held it above Lucy’s head, and began to pour. ‘Show me where your fill-line is, Lovee.’ Lucy held her hand near her stomach, then let it rise. C.C. poured till Lucy’s hand was at the top of her head. ‘Full of brave?’ C.C. asked her. Lucy nodded, and they hugged again.
Still clutching Lucy, C.C. looked up at Kathryn, then at her two best friends, all of whom were teary. But Kathryn turned away from her. C.C. could hear her daughter’s sharp intake of breath, but she didn’t know how to read it. Kathryn held her hand out to Shelly for a plate.
Only her granddaughter enjoyed the picnic dinner on an old sheet on the floor of the empty living room. For C.C., and she suspected for the others as well, all the leftovers of their lives made for an odd and bittersweet meal.
‘I spy with my little eye, something blue.’
‘Blue?’ said Shelly. ‘It can’t be inside the car, Ceece!’
‘It’s not! Look! On the bottom of that silo.’
‘Well, don’t show me, for God’s sakes! Now you have to pick something else!’
Meg smiled at them, Shelly riding shotgun, C.C. in the back, where she would be the entire trip because she didn’t drive a stick. Meg wasn’t playing the I Spy game; she was too worried about her car. The windshield wipers had done it again, a sort of hiccup. As she watched, they stalled mid-swipe and finally slid down and lay there, as if exhausted. Meg stared at them; she could relate.
At least it had nearly stopped raining. She glanced over at Shelly, then caught C.C. staring at her in the rear-view mirror. Both of them had that flicker of alarm in their eyes, their lively chatting abruptly stopped. It was clear to all of them now, the car was unwell. But it kept on going. Good ole Rosie, Meg thought. But she wondered again if the full load–all their suitcases, the cooler and the three of them–wasn’t too much for her ancient Honda.
‘I think your old car is having mid-life issues too, Meg.’ Shelly was fanning herself with the map again. She laughed, and C.C. chortled in the back.
Meg turned the radio off, then the headlights. She flipped the wiper switch off, then on, and the blades reluctantly picked up. But then the car surged and sputtered, and the wipers flopped spasmodically again.
As long as the car is moving, I’ll be damned if I’m going to pull over here, in Middle-of-Nowhere, Illinois. Meg stared up at the gray sky, not to God, because she’d long ago dismissed that notion, but rather in the same way Eeyore would look at his personal rain cloud, not questioning, but with a somber acceptance. Hello there, Rain cloud. I knew you’d stay with me.
‘Those wipers look about as useful as goose doo on a pump handle,’ said C.C., matter-of-factly.
Meg smiled, finally. She was always grateful for C.C.’s take on things, and now it seemed their every mile southward was bringing out a little more of her latent accent and homespun sayings.
Meg looked at the trip odometer: 212. And they had nearly four hundred miles to go!
She tried the wipers again. ‘C’mon, you worthless things!’ They sprang to life, as if to mock her.
‘Yay!’ said C.C., and she and Shelly resumed their conversation.
Meg straightened in her seat again, able to see now through the cleared arcs. They rolled past another mile marker and Meg flinched when she saw it: 32. Her upcoming wedding anniversary. She said nothing, fearing that C.C. would interpret it as a bad omen.
Was it her imagination or were the wipers slowing again? Her fingers tightened on the steering wheel. They were. They stuttered, then refused to rise. Again. She glared at the blades, black and crisp-looking–she’d bought new ones just for this trip-but utterly useless on their metal arms. Involuntarily, she glanced down at her new pants, loden-green corduroys, also purchased just for this trip; she’d been shocked to find that she had to buy a size six. She’d been a fit ten her whole married life, except for when she was pregnant. A deep and audible sigh of empathy with the wipers slipped out as she decided she really couldn’t see. She carefully steered the car toward the side of the road.
Suddenly the wipers picked up again and the engine hummed to life. ‘Make up your friggin’ mind!’ Meg growled. She steered the car back onto the paved but unlined country road.
‘What the hell’s wrong with the wipers?’ asked Shelly.
‘Yeah, what’s wrong?’ C.C. asked.
Meg felt a surge of irritation that she was expected to know what was wrong, just because it was her car. She was a high-school English teacher; her mechanical aptitude wouldn’t fill a thimble. She tried the wiper switch again as rustling sounds came from the back seat.
‘Here, hon.’ C.C.’s chubby pale hand appeared between the seats, holding four squares of a Hershey bar. ‘Have some chocolate.’ C.C.’s panacea.
‘No, thanks. I’m okay,’ said Meg, though she realized her posture, hunched over the steering wheel, hands clenched and bloodless on the wheel, belied her claim. C.C.’s hand silently retracted, followed by soft sounds of smacking from the back seat.
Meg touched the accelerator with her toe again. The speedometer registered a lethargic twenty-seven miles per hour. She pressed again and there was a small roar, so she tried the wipers; they started up again, at a galloping beat. But they seemed…untrustworthy. But both Shelly and C.C. gave dramatic sighs of relief and resumed chatting.
Did they not notice that they were crawling along? Could they not hear the engine? Meg continued to breathe as if through a cocktail straw. The car was fine, she told herself; it was her. Hadn’t nearly everything become untrustworthy since—
Even the bucolic rural Illinois farmland had become foreboding. The country scene, the broad sky, the rich, chocolatey soil of the newly plowed fields, the red barns with their big white Xs on the doors, they had all always been a salve to her, harking back to another era. She had such nostalgia for a slower pace and a gentler time that Meg thought reincarnation seemed a more distinct possibility than heaven or hell. But at the moment, the somber gray sky and the sodden fields felt not calming, but remote and desolate.
They were down to ten miles per hour. Should she pull over again? A sudden stillness announced that there was no question for her to ponder anymore. The wipers slid one final arc. The quiet settled into the car like a morose fourth passenger. On momentum alone, Meg steered the car to the edge of the road.
No one spoke, but she knew the other two were looking at her. She exhaled finally; she hadn’t even realized she’d been holding her breath. She took one hand off the steering wheel, turned the key in the ignition to off, then turned it back. Nothing. She tried it again, with the same result.
She leaned back hard in her seat. ‘Shit. I’m sorry, you guys.’ She massaged the red marks on her otherwise white palms. ‘It was my stupid literary fantasy, to take the scenic small roads, emulate John Steinbeck. Now we’re stuck in the middle of nowhere,’ she said morosely, staring out her window. There was not a house, barn or even another car in sight. Just acres and acres of wet farmland.
Meg closed her eyes, too tired to remember C.C.’s cardinal rule never to tempt the fates when things were going wrong. As she rubbed her hands she thought: This can’t get any worse. They were stuck in the middle of their lives, in middle America, in the middle of life crises, and now, in the middle of nowhere. ‘So much for our Great Escape,’ she said with a small, unconvincing laugh.
How many decades had they fantasized about ‘the Great Escape’? To just up and leave their kids, husbands, jobs, lives for a week or two, head for the horizon, free of the myriad burdens of being something to someone, other than friend. They’d long ago agreed that their friendship was what held them together, reminded them of who they were as women,