22
TWO HOURS INTO THEIR TRIP, LISE TOLD ROY HE HAD TO LET HER drive. It was only fair, she said, that they split the drive into equal segments. It was only reasonable.
“Sit up here with me,” Lise told Delia next, after they’d all finished stretching their legs by the side of the road. “Keep me company.” Win claimed the passenger-side window in the back, and so Roy ended up in the middle, wedged between Wendy and Win. When Wendy whispered, “Why did you let Lise do that?” Roy whispered back, “What’s the point of fighting? She’ll only take it out on Delia.”
Which was true, Wendy thought; when Lise was crossed she always turned on Delia. But she wondered how Roy had figured this out. Then she wondered if any man would ever know something like that about her.
As soon as Lise started driving, she looked over her shoulder at Roy and said, “Why do you keep this car? It’s a piece of shit. The steering’s so loose I feel like I’m floating. The brakes are soft.”
“It’s an old car,” Roy said patiently, but Lise couldn’t leave it at that; every rattle and wheeze upset her. “Is that one of the tires?” Lise said. “Is something loose in the trunk? Do you think that tapping means anything?”
“I don’t know,” Roy said finally. “Do you think it’s going to blow?”
Delia laughed loudly and Wendy snickered despite herself. Delia had brought along a bottle of vodka, which she sipped from now and again despite Lise’s objections. When Delia passed the bottle back to Roy, Roy took a long hit and then held it out to Wendy, who shook her head. “I better not,” she said, not wanting to tell him that she never drank anymore. “I’ll drive after Lise.”
“Suit yourself,” Roy said. He drank some more and then passed the bottle back to Delia, who turned up the radio and started singing along with the tunes that filled the car. Roy sang, too, and eventually Wendy joined in. For a while, then, except for Lise’s brittle silence and the fact that Win had somehow fallen asleep against the window with his own radio plugged into his ears, Wendy found the journey almost festive. They might have been driving to the mountains or the ocean, she thought. Driving all night like any other group intent on landing someplace wonderful by morning. No one said a word about what they were really doing, and the music almost muffled her fears.
Christine’s words echoed in Wendy’s head in the gaps between the songs. Your great-uncle’s Spirit is getting ready to transit, she’d said. I can make sure his Spirit finds the Light. But there was no light, Wendy thought, as she tapped out a rhythm on her thigh. There was no way out of this. The best she could hope for was that she found her family before her mother flipped out completely, before her uncle did something stupid, before Grunkie got hurt. All she could do on this trip was hope to restore everyone to the state they’d been in before Grunkie vanished in that van. Only this morning, she’d dreaded and despised that state. Now it seemed almost desirable.
She pushed away Christine and Grunkie, her parents and her uncle. The car was moving, the music was blaring. She was young and Roy was sitting next to her. She thought of the way he’d looked the afternoon he’d opened his door clad only in his shorts. She thought of him and Delia intertwined on his mattress on the floor; she thought of how she belonged in the front seat with Lise — crabby, frustrated Lise — and Delia belonged back here with Roy. Then she thought how nothing, not even her fears, could move her from this seat just now. Her body felt very peculiar, as if her bones had expanded and were stretching her skin into a thin, taut film. Roy’s hip was touching hers, and although she had only Lise to thank for this she relished the gentle contact.
Lise refused to give up the wheel when they stopped at one of the Thruway plazas for gas. Delia said she was hungry but too tired to move. Roy said he needed to take a leak and so Wendy had to move after all; once she’d stepped out to let Roy by, she decided to go inside and find something to eat. She bought a bag of chips from the vending machine in the lobby, as well as a bag of M&M’s and another of pretzels. Then she went into the gift shop next door, and as smoothly as if she were still fifteen and used to doing this every day, she lifted two road maps, a white plastic mug that said I 
THE ADIRONDACKS, a T-shirt printed with a picture of a moose, and a toy log cabin. One by one she slipped these things into her bag, although she wanted none of them. In her mind she could still hear Christine’s acid comments about the things her uncle Henry had stolen, but his actions didn’t seem related to her in any way.
The woman at the counter had thin, dry hair, scraped back into a wispy tail and splotched with white roots. Her arms were bare and enormous. She’d looked at Wendy when Wendy walked in, but after a brief glance she’d turned back to her magazine and Wendy had realized that she was invisible. Her clothes concealed her, and her well-cut hair and her straight teeth. She looked down at her neat jeans and her blue-and-white shirt, both of which Sarah had bought for her: her jeans were unfaded and her shirt had extra buttons on the sleeve plackets and crisp pleats at the yoke. It had never occurred to her before that this cleaned-up version of herself, which her father and Sarah had manufactured, might serve as a perfect disguise.
The woman never looked at Wendy, nor did she check the mirrors hanging overhead. Wendy stuck out her tongue. The woman didn’t notice. Wendy took a Yankees sweatshirt off a pile, held it out, refolded it, and then laid it quite deliberately in her bag, on top of the rest of her loot. The woman said nothing. She looked up when Wendy walked out the door, but her face was blank and no sirens rang. Wendy realized she could have walked off with anything there. No one looked at her in the lobby either, and in the bathroom women walked past her as if she weren’t there. She looked like anyone else, she realized. Like any other middle-class girl, as safe and unthreatening as soap.
When she got back in the car she shoved the bag between her feet, and the next time Delia passed the bottle she took a modest drink. How could anything happen to a girl who looked like her? The vodka tasted like nothing but seemed to relieve the tenseness in her skin. She drank some more. Lise drove just at the speed limit through the quiet night, and Wendy laughed at the steady stream of jokes Delia and Roy exchanged. Delia was funny, she saw. Roy was funnier. Win was asleep and Wendy felt a surge of affection for him and reached behind Roy to touch Win’s shoulder. Her hand brushed Roy’s neck on its way back. Delia told a long joke about two old women and a vase of flowers, and then she yawned and stretched and leaned her head into the window and said, “I’m going to catch a few Zs, okay? So I’ll be fresh to drive.” And although Lise protested that Delia was much too drunk to drive even after a nap, Delia just said, “We’ll see,” and then closed her eyes.
“Are you all right?” Roy asked Lise. “Don’t you feel sleepy?”
“Not at all.” Lise seemed to have no intention of ever relinquishing the wheel. “I can drive all night.”
“We’ll take shifts,” Roy said firmly. “Just like you said. But if you don’t need the company now, I guess I’ll try and catch a snooze, too. Let Wendy drive when you’re tired.”
“I can drive,” Wendy said, but everyone ignored her. “I could drive right now.”
She sat very still as Roy slumped down in the seat, angled his legs away from hers, and leaned his head and shoulders back. His left shoulder was just touching her right arm. His left hip was resting against her right thigh. After a few minutes, as his breathing slowed, his head slumped over until it rested on her shoulder. A few minutes later, when she was sure he was asleep, she let her head tilt until her cheek rested on his hair. Of course Delia wanted him, everyone wanted him. His hair was surprisingly soft.