The Way to Schenectady (3 page)

We clattered up to the van in a fury of footsteps and loud breathing.

“Oh, hi,” Dad said to us. He looked embarrassed.

“Are we in time?” asked Bill. “We came as fast as we could.”

Bernie wiggled his arms. We must have pulled them almost out of their sockets. “I came even faster,” he said.

The policewoman smiled and kept writing.

“Better get in the van, children,” said Dad, in a resigned way. “This won’t take very long.”

Bill slid in to the very back of the van. I helped Bernie into his car seat, and sat beside him.

Grandma came hurrying up, her eyes burning more fiercely than her cigarette. “Well, this is a great start to the vacation.”

“Oh, hello, Mother-in-law.”

“Nice parking job. A long way from the front door, and illegal, too.”

Dad sighed.

“Don’t mind me,” said Grandma to the policewoman. “No one does. I haven’t mattered to anyone since my husband died. Just another lonely old lady. Keep writing the ticket, officer.”

“But don’t take away his license,” I said. “We’re driving to Massachusetts to see Mom.”

Grandma was in the front seat, with the window unrolled. “His name is Alexander Peeler. He lives on Garden Avenue with my younger daughter and these three urchins. Big old house, plenty of room. Needs a coat of paint, though, and a new roof, but he’s too cheap to fix it up.” She spoke with grim enjoyment.

The policewoman’s expression had changed since we showed up. From being kind of bored and uncaring, she began to look almost, well, compassionate. She stuck her finger in her notebook, marking her place. She spoke to Dad, “This old lady with a mouth full of lemons – you’re driving her to the States?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Dad.

“Long trip,” said the policewoman. “I’m sorry for you.” That shut Grandma up.

“Sorry enough to tear up the ticket?” Dad asked.

“No.”

But she stood out in the middle of the road and stopped traffic so we could pull out of our illegal parking spot. Dad called “Thanks” over his shoulder, but the policewoman was already writing another ticket.

We edged forward in silence for a moment. I think we were all surprised at what Grandma had said. Even she was surprised.

“Dad,” (predictably, Bernie was the first of us to react) “what’s an urchin?”

“A mop-top, gap-toothed, knee-high rebel,” said Dad promptly. “A ragged, freethinking, contemptuous answer to the sour complacency of an older generation.” He turned his head. He wasn’t smiling. “Isn’t that right, Mother-in-law?”

She didn’t say anything.

“Wow,” said Bernie.

The highway would be coming up soon. I opened my travel case.

“About what I said back there,” began Grandma in an undertone.

“We’ve got a big house, do we?” said Dad, speeding up to get onto the highway. “Big enough for what, you lonely old lady?”

“Forget I said anything. Please. I’m in a lousy mood today. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

I couldn’t remember hearing Grandma say “please” before – not even “please pass the potatoes.” She’d say, “If you’re quite finished with the potatoes, Jane, maybe someone else would like to have some.” That’s not please.

Bill’s voice was a plaintive whine, the sound of a cheap remote-control car trying to climb a ramp. “Are
we there yet?” he said. I guess he couldn’t stop himself from asking.

My brother is good at parsecs and microns. These are not the measures on our road map. I folded the map and held it out to him. “See, Bill,” I said, “we’re here, in Toronto. See, I’ve circled it. And we’re going to Auntie Vera’s, which is just outside of Pittsfield, all the way over here,” I unfolded the map, “in Massachusetts. Do you see? I’ve circled that, too. There’s the scale of the map down at the bottom. On average, we travel the length of my thumb every hour. We have to travel eighteen thumb lengths before we’re finished.” I folded up the map. “Now do you see, Bill?”

“Negative,” he said grumpily.

“Shall I explain it again?”

“You know, if this really was a spaceship, we’d be there in eighteen seconds. Whizz!” he said suddenly, in a loud voice, startling Grandma. “Whizz! Bang! Boom! And we’d be there!”

Beside me, Bernie squirmed in his car seat. “Maybe we’ll be there
soon
,” he said. “Soon” is what Dad usually says when we ask “Are we there yet?” Bill and I are old enough to understand that he doesn’t mean it, but Bernie is just a baby, and he still feels better when he hears it. “Will we be there soon?” he asked.

“Yes, Bernie,” I told him. “We’ll be there soon.”

He smiled. He’s got all his teeth now. Cute little baby teeth like a row of milk-white corn niblets. “Don’t worry, Bill,” he said, throwing the words like salt over
his shoulder to avoid the bad luck. “Jane says we’ll be there soon.”

“Not soon enough,” said Grandma.

As we turned onto the highway that would take us out of the city, Bill lurched sideways and hit his elbow. He started to whimper, very dramatically, and I told him to, well, I told him to shut up. He got angry and leaned forward to
boomp
me on the head with his fist; I may have accidentally undone my seat belt, turned around, and knelt on my seat in order to
boomp
him back. Accidentally. And he screamed and started to complain, and I called him a name, and he called me a name, and, before we knew it, Dad had pulled out a bag and started throwing candies around the car. “And do up your seat belt,” he told me sternly, with his mouth full of toffee.

“Ouch,” said Bill, when the toffee hit him in the nose. I giggled. He bounced out of the seat and bonked me on the back of the head. I screamed. He giggled.

Overhead, the sun was beating down. In the van, Bernie was beating on the front of his car seat. “Go faster,” he said. I knew how he felt. The faster we went, the sooner we’d get there. I thought about Mom, checking her watch at Auntie Vera’s. I started to hum “Seventy-six Trombones.”

Lots of cars all around us. The highway had about fifteen lanes, and they were all full. Where do the people go? It was ten o’clock on a midsummer Monday, and
people were sure anxious to get somewhere. The same cars seemed to appear and disappear, no matter how fast we went. The same faces behind the steering wheels: grim faces, work faces, busy faces.

“Let’s play a game,” I said. I love to get people organized so they can have fun. If the game lasted for an hour, it would be time to think about lunch. “How about the game where we get points for the things we see? Do you know that one, Grandma?”

She didn’t answer.

“Do you remember that game, Bill?”

He didn’t answer.

“Remember, Bernie?” I asked, poking him. “Remember we’d get points for seeing cows or horses? Or barns? Remember, Bernie? Cows, point for me?” Usually, he likes my suggestions. But he didn’t answer either. He had that faraway look, deep and mysterious. Either he was about to have a nap, or … “Dad,” I whispered, “I think Bernie’s making a diaper.”

Dad was offering Grandma some coffee from the cup that sits on top of the thermos. She was shaking her head.

“What?” he said. “A diaper? Bernie, don’t you remember what we talked about after breakfast? And yesterday? Don’t you want to be a big boy? You said you’d try to remember to tell me before you had to go.”

Bernie looked guilty. “I’m fine,” he said. “Now.”

I moved away from him on the seat. I knew what that meant.

Dad made a gesture of impatience. “I can’t understand you, Bernie. I can’t understand why a boy, who speaks in sentences, who can remember things from last year – a boy who can practically tell time, for crying out loud – why that same boy cannot tell when he has to go to the bathroom.”

Bernie shook his head. He couldn’t understand either.

We were slowing down. Hot air shimmered over our hood. All around us were cars steaming gently in the morning sun. The highway was like a giant pot, filled with boiling eggs. Would one of them pop?

“I should have had the van serviced,” said Dad. “The temperature gauge doesn’t seem to be working. Either that, or we’re running a little hot.”

“Cows,” said Bernie.

“That’s it. Point for you! Good!” I said. He remembered from last year, on our way up to the cottage. In fact, there were no cows now; we were in the middle of the suburbs. Off the highway were places that sold tires, and places that sold rooms for the night, and places that didn’t sell anything, just sat there in rows like empty boxes. You couldn’t get to them from the highway even if you wanted to, and I couldn’t see why you’d want to.

“My turn,” I said, peering through the windows one at a time. “I see a big apartment building, but I don’t think that’s worth a point. I see a church in the distance. And – oh, look!” I said, staring through the windshield. Up ahead was a truck turned sideways, blocking one
lane of traffic. One of its doors had popped open, and I could see a cow’s head sticking out.

“You were right, Bernie,” I said. “Cows.”

“They say ‘moo,’ ” he confided behind his hand.

“Do they?” I said.

“Moo,” he said.

“Moo,” I said, as deeply as I could. It sounded just like a cow to me.

“Moo,” said Bill, from the backseat.

“Have a candy,” Dad said to Grandma.

“I do not want a … candy,” said Grandma. I must say, by the way, that Grandma has another nasty habit besides smoking. She swears. I’m not allowed to say those words, so I won’t repeat them, but Grandma uses words that rhyme with “shell” and “ham” a lot. “I don’t want a ham candy,” said Grandma.

We were passing the truck now. Very slowly, one car at a time. The cows stared out at us as we passed by. They were almost close enough to touch.

“Mooooo,” we all said together. Bernie was laughing so hard, it didn’t come out right.

“Stick of gum?” Dad offered to Grandma.

She shut her eyes. Her hands were trembling. “Take it away,” she said, in a low voice. “Take it away, I tell you, and leave me the shell alone!”

“Elephant,” said Bernie. “Point for me.”

“Where?” I asked, peering around.

He opened his blue blue eyes really wide. “In the zoo,” he said.

We took the next exit off the highway, and drove down a road with hardly anything on it except signs showing how to get to other roads. Asphalt ramps snaked all around us. In the distance, huge power pylons marched across the landscape like giants. “Are we there yet?” asked Bill, not very hopefully.

“We’re outside Oshawa,” I told him. “There, see.” I held out the map, but he wouldn’t look. We stopped at a gas station. Dad told us we could get out and stretch our legs, then grabbed Bernie and the diaper bag. Grandma already had her door open, and was reaching into her purse. Bill and I climbed out more slowly.

“There’s a vending machine,” I said.

Dad and Bernie disappeared toward the washrooms – Bernie under Dad’s arm, wriggling. Grandma stood beside the van.

“You can’t smoke here, ma’am,” said the gas station attendant.

Her face fell.

“Not near the pumps, ma’am. It’s a regulation.”

She moved away from the van and lit her cigarette in the shade of a stack of old tires.

Bill and I bought ourselves cans of pop from the vending machine, and wandered around behind the gas station. We could hear the sound of the highway – a constant whine.

“Do you have to go to the bathroom, Bill?” I said. “It’ll be another hour and a half until we stop for lunch.”

He stuck out his tongue. I sipped my pop. Root beer.

And then a pile of clothes spoke to us. At least that’s what I thought at the time. A huddle of old clothes heaped against the back wall of the gas station.

“Oh, no,” it said. Or possibly, “Oh, woe.” I wasn’t paying close attention to the choice of words. The idea of an animated pile of rags was more interesting than what it was saying. The voice went on, “So thirsty. So far to go. How am I going to get there?”

I shrank back against Bill. I’d heard of people who could make it sound like something across the room was talking. Throwing their voice, they call it. I wondered if someone was throwing his voice into a pile of dirty clothes.

And then the pile sat up. And it wasn’t laundry anymore. It was a man.

A small, bumpy-faced man, with white hair and white eyebrows that went up in little points, like paper hats, or that French accent I can never remember the name of.

A small, skin-and-bones man, with a hole in one of his running shoes. A crinkly-eyed man, who climbed to his feet with effort, as if it were a long way up – which it wasn’t – and stared at us.

A stranger. They keep telling us about strangers in school, and it would be hard to imagine a stranger stranger than this one. I was surprised to see him appear from nothing, but I was more surprised than scared. Maybe because he was smaller than I was. Maybe because he’d been crying.

“Hello,” I said.

Bill’s mouth was open. No sound came out of it.

“Do you … want some root beer?” I asked the stranger.

His chin moved sideways when he ducked his head. A tiny man, with nervous, jerky motions, like a bird’s.