Even Sarah came out. It wasn’t her weekend to see Emmanuel, she was just out for the social occasion of Deadbeat Dad’s day. That morning everybody was huddling under umbrellas and black garbage bags. Sarah got wet like always: she didn’t seem to mind the rain. Sherree’s ex had barely said hello to Jasmine before he looked pissed off and fed up with her. I remember Lish telling me that when Maya or Hope — I can’t remember which one — was born, she had gone over to Sherree’s place to show them the baby, and Sherree’s ex had said, “Don’t point that thing at me.” Now he hurled Jasmine’s little plastic knapsack into the back part, it wasn’t really a seat, of his Camaro and said in a very irritated tone of voice, “I said hurry up, get in the damn car already.”
Terrapin was actually allowing her daughters to go out with their father, a macrobiotic software programmer who had had a nervous breakdown but was recovering, thanks to the Lord and a daily journal of affirmations or some such thing. Terrapin said she could feel his pain, and although at first she was angry when he had his breakdown, she was now sympathetic. She was just so thankful he wasn’t put on any mind-altering medication. She was sure it was diet-related, though I didn’t know how that could be, because the man looked like he hardly ate anything at all.
Another couple was exchanging insults over the heads of their two kids, and the two kids were hitting each other. Apparently he was accusing her of putting his phone number in the Buy and Sell, advertising all sorts of things really cheap: like VCRs for ten bucks and a 1992 Volvo for one hundred dollars and furniture for free and stuff like that, so he’d get tons of phone calls and be driven up the wall. She said it was the only thing left for her to do to get even with him, and all the other women, even Sarah, were laughing; she said she’d already had three arrests for assaulting him — one more and she’d lose custody rights, maybe even visitation rights. This was stupid, because she actually seemed like a pretty good mother, she just had it in for her ex. Lish told me that even this woman’s own mother was on her ex’s side. Both thought she was crazy because she had been misdiagnosed as a schizophrenic. They never thought to get mad at the doctor. Anyway, so now all she could do to him were non-violent things like the Buy and Sell prank. I think she also wrote country songs about him and performed them at amateur Saturdays at the Blues Jam.
Geez, I tell you, we’d never have had kids if we’d known it would turn out like this. And besides, Lish said that women are always hornier when they’re ovulating because it’s nature’s cruel trick to get them pregnant. During that time the body takes over the brain and they get themselves in trouble. It’s not the brain talking, it’s the egg. Well, Lish never thought having the baby was a problem. She just wasn’t sure she could handle having the man. It made me think maybe I was better off not knowing Dill’s father. I couldn’t see myself shouting instructions from the front door of Half-a-Life every Friday evening and waiting, lonely and worried as hell, every Sunday evening for Dill’s return, waiting to see if his hair had been cut, or worrying about him growing fond of some other woman. Some of the women in Half-a-Life worried about their exes leaving the country with the kid or kids. Especially after the movie of the week had been on because it was usually about some nut who kidnaps his kid or tries to swap him with a different one or something else entirely freaky. I doubted Camaro Guy was up for that, let alone any of the other Deadbeat Dads. But if some kid wasn’t home at six on Sunday, oh boy, the cops were called, and there were police escorts home for the kids, trailing the father’s car all the way to Half-a-Life, cursing and crying and recriminations and shouts of see you in court and name-calling and sad, mixed-up kids. Like I said, it’s amazing how love can turn so rotten.
I noticed Jasmine had a little tear in her black tights that tore a little more as she crawled up onto the front seat of the red Camaro. I could smell the unmistakable odour of fried hamburger. Even if some of the mothers were losing their kids for the weekend, they weren’t saying goodbye to cheap meat and noodle dishes. Somewhere in between the time the women said goodbye to their kids and went upstairs to their quiet apartments, they’d have to find something good, maybe the look of the sky or the smile on their kid’s face as they drove away or a whiff of something that reminded them of a long time ago or a coupon for a two-for-one deal at Safeway or an invitation to the Scrabble tournament with tequila in the block that night. Something good, otherwise I would imagine the quiet of an empty apartment could kill you.
Anyway, Lish had spent about an hour deciding what to wear for our first day on the road. She was wearing a pair of Hope’s pink plastic sunglasses and frosted lipstick to match. Her hair was plastered back, held in place by her hat. Her spider had been polished for the occasion. Her black t-shirt was cut off so low in the front that with every little bump in the road her breasts jumped up and down and teetered for a while afterwards. She was drinking Roots ginger-ale and belching on purpose in between gulps. Around her neck, she had her good luck charm in a little leather pouch. The charm was actually Maya’s dried up umbilical cord with some rosemary and a couple of bay leaves thrown in. She had stuck the postcard of the sunset from Gotcha onto the ceiling of the van above her head. The kids, in the back of the van, were quiet. Their black eyes shone and I noticed they were holding hands. Nobody said anything. We all stared off to the side or ahead of us down the highway.
This was the first time Dill had left the city, our city. Centre of the universe. And right now an official disaster area. His head had fallen onto his chest. His rice cake had fallen to the floor of the van. He was asleep.
By suppertime we were well and truly on the road. If things worked according to plan we would make it to Fargo, North Dakota, by the kids’ bedtime. The van could only go about 55 miles an hour without starting to shudder, and with the load of stuff and all the kids and everything we really didn’t want to push it. Mercy had told us that a vehicle could be controlled when a tire blows at 55 miles an hour but not faster than that. She said that good tires were the most important safety feature of any vehicle. She said after 40,000 kilometres of wear and tear most tires are liable to blow. But at a hundred bucks a pop who can afford new tires? Not us, that’s for sure. Or Rodger. Or anybody else I know except my dad, and he didn’t need new tires, because since my mom’s accident he rarely ever drove. Anyway, we’d go slow. It would be a bit of a drag.
Like my mom, I was fond of driving fast. I remember a family trip we took to Quebec, and my mom almost went insane because my dad was driving so slow. When we got to Montreal, she said that was it. She told my dad to rake a nap in the back seat and she’d drive. She said, “Geoffrey, if we’re going to get anywhere in Montreal we have to drive like Montrealers do.” By the time we arrived at our hotel my dad was pale and stiff in the back seat. My mom was flushed with excitement and enormously proud of herself. Actually, the last time I talked to my dad just before Dill was born, he said he wasn’t driving any more ’cause of night vision or lack of it or something. He said he only needed to go to the university and the grocery store, and why bother insuring a car and risking an accident to boot? He had invited me and Dill to his house to visit him, but I figured if he was too stubborn or terrified to keep a car of his own and use it to visit us, then damned if I was going to bus it to his place with Dill and bags and stroller and stuff. Just because my mom, his wife, died in a car — well, she died in the ditch, but she wouldn’t have got there if it hadn’t been for the car about to be stolen — didn’t mean that he could just refuse to drive a car. Hadn’t my mother had any effect on him at all? I mean, while she was counselling women to get up and leave their husbands, live, start fresh, take a chance, move, move, move, drive away now, he, her husband, was just dying inside. Had it ever occurred to her to give him the same advice? Or had it ever occurred to him to take that advice? Probably. But something that occurs to us doesn’t mean it’s going to happen, does it? Look at Lish and me.