have solid, reliable-sounding names—Indianhead, TransAmerica—and I like the associated images I always get: fat guys climbing out of big black trucks named Rita and going in for a plate of meat loaf and mashed potatoes and green beans, leaning back and picking their teeth afterward, satisfied as Romans after a banquet. Or young, slim guys with Elvis sideburns and cowboy boots drinking coffee straight from the thermos and driving far into the night, the only vehicle on the road. I see them cranking up the country-and-western, singing along a little, looking for company on the CB, watching the night-softened horizon out the left-hand window like a miles-long floor show. I understand there’s a fair number of female truckers now, and sometimes I get a notion that in another life, that would have been the job for me. Just keep moving, you know. Socialization at the counters of the restaurants. “Okay, June, how about some of those blueberry cakes?” I’d ask the waitress I knew pretty well just outside Toledo. Her with her forty-year-old ponytail, her fading sexiness, nice mole above her upper lip. “How’s the ride today, Lainey?” she’d ask, wiping down the counter beside me after she delivered my order. “Hear you just come out of some heavy rain.”
“Yeah, it was going pretty good there for a while,” I’d say. My king-sized windshield wipers would have been thunking out a heavy rhythm that was still in my brain. June would tell me about the P.I.E. guy she had a one-nighter with and I’d say, Now June that’s dangerous for your body and your spiritand she’d say, Oh, she knew that, but what the hell, he untied her apron when she poured his coffee and smiled up at her with those dimples—Lord! What was she supposed to do? Sit home alone in her bathrobe looking at reruns? Not this girl. She wasn’t the stay-at-home type, not yet. She’d make a giddy-up sound, wink at me, then go to pick up the order for chicken-fried steak the cook in the back was yelling about. “Aw, hold your horses, Mikey,” she’d say. “Settle down back there, you’re gonna blow a gasket.”
I called work a few days ago to say I still couldn’t come in and Frank said that was perfectly all right, not to worry; he said they had a temporary worker, driving Dolly nuts with her gum-chewing, but otherwise doing just fine. I should take my time, come back whenever I was ready. And … how was he?
“Oh,” I’d said. “No change.”
“I’m so s-s-s-s-s-s-s … regretful,” Frank said.
“Thank you,” I said. The sound of his voice made me wish so hard to be sitting there at my desk, making out the grocery list before I left for home and a normal evening, like I used to.
M onday evening, the setting sun coloring the clouds pink as cotton candy. The kids and I are on the way to see him. We’ve brought offerings: from Amy, a drawing of stick-fingered, smiling people, a family lined up outside a house with heart-shaped window boxes. The woman wears a blue triangular skirt, the man rectangular brown pants. There are two little children, a boy and a girl, dressed identically to their parents. Sarah has made a tape of herself reading some of
The Secret Garden
, her current favorite. I have brought an embroidered pillowcase that my grandmother did years ago, and Jay’s Weejuns, and some apple crisp which I know he can’t eat but which I want to heat up in the microwave and put under his nose. I’m a little nervous. I’ve prepared the girls for the patients in the nursing home, but they still might stand stock-still when we walk in, stare at one of the residents, feel fear knocking about inside them. Maybe they’ll sit down on the floor and say, “No!” like when they were toddlers and didn’t want to put their jackets on.
“He has his own room,” I say now, looking in the rearview mirror at the two of them sitting together in the back seat. Usually they fight over the front seat, but tonight they both wanted to
“Yeah, it was going pretty good there for a while,” I’d say. My king-sized windshield wipers would have been thunking out a heavy rhythm that was still in my brain. June would tell me about the P.I.E. guy she had a one-nighter with and I’d say, Now June that’s dangerous for your body and your spiritand she’d say, Oh, she knew that, but what the hell, he untied her apron when she poured his coffee and smiled up at her with those dimples—Lord! What was she supposed to do? Sit home alone in her bathrobe looking at reruns? Not this girl. She wasn’t the stay-at-home type, not yet. She’d make a giddy-up sound, wink at me, then go to pick up the order for chicken-fried steak the cook in the back was yelling about. “Aw, hold your horses, Mikey,” she’d say. “Settle down back there, you’re gonna blow a gasket.”
I called work a few days ago to say I still couldn’t come in and Frank said that was perfectly all right, not to worry; he said they had a temporary worker, driving Dolly nuts with her gum-chewing, but otherwise doing just fine. I should take my time, come back whenever I was ready. And … how was he?
“Oh,” I’d said. “No change.”
“I’m so s-s-s-s-s-s-s … regretful,” Frank said.
“Thank you,” I said. The sound of his voice made me wish so hard to be sitting there at my desk, making out the grocery list before I left for home and a normal evening, like I used to.
M onday evening, the setting sun coloring the clouds pink as cotton candy. The kids and I are on the way to see him. We’ve brought offerings: from Amy, a drawing of stick-fingered, smiling people, a family lined up outside a house with heart-shaped window boxes. The woman wears a blue triangular skirt, the man rectangular brown pants. There are two little children, a boy and a girl, dressed identically to their parents. Sarah has made a tape of herself reading some of
The Secret Garden
, her current favorite. I have brought an embroidered pillowcase that my grandmother did years ago, and Jay’s Weejuns, and some apple crisp which I know he can’t eat but which I want to heat up in the microwave and put under his nose. I’m a little nervous. I’ve prepared the girls for the patients in the nursing home, but they still might stand stock-still when we walk in, stare at one of the residents, feel fear knocking about inside them. Maybe they’ll sit down on the floor and say, “No!” like when they were toddlers and didn’t want to put their jackets on.
“He has his own room,” I say now, looking in the rearview mirror at the two of them sitting together in the back seat. Usually they fight over the front seat, but tonight they both wanted to
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