0451471075 (N) (4 page)

“I can read a map better than Siri,” Joanna insists.

I say, “I’m willing to wager that’s not true.”

“Please, I’m highly competent. Oh, wait, you were supposed to turn back there,” Joanna says, as we whiz past the exit on the right.

“I thought you said we should turn left.”

“I must have had the map upside down,” she admits.

“Siri, get directions to EAST JONES STREET,” I shout in the direction of my phone.

Joanna clutches the device to her chest. “No, Siri, don’t listen to her! We’re doing this ourselves, like the pioneers did!”

“Siri, what does it mean when I can’t feel my molars? And how important is a functioning frontal lobe?” Kathleen asks. “Also, Siri, are there two sets of headlights over there, or do I have double vision?”

“Whoops, wait, turn here right now!” Joanna exclaims, and I barely have time to cut across two lanes of traffic to make it. “Now veer right and stay on this road.”

“For how long?”

“Um . . . this long.” She holds her thumb and forefinger an inch apart to demonstrate the distance on the map.

“Is that an hour? A minute? A mile?”

“Do you guys hear sleigh bells? I hear sleigh bells,” Kathleen says.

“You, lie down,” I call over my shoulder. I turn to Joanna. “And you, either tell me how far in actual distance or
please ask Siri
.”

“You’re going to want to . . . exit back there!”

I have to swerve again and I’m really glad there are no other cars on the road. “You’re not making your case, Joanna. You can’t give me turns in retrospect. Now you have to let me know how long we’re on this portion of the road or I’m pulling over.”

She squints at her screen. “You’re going to travel on this road for . . . three times longer than you were on the last road.”

“And how the fuck long is that?” I’ve been trying to curtail my use of f-bombs because once I arrived in Ma’amsylvania, swearing lost its charm. Well-groomed sorority girl spouting profanity? Totes adorbs. Middle-aged woman doing the same? Next stop, the Springer show.

However, swearing in this case is wholly necessary.

“This much.” She holds up her thumb and forefinger again, as though she’s about to pinch someone.

“Do you want me to solve for X? Is that what you’re telling me? These aren’t directions, Joanna. This is Euclidian geometry!”

From the backseat Kathleen is quietly singing to herself. “Just hear those sleigh bells jingling, ring-ting-tingling, oooh.”

Joanna slips on her reading glasses and examines the phone some more. “In exactly one and one-tenths mile, you will turn right. How’s that for accurate?”

“That’s perfect,” I admit. “Thank you. Kat, how we doing back there?”

“Ring-ting-tingling?”

I assure her, “Don’t worry, we’ll be at the house soon.”

I make the turn and only then do I read the name of the street we’re merging onto. “Joanna, are you aware you’re having us take Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard? Now, I don’t know how to say this without sounding like an a-hole, but, um, traditionally this very good man’s name is not always attached to very good neighborhoods.”

“But it’s a shortcut,” she insists.

“Ring-ting-tingly!” Kathleen offers.

I grit my teeth. “Then I’m sure in no way will we regret this route.”

However, Joanna’s right on this one and it’s the most expedient way to get where we’re going.

“I told you so,” she offers, a bit too smugly for one who not sixty seconds ago sent us the wrong way down a one-way street.

“And we didn’t mess up our dos,” Kathleen adds.

We arrive at the house minutes later. I wish Fletch could see this place so he’d understand how Not Spring Break this stunning wedding cake of a home is. Our new digs are a Victorian town house in the middle of a picturesque neighborhood where the trees are all draped with moss.

We can gather in the antique-strewn living rooms on the first or second floors and there’s plenty of space for us all to hang out on
one of the multiple verandas. And, instead of sleeping on a blow-up raft like I did in Clearwater, we each have our own bedroom. Trenna and I have our own bathrooms—hers with a claw-foot tub—and there’s a whole separate dressing room for those sharing the other baths. I can’t imagine any place more grown-up or civilized. The best part is that Julia’s a bargain shopper and the house costs less than if we’d booked our own rooms at a budget hotel.

Julia hands us each a glass of wine when we walk in and once we unpack and have a moment to decompress, we finally begin to relax and enjoy our grown-up girls’ weekend.

Everything is going to be great!

“Remember to set your alarm clocks, girls—we’re doing Zumba first thing in the morning,” Trenna says.

With a clear commitment to my own convictions and with zero regrets, I reply, “Sorry, that doesn’t work for me.”

3.

I A
M THE
O
NE
W
HO
K
NOCKS

“How’s Adult Spring Break?”

“When are you going to stop asking me that?”

“When it stops being funny. Hey, you realize I can see you rolling your eyes, right?”

Damn you, FaceTime, foiled again!

Perhaps threats will cease Fletcher’s endless mockery. “Do you want me to spoil the next episode for you? Because I will.” Almost five years late to the party, Fletch and I have started watching
Breaking Bad
. Our goal is to catch up with everyone before the series finale, so we’re currently ODing on all things Walter White.

We’ve since discovered that binge-watching is the new binge-drinking, at least for us. I’m sure College Jen and Fletch would call us pathetic for subbing TV for cocktails, but College Jen and Fletch also sat on a couch they found by a Dumpster and ate Beefaroni straight out of the can. Besides,
Breaking Bad
is masterful and I just want to take Jesse home to hug him and make him a nice stew.

(Sidebar: Why do we hate Skyler so damn much?)

Also, between this show and having plowed through
Weeds
earlier this year, I’m now secretly convinced that everyone sells drugs. EVERY. ONE. Whenever I see a weird business like a still-operating video rental store, I swear up and down that it’s actually a grow house. I have no reason to ever enter one of these stores, save for making a citizen’s arrest, but I always shake my fist at them when we drive past, like,
I’m onto you.

“No! I want to be surprised,” Fletch pleads. “New subject, are you having fun?”

“Yes, this was such a good idea,” I tell him. “Thank you for encouraging me to come.” Fletch was the one who helped motivate me to shift my plan-canceling, sticking-close-to-home, why-don’t-you-all-just-come-stay-here paradigm and I’m so glad that I did. The last couple of years have been nothing but stress and tours and due dates and I’m wound pretty tightly right now. He’s been very conscious of my needing some kind of outlet, lest I explode.

The fact that he now gets to spend a number of days sitting on the big couch alone, not watching endless episodes of
Big Brother,
likely motivated him as well. Still, I appreciate how he’s almost better that I am at gauging my moods, and inevitably, he helps push me to make the right decisions.

Since I’ve been in Savannah, I’ve started to ponder what else I might have been missing over the past few years of being a deadline-ridden semihermit. For all my “seize the day” resolve, I’ve too often allowed myself to be bogged down by boring household bullshit, like spending countless hours trying to figure out what kind of tile I wanted in the upstairs bath. In fact, the funds for this trip were originally earmarked for said new tile, but Fletch asked me what was going to be more important when I looked back on my life—creating new memories with people I love or upgrading to travertine. Put like that, the choice was clear.

There’s an expression about how there’s what you know, what you don’t know, and what you don’t know you don’t know.
I have a feeling my second act should be all about exploring what I don’t know I don’t know.

Again, I need to forge a new path.

The time has come to make a bold move and I may have just figured out the way to make one.

“Hey, I had an idea, but it might be dumb. What do you think about bucket lists?”

Hambone, Maisy’s sequel, suddenly appears on-screen. This extraordinarily silly red pit bull has planted herself next to Fletch and keeps trying to lick his brain by way of his ear.

(Sidebar: No matter how much you might love
Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo
, it’s never quite as good as the original, is it?)

“Augh, this dog. She’s been glued to my side ever since you left.”

Her enormous monochromatic melon takes up the whole screen and the picture quality is so clear I can see the tiny dimple in the middle of her nose. As always, she makes me melt.

(Sidebar: Wait, what about
Godfather II
? Perhaps there’s hope for her yet.)

“Aw, Hammy misses her mumma! You miss your mumma, sweetie? See? This is why I stay home; it’s too hard to be away from her precious widdle face. Hello, Hammy! Hello, Hammy baby! Give your mumma some sugar!!”

“You have the world of technology at your fingertips and you use it to talk to the dogs.” He sighs and positions the Ham away from him on the couch. She sits up next to him on her haunches, with her back pressed into the couch, aw . . . just like people!

“What about lists now?”

“Bucket lists—the things you want to do before you die.”

“Are you dying?”

“Eventually, but hopefully not on this trip. Bucket list items are stuff you want to achieve, like write a book or be on television.”

“You’ve already done both.”

“So those won’t go on my list, but there’s plenty other stuff I’ve always wanted to do but put off until later. Maybe
now
is my later.” I shift on the bed so now I’m facing the fireplace. My room has a fireplace! Sure, it’s twelve-hundred degrees outside right now, but nothing beats the
option
of having a fire.

Technically, I suspect this whole place may be flammable. As luxurious as our rental looked online, clearly we received the deal we did because the homeowners are borderline hoarders. We’re finding really weird stuff crammed into every nook and cranny. For example, we noticed that one of the big Chinese vases on the landing between the second and third floor is packed with dirty men’s shirts. There are fifteen different types of cutting boards in the kitchen, so many that there’s not actually any counter space left to
use
a cutting board. And the dresser in the front hallway has what looks like a Steve Buscemi doll nestled in a tiny coffin among tons of junk.

I opened one of the bedside tables and it is stacked full of hundreds of old copies of
Entertainment Weekly
. Mind you, I love
EW
, but the point of the magazine is timeliness. Is it really necessary to save the fall preview
guide from 2008? (Although, is that when
Breaking Bad
debuted? Maybe I actually should read that issue for other viewing suggestions. Otherwise, though, no.) We’ve been having little treasure hunts for the weirdest stuff we can find squirreled away. Thus far Dead Steve Buscemi wins, but the trip is still in its early stages.