Here We Go Again, page 7
“In case we need to make adjustments to the itinerary,” Hale explains as she puts on her seat belt. “My travel laminating machine is in my large bag.”
“They’re both large,” Logan corrects. She packed a normal-sized duffle bag with enough pairs of underwear to get her to Maine, where she can do laundry, and a backpack with six paperbacks, various electronics chargers, and a few snacks purchased from the 7-Eleven the night before. It’s only five nights until Maine. Then, once they get Joe settled, Logan will try to sell the van to someone else, or, worst-case scenario, they’ll donate it to the nearest Habitat for Humanity, and they will both fly home separately from there.
“Why did you pack so much food?” Logan asks as Hale spends five minutes adjusting her mirrors and the driver’s seat and the steering wheel and then her mirrors again.
“So we’re not tempted to eat drive-through the entire time.”
“Isn’t that the fun of being on a road trip?”
“If you enjoy acid-reflux, I suppose.” Hale clicks her tongue. Maybe Logan won’t kill her, but there’s a high probability she will cut out her tongue. Dangle it from the rearview mirror like a talisman for good luck. “What food did you pack?”
Logan pulls out a bag of Funyuns.
“You absolutely will not be eating those in my car.”
“Oh, so this is your Gay Mobile?” She doesn’t care that it’s six thirty in the morning: Logan opens that bag of Funyuns. “And no fighting with me while driving, remember?”
Hale huffs as she shoves the Gay Mobile into drive.
It took them six days to prepare for this trip, and they were the longest days of Logan’s life. The first week of summer vacation is usually sacred. She sleeps in until noon. She spends an entire day playing Tears of the Kingdom while eating pizza pockets and microwave taquitos. She gets outside, hiking in the Gorge with the trees and the mountains and the river. She gets high on edibles and watches the sunset with her dad.
Except this past week she substituted sleeping in with seven a.m. emails from Hale delineating the day’s task list. She exchanged video games for learning how to change Joe’s diaper while he screamed at her about the indignity. She outfitted the van with a makeshift wheelchair ramp and an adjust strap above the sliding door, and she spent all her sunsets inside Joe’s apartment in the assisted living facility, packing up the stuff he cares about and donating the rest. He doesn’t intend to return to Vista Summit. She argued with oncologists who insisted this road trip was a terrible idea, and she ignored the nurses who handed her brochures about end-of-life care.
“It’s my end-of-life,” Joe complained, “and I get to decide how much I care.”
Hale signed his discharge papers. Logan lifted the heavy boxes. Because they were doing this.
They were really doing this.
Now, they pull up to Evergreen Pines for the last time. Joe is already out front in a wheelchair, his broken foot in a blue cast half-hidden by his brown corduroy pants. An angry-faced nurse stands behind him, and at his feet are the belongings he chose to keep: his record player, his collection of vinyls, a box of books, a Pendleton blanket.
“Sweet Walt-Whitman-at-a-log-cabin-retreat-with-Abe.” Joe whistles as Logan climbs out of the van. “That’s the gayest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Do you like it?” Logan does a flourishing gesture toward the logo even though she’s terrified she’s made a horrible mistake.
“Honey, it’s exactly the vehicle I would have chosen for my death road trip.”
Logan turns to Hale. “See? He likes it.”
“It’s not a death road trip.” Hale falls out of the tall van and twists her heel on the curb. “What is that?” she asks as she straightens herself, her tone again accusing.
“What’s what?” Joe asks innocently.
“That.” She is pointing at a dog.
“This is Odysseus,” Joe answers, gesturing to the all-black, monstrous mutt at his feet. “My cancer dog. You remember Odysseus.”
“Of course we do,” Logan coos. She crouches down as the dog lumbers over for scratches. “And he remembers me too. Yes, I’m the one who rescued you from that horrible place. How’s my little Odie doing?”
“Yes, I remember Odysseus,” Hale says through tight teeth. “But I am confused as to why he’s here.”
When Joe first started chemo, Logan had felt so helpless, so ill-equipped to provide the kind of emotional support he was going to need. So, she did the only thing she could think of: she went to the nearest animal shelter and bought him a six-month-old dog. A dog would have the emotional intelligence she lacked.
When Joe saw the black fur ball with the floppy ears and giant paws, he said the dog reminded him of Argos from The Odyssey: Odysseus’s loyal dog, who remembers him even after his twenty-year journey away from home, and then promptly dies upon his return. Logan insisted he couldn’t name the rescue after a dog who is most famous for dying. So he named the dog Odysseus instead.
The animal shelter promised Odie would be forty pounds, at most. He’s now ninety pounds of pure muscle. He has the body of a jaguar and the face of a baby otter.
“Why wouldn’t he be here?” Joe asks Hale. “He’s my dog. He’s coming with us.”
Hale turns a cute shade of purple. “And it didn’t occur to you to mention him at any point over the course of the past week of planning for this trip?”
Joe frowns at her. “I figured you knew he was coming. Rosie, dear, did you think I was going to give away my dog on Facebook Marketplace like I did my reclining chair? And he’s technically a service dog.”
“Technically, he’s not,” Logan corrects, letting Odysseus lick her eyeballs. “He failed his final exam.”
“Standardized testing is bullshit,” Joe says. “And it’s not Odysseus’s fault that he ate all those Costco hotdogs.”
Hale taps the toe of her heels against the sidewalk. “You want to travel across the country with a fraudulent service dog?”
“Not fraudulent. More… unlicensed.”
“That makes him a fake service dog.”
“But he’s of service to me.” Joe clutches his chest. “My dog is not a negotiable part of your two-hundred-page itinerary.”
The dog whimpers at Hale like he knows she’s trying to leave him behind. She switches topics. “And this record player really isn’t practical for a road trip.”
“Says the woman who packed a wireless printer.” Logan hoists the outdated technology into the back of the van. Then she discovers the giant bag of dog food hiding behind Joe’s wheelchair and lifts that, too.
“I want to die in Maine,” Joe ruminates wistfully, “staring at the ocean, listening to my Van Morrison records with my favorite blanket and my dog curled up at my feet.”
Hale begins massaging her temples. “Please tell me you also packed useful things, like clothes and diapers and your medications?”
Joe makes a scandalized face. “Please do not discuss my diapers in mixed company, Rosemary.”
“He has all that stuff,” the nurse says as she hands Hale a large black medical bag. “We got permission from his doctor to get refills of all his prescriptions to last three months, and we packed extra diapers, extra—”
It’s clear from Joe’s souring expression that he doesn’t want to sit here thinking about all the various accouterments needed to keep him alive. He packed his dog; he packed his records. He is ready to get in a car and drive.
Logan thinks about yesterday when she stayed late at Evergreen Pines watching Family Feud with Joe. “Are you sure you want to do this?” she’d asked him, as a woman screamed We’re gonna play, Steve! on the TV. “You can still change your mind and stay here. Evergreen Pines can make you extremely comfortable for this last part.”
And he looked her dead in the eye with a grimace of pain twisting his mouth. “I spent my whole life choosing comfort. In my death, I want to choose something else.”
“Enough chitchat,” Logan blurts now, interrupting the nurse and her unending list of death supplies. “Are you ready to Thelma and Louise this shit?”
Joe beams at her. “Does that make me a Mexican Brad Pitt?”
“There are some sexual connotations there that I’m quite uncomfortable with, but if you want to be Brad Pitt, you can be Brad Pitt. It’s your death trip.”
“It’s not a death trip!” Hale stamps her little foot.
“Chill, Thelma.” Logan picks up the vinyls and the books and loads them into the back of the van. “Or I’ll drive us off a cliff just to spite you.”
ROSEMARY
“The speed limit is seventy.”
“I am aware.”
“You’re going fifty-five, though.”
Rosemary arches her back. “I’m being safe.”
“People are honking.”
“Probably because I am driving an enormous blue van with the words ‘The Queer Cuddler’ painted on the side.”
“I think it’s because you’re driving dangerously slow on a freeway. My yiayia drives faster than this, and she’s eighty.”
Rosemary grips the steering wheel tighter. “If you think your constant taunts will convince me to speed, you will be sorely disappointed.”
They’ve barely started down I-84 East through Oregon, and Rosemary’s ready to admit this is the worst idea she’s ever had. All the laminated maps and first aid training couldn’t adequately prepare her for spending five days trapped in a car with Logan Maletis. Not to mention the toddler horse masquerading as a dog stinking up the back seat, who barks at every single car they pass like he’s protecting his territory.
Getting Joe into the car had been a feat of herculean strength and saintlike patience. Even with the wheelchair ramp and the assist strap above the sliding side door, it was a ten-minute ordeal of seesawing his body onto the reclined back seat. Joe screamed about his pride the entire time, and Odysseus drooled on her Saint Laurent heels.
Rosemary tries to focus on the beautiful view out the driver’s-side window, the Columbia River Gorge, dappled in the sunlight of early summer. She tries to focus on her deep breathing and on her perfectly structured itinerary.
But Logan is like a mosquito bite you know you shouldn’t scratch but can’t ignore. She chomps loudly on a Funyun, and Rosemary feels the sound in the back of her teeth. “Can you please desist with that abominable crunching?”
“Calm your tits,” Logan says, masticating with her mouth wide open. Bits of chip spray onto the dashboard in front of her. “It’s breakfast time. I have to eat.”
“Fascinating.” Joe whistles from the back seat. “Absolutely fascinating.”
Rosemary has to push herself up off the seat to look at him in the rearview mirror. The back seat is reclined to a forty-five-degree angle, with pillows propped behind Joe’s head, and his legs stretched out in front of him. With his Pendleton blanket and his dog curled up beside him, he looks almost cozy, but Rosemary sees the sadistic twinkle in his eye. “What’s fascinating?”
“This. The two of you. Two adult women reverting back to who they were at fourteen due to their unresolved conflict from that time.”
Logan crumples up her Funyun bag and chucks it in Joe’s face. “Don’t psychoanalyze us, old man. We’re taking you on your death trip. Please allow us to repress in peace.”
“It’s not a death trip,” Rosemary insists. “And I’m not repressed.”
Logan kicks up her long, tan legs and props them on the dashboard. “I, for one, am happy to let my past trauma resurface at unexpected times. It’s like a never-ending game of emotional Whac-a-Mole.”
In the rearview mirror, Rosemary sees Joe smile. “I spent thirty years of my life with teenagers, and while I’m grateful for every minute of my career as a teacher, I would rather not spend this trip with bickering children.”
Rosemary bites down on her jaw until she feels the pain radiate back to her ears. She doesn’t want to behave like a child. She doesn’t want to fight with Logan at all. The truth is, she would give anything to talk to Logan. She’s the only other person who might understand what it means to Rosemary to lose Joe.
But Logan is hell-bent on not understanding her at all.
“I’m sorry, Joe.”
“Thank you, Rosie dear. Now please take this exit.”
Rosemary glances to the right to see the upcoming green sign for Exit 22. “What?”
“Get off the freeway. Right here.”
Joe says this so casually, as if he’s not impulsively derailing everything. “But we’re already six minutes behind schedule.”
“Rosemary,” Joe says, less casually. “Pull over the damn car!”
“Pull over the damn car!” Logan echoes, and Rosemary panics, jerks the wheel to the right. The van pitches sideways as the wheels crunch over white lines and slide into the exit lane at the last possible second. Thankfully, no other cars exited I-84 at that precise moment. She slams on the brakes when they reach the stop sign at the end of the off-ramp.
“What the hell?” Rosemary bleats. Her heart is skittering in her chest and her palms are damp around the steering wheel.
“Are you okay?” Logan flips around in her seat and there is nothing impassive about the expression of terror on her face. “Are you in pain? Do you need to get out of the car?”
Rosemary presses a hand to her chest to feel her heartbeat against her ribs and stares at the concerned crinkle of Logan’s bushy eyebrows, the first sign that she truly cares.
“What I need,” Joe says, casual again, “is for us to take a brief detour.”
Rosemary puts on the hazard lights and turns to face Joe, too. “A detour? No. Absolutely not,” she says as Joe nods his head in confirmation. “You have a copy of the itinerary. We’ll stop to use the bathroom in seventy-five minutes and not before.”
Joe thoughtfully strokes Odysseus’s ear. “I didn’t agree to that.”
“Excuse me?”
“I didn’t agree to your itinerary,” he says. “My death trip has detours.”
It’s not a death trip, she wants to scream. She can’t think of it that way. If she thinks about the fact that all that’s waiting for them at the end of this hellish journey is saying goodbye to Joe, she won’t be able to put one foot in front of the other, one mile marker behind the next.
“I’m dying, Rosemary,” Joe says breathlessly. “Are you really going to deny me a small detour?”
Logan throws her head back and laughs. “You’re really going to milk that for all it’s worth, aren’t you?”
Rosemary takes four deep breaths and clicks off the hazard lights. “Which way?”
“Right,” Joe says, and Rosemary turns right.
Chapter Eight
ROSEMARY
They take a winding road through the trees that climbs drastically until it curves into a parking lot, and Rosemary realizes where they are as a familiar shape comes into view. It’s a giant circular building made out of gray sandstone, with a darker gray dome reflecting atop it in the sunlight, the grandiosity entirely out of place in the middle of the woods. The building is surrounded by retaining walls, and Rosemary is immediately struck by a memory: Logan, thirteen, limbs stretched out like saltwater taffy, climbing up onto the retaining wall, balancing herself precariously as Rosemary begged her to come down.
“The Vista House.” Logan braces her hands on the dashboard and leans forward. “Damn, I haven’t been here in forever.”
Odysseus flings himself at the window with excitement, too, as Rosemary reluctantly pulls into a handicap parking space. “Why are we here, Joe?”
Logan doesn’t wait for an explanation. She grabs the red dog leash off the floor and hops out of the car. “Come on, buddy. You need to get out and stretch your legs.”
“It’s been forty-five minutes!” Rosemary shouts as she does an elegant slide out of the driver’s seat. When she comes around the passenger side, Logan is hooking the dog leash around the door handle. Then she climbs into the back of the van to begin the arduous process of getting Joe out of his comfortable lounge position and back into his wheelchair. The last thing she wants is to make Joe feel like a burden, because he’s not. He never could be. So she doesn’t complain as they transfer him. Neither does Logan.
After a few clumsy moments, they help Joe into his wheelchair, and Logan grabs the leash again, taking off up the path toward Vista House.
“I know you’re mad at me,” Joe says as she pushes his wheelchair over uneven cobblestones.
“I’m not mad at you.”
“Yet I can’t help but notice that you seem tense.”
“When, in the past eighteen years, have you seen me not tense?”
Both his wheelchair and her heels get stuck in a groove, and she has to wiggle them free. “That’s what I’m saying, Rosie, darling. You seem tense, even by your standards.”
“I’m not.”
She realizes she’s clenching her jaw again and tries to relax it. “I just… I want to do this for you, Joe. Get you to Maine. You’ve done so much for me—so much for so many people—and I want to make sure you get your wish.”
“Part of my wish involves stopping at the Vista House.”
“Okay, but the quickest, safest way to get you to Maine is to plan our stops so you’re not getting in and out of the van unnecessarily and risking another fall.” Or worse.
“Who said I wanted safe?”
“You do want to get to Maine alive?”
Joe grunts as she gets his wheelchair stuck on another paver. “I do. But I don’t want to be so fixated on getting there that I miss this.”
They reach the edge of the retaining wall and the Columbia River Gorge spills out in front of them. A blue, serpentine river disappearing on the horizons both east and west. Green hills hug the river’s north and boundaries, and the early morning sky is the palest, clearest blue, a proper Pacific Northwest June day. Sunny, with a few columns of clouds to remind you how rare it is.
