It pulled at her throat to hear her words, exactly the way she’d urged on her kids, especially for all their firsts: letting go of her fingers and taking those first robotic steps on stubby legs across the living room; or when they were learning to dive off the edge of the pool, their little toes curled tightly around the cement edge, bony knees knocking from chill and fear, arms plastered against ears, fingers tight, hands laid perfectly, one over the other, a prayer pose if ever there was one, with Meg treading water, waiting, saying, ‘You can do it! I know you can!’; or as they wobbled off on their little bikes with the small, fat tires but, for the first time, no training wheels, defying both gravity and Meg’s own death-grip on their bicycle seat till she had to let go; or when they first merged into rush-hour traffic on the freeway with their still-crisp learner’s permit tucked proudly into their purse or wallet, both child and mother’s knuckles white; or when they were sitting on their overstuffed college suitcase, finally succeeding in zippering it closed, and then the child who had been so irritable and distant all summer, nearly bursting with the need to leave home, suddenly burst into tears at the prospect. ‘C’mon, you can do it,’ she’d said each and every time, until they had.
‘C’mon, you can do it,’ she said again, louder, to her car and to herself. But when she turned the key, the solitary and forlorn click of the ignition could barely be heard above the rain. She looked right, saw Shelly studying her, overly sympathetically.
‘Damn cars,’ she told Meg. ‘They’re like men. You can’t live with ’em, and you can’t live without ’em.’
Meg nodded, although it was Shelly’s mantra, not hers. Meg had never wanted to be alone. Never.
She sighed, reached forward, patted the dashboard. ‘What’s wrong, little Rosie?’
She felt a gaze pierce the side of her head. Shelly again. This time, mouth and eyes wide open. ‘You named your car?’ she asked. ‘I did not know this about you. How could I not know this? Did you name your lawn mower too?’ Shelly snickered. C.C. chuckled in the back seat. Meg tried to look indignant, but she couldn’t completely stifle a smile.
‘And your cheese grater?’ asked Shelly. There was just a fraction of a moment of silence, then the car seemed to explode with laughter. Their fatigue and predicament was taking its toll, all of them laughing so hard they could barely breathe, tears streaming down their cheeks, the kind of uncontrollable laughter that was pure, emotional release.
‘And your…carrot peeler?’ Shelly wheezed.
‘Oh, wait! I know, I know!’ said Meg, breathlessly. ‘Together, they could be Larry, Moe and Curly!’ She fell onto the steering wheel in silent, shaking laughter.
Shelly shrieked, then caught her breath enough to squeeze out, ‘Perhaps we should change from The Trio, to the Three Stooges!’ More uncontrollable laughter. ‘Oh! I’ve got it!’ Shelly was almost screaming now. ‘The lawn mower is…Moe!’
C.C.’s distinct laugh, an almost maniacal giggle when she really got going, made Meg laugh even harder. They were all beside themselves, hardly able to breathe.
Shelly was wheezing, talking in gasps. ‘And the…carrot…peeler is…Curly,’ more shrieks of laughter, ‘and the…the…’
Meg and C.C., still laughing but more controlled, waited for Shelly.
But Shelly had stopped laughing. She looked truly frightened. ‘Oh shit!’ she said, pressing her palms to her cheeks. Meg glanced back at C.C., who looked worriedly at Shelly, then at Meg.
‘Shell?’ asked Meg, placing her hand on Shelly’s knee. Meg’s mind raced with what the problem could be–a suddenly remembered stove left on at home? Sudden pain?
‘I forgot the third thing!’ said Shelly.
There was just the briefest pause, then all three screamed with laughter again.
‘I don’t remember it either!’ C.C. squealed.
‘Oh my God,’ Meg said flatly, catching her breath, looking side to side, blinking. ‘I can’t remember it either! This is so pathetic.’ She burst out laughing along with the other two and inadvertently snorted, making them all dissolve again.
‘Stop! Stop! Or you’ll make me pee!’ C.C. gasped from the back seat.
They slowly regained control. C.C.’s worry, a frequent one of late, quickly brought some sobriety into the car.
‘Oh my,’ said Meg, inhaling deeply. She pulled a tissue from the center console and dabbed at her eyes, sighing. ‘Golly. Just look at us here, all broken down and stranded, not doing a darned thing about it.’
‘Well, why the hell are we just sitting here, girls?’ said Shelly, digging through her purse. She pulled out a pack of tissues, which she handed back to C.C., then her bright red reading glasses, then her gem-studded cellphone. ‘You’re a member of Triple A, right, Meg?’ she asked.
Meg shook her head, pointed to a small sticker on the corner of the windshield. ‘No, but we’ve got–’ she sucked in a breath–‘I’ve got towing coverage. With our insurance.’ She held out her hand. ‘May I use your phone?’ Shelly handed it to her.
‘Ceece?’ Shelly said, twisting in her seat. ‘You’d better get an urgent delivery prayer up that we can get a signal out here.’
Meg turned and watched as C.C. closed her eyes, crossed herself quickly, then put her forehead against her clasped hands. Meg turned back around. She looked at the sticker, blinked, pressed her head back into the headrest, then looked at Shelly again. ‘I can’t read the numbers. Hand the specs over too, please.’ She punched in the number, and when it rang, Meg gave the other two a thumbs-up.
‘Yay, Jesus!’ shouted Shelly, the recalcitrant but loyal Jew, pumping her fist. Meg could hear C.C. clapping, saying, ‘Thank you, Jesus.’ Meg waved her hand for them to quiet.
‘Hello? Hello? Can you hear me? Yes? Great. Hi. This is Meg Bartholomew. We, uh, need a little help, I guess.’
Shelly leaned over, nearly in Meg’s lap, and yelled toward the phone, ‘We need a lot of help!’ Meg swatted her off, grinning.
Meg listened, then said, ‘Well, actually, I did happen to notice the last mile marker we passed. Number thirty-two.’ Whether C.C. hadn’t heard, or didn’t remember the significance of the number, or simply decided to keep quiet, Meg didn’t know. But she was grateful.
When she had relayed the rest of the information, Meg closed the phone and handed it back to Shelly. ‘Well, I guess there’s nothing left to do but wait for someone to rescue us.’
The rain, which had been slowly letting up, had now finally stopped altogether, as if it too were worn out. Meg looked up, hopeful for a rainbow that she could point out to C.C. But there was no rainbow, no fingers of sunlight breaking through, not even a parting in the clouds.
No one spoke. Meg looked out at the soggy patchwork of farmland, most of it fallow still, even late March being too early and–untrustworthy–for planting. She stared at the barbed-wire fence, watched the drops clinging to the bottom of the wires, like tiny, upside-down birds, until they grew fat and heavy, and gravity made them plunge to the ground. She rested her head on the cool glass and wondered where Grant was. She closed her eyes, picturing him in his ubiquitous Yankees cap, driving his orange BMW. But where? She willed him to write to her, tried even to make herself picture a letter already waiting for her in Tennessee. He had the address; she’d dictated it to him that day he was sitting at the kitchen table making some sort of list and—She had a sudden pang. What had he been writing that day? He’d been sitting at the kitchen table, writing a list on a legal pad, and listening to that awful sports radio where the men seemed to yell all the time. She’d hesitated briefly, then she’d asked to speak to him. ‘What’s up?’ he said, neither looking up nor turning down the radio. The conversation that had followed, like all their conversations, was stilted, awkward. But