Driving With the Top Down (7 page)

“Sorry—Vegas?” “Out West” had sounded a lot more businesslike than
Vegas.
Suddenly his trip didn’t sound so urgent.

He nodded. “Conference. The hotels there are cheaper than in other major cities, and there are plenty of flights. But can you imagine me trusting Tamara in the room while I wasn’t there?”

The girl’s posture shrank almost imperceptibly.

“I don’t know,” Colleen said, even though she might have said the exact same words to Kevin about leaving Tamara in a B and B room while she went to an auction without her. Something about Chris’s dismissal of his own daughter got under Colleen’s skin, though. Quickly and a little illogically. “I’m sure she’d be fine, if a bit bored sitting around in a hotel room.”

“She hasn’t been reliably fine in three years,” Chris said, seemingly heedless of the fact that Tamara was getting out of the car then and could hear him.

Colleen noticed the girl’s eyes dart toward her father, then away.

“Tamara, you remember your aunt Colleen,” Chris said, stiff. Awkward. Like he was unsure of the name.

“Not really.”

Colleen barely remembered her either, and definitely wouldn’t have recognized the tall, thin girl standing before her with pale clear skin, no makeup, and dull black hair processed to frizzy, damaged ends.

“Be polite,” Chris cautioned.

For a moment, Colleen thought he was talking to her, but then Tamara said, “Thanks for having me join you, Aunt Colleen.”

God, this was uncomfortable. “You’re welcome. Of course.”

They all stood there in awkward silence for a moment, and Colleen wondered if it was twenty minutes to ten, based on the old Irish lore that awkward silences happened twenty minutes before or after the hour. For every time she’d been right in pointing it out to Kevin, there were at least five others when it had been nowhere near the mark, so she resisted saying anything this time, though she and Kevin locked eyes for just an instant.

“Well, we’d better get going,” Colleen said. “I’m starving and I want to hit McDonald’s before they start serving lunch. Are you hungry, Tamara?”

She shrugged. “I’m fine.”

“This is to cover her expenses,” Chris said, handing Colleen an envelope.

“Chris, that’s not necessary.”

“Of course it is. Take it.”

No wonder Colleen had thought he was ordering her to be polite. He took on the same commanding tone with her that he did with Tamara. She took the envelope without comment and gave him a stern look he clearly didn’t notice or care to notice.

He went to the backseat and took out a faded green backpack. “Tamara, where’s your suitcase?”

“That’s it.” She gestured at what he was holding. “I don’t even
have
a suitcase.”

He looked annoyed. Maybe self-conscious of this small indicator of his parenting prowess. “This is all you packed?”

“Well … yeah. I mean … yeah?” She looked at him questioningly. “We’re only going for a week, right?”

“Week and a half-ish,” Colleen told her. “But don’t worry, if we need anything else, we can certainly pick it up on the road.”

Tamara turned her gaze to her father. “See?”

His expression darkened instantly. “Listen—!”

“Let’s go!” Colleen said a little too forcefully. “Time’s a-wastin’.” Good Lord, she was turning into Ma Kettle. But whatever this girl had done—and she knew it had been stressful for Chris—her father was clearly way past the point where he could take anything in stride. It looked like he was one or ten all the time with Tamara, and Colleen didn’t want to sit here and watch him go to ten.

Tamara looked uncertainly at her father, then went to him and gave him a cursory hug. He patted her shoulder with an open hand. Then Tamara came to the car and opened the passenger door to get in. She moved the front seat forward and tossed her backpack in, then started to climb in the back herself.

Colleen stopped her. “For Pete’s sake, Tamara, I’m not your chauffeur—get in the front!”

“Oh.” The girl hesitated, then got into the front seat.

Kevin pulled Colleen into a hug and said, “Bye-bye, baby.” Then whispered in her ear. “This is a good thing you’re doing.”

She wrapped her arms around his lower back and gave him an answering squeeze before climbing in behind the wheel.

The car started with no problem—that was when Colleen realized she’d been semi-hoping for a reprieve right up to the last second—and she put it in gear and backed out of the drive.

As soon as they started toward the main road, she felt a rush of anxiety and glanced at Tamara, who looked away the moment their eyes met.

“I’m starving.” She’d already said so once, and repeated it even though it was pretty meaningless. If she were this lost for words the entire trip, it was going to be a very long couple of weeks.

Tamara nodded. “Yeah. You said.”

“You look like you could use a little nourishment yourself.” Wait, was that bad? Everyone said it was just as bad to tell a skinny person she needed a cheeseburger as it was to tell a fat person she needed to put the cheeseburger down. Had she just insulted the girl thirty seconds into their trip?

“I guess.”

This was off to a bangin’ start. Colleen was as nervous with a sixteen-year-old girl as she would have been with a sixteen-year-old boy when she
was
a sixteen-year-old girl. All tied up in knots about saying the right thing, not saying the wrong thing, not offending, not judging. It was all incredibly uncomfortable.

For both of them, no doubt.

She pulled up to the drive-through window and ordered her usual, plus a large coffee—even though she’d probably have to stop and pee a hundred times after drinking it—then looked to Tamara and asked, “Anything?”

“An Egg McMuffin,” Tamara said, then quickly added, “And hash browns. The double one on the dollar menu.”

No sooner had Colleen yelled the order into the microphone than Tamara added, “And a biscuit. And a Wild Berry Smoothie.” Then, as if that were going too far, she tagged on, “Small is fine.”

Colleen placed the order, secretly glad the girl was going to eat, because Tamara really did look like she needed it. Not that Colleen thought Chris didn’t feed his daughter; he probably just didn’t take her tastes into account much. He was used to being on his own, and honestly, no matter who else came into his sphere, he probably wasn’t likely to be very accommodating. That was how Chris was. That was how Chris had always been.

By the time they hit the road, it was a lot later than Colleen had hoped to leave, but at least it was with full stomachs.

Unfortunately, it was also with empty minds. At least conversation-wise. They drove for long, long stretches of silence, tied up in a long ribbon of D.C. traffic. Miles and miles passed, all looking the same—big buildings behind Jersey walls and construction. Brake lights. Horns. Extended middle fingers. This stretch of road felt like it went on forever, where if it had been a straight country road through farmland, it might have passed like a favorite song.

Instead the drive dragged like an amateur opera, made louder by the silence in the passenger seat.

There was no way to tell what Tamara was thinking, if she noticed or was uncomfortable with the awkwardness, but Colleen’s mind was racing, trying to think of something—anything—to say. Initially she was aiming for witty and entertaining, but now she would settle for anything that was simply communicated out loud.

Meanwhile, Colleen’s entire playlist was murmuring quietly over the speakers in the oppressive, muggy car, and the windshield wipers whipped out of sync to the music. She kept catching herself humming along, then stopped, embarrassed. She really wanted to belt out with it, but she was very aware of the presence next to her, and she could feel Tamara looking sideways at her now and then.

“So, do you have a boyfriend?” Colleen asked at last, even though it was exactly the sort of lame typical-adult question she’d wanted to avoid.

“I—” Tamara paused, then sighed and looked out the window, her posture tense. “No, not really.”

That hesitation raised a lot of questions, but none that Colleen felt like she could ask right now without seeming really intrusive.

Instead she nodded. “I had a lot of on-and-off things at your age.” Whatever that meant. How on earth could that be helpful? She was just trying to fill the gaps in conversation, and the effort was obvious to both of them. “What do you like to do in your free time?”

Tamara glanced at her and shrugged. “Listen to music. I don’t know. Watch TV. The usual.”

“Yeah? What do you like to watch?”

Tamara shrugged again. “I don’t know. Whatever’s on.”

Right. Good start. “And what music do you like?” She was losing the kid, she could tell. How could she not? Her questions were so judge-y, Tamara’s nonanswers even worse.

“Old stuff, mostly.”

“Really?” That answer surprised her. Did this seemingly sullen, drug-addled teenager secretly harbor a love for Sinatra? Perry Como? Nat King Cole? “Like who?”

“The Clash—”

Oh.

“Sex Pistols, Arctic Monkeys, I don’t know … all sorts of stuff. The Beatles. Bon Jovi.”

“Bon Jovi?”

“Yup.”

“Seriously?”

“Why not?”

“They’re not that old, and not new enough to be in your current spehere. They’re just like
in between
.”

Tamara gave a laugh. “They’ve been around, like, thirty years!”

“No, they haven’t.” That seemed impossible.

“Yeah. They have. Probably longer.” Tamara started fidgeting with the screen of her phone. “In fact, they’re probably even before your time.”

“No, they were hot when I was coming of age.” Suddenly she was feeling really old. She didn’t even use expressions like “coming of age”! Soon she’d be complaining that her crinolines were too stiff and her corset was too tight.

“Debut album,
Bon Jovi,
was released January twenty-first, 1984,” Tamara read from her phone.

“Wow, really?”

Tamara held her phone up, as if Colleen could read the minuscule print. “It’s a fact.”

1984. A million years ago to Tamara. An era before she was a possibility. But Colleen’s life had been in full swing. And it didn’t even feel that long ago. And on the other hand, it also felt like lifetimes ago. How was it possible to feel so completely both ways at once?

“Okay, then, that’s not before my time, exactly, but it’s definitely really early in my time.”

Tamara laughed. “Anyway, he was pretty hot. Bon Jovi.”

“Still is.”

Tamara gave a small shrug.

“Oh, I remember that feeling,” Colleen said.

“What?”

“I remember being around older women and thinking their idea of hot was just depressing. Older women like older men, but when you’re young you can’t see it.”

“Wait a minute, you’re saying you wouldn’t do Bon Jovi, version 1984?”

Of course she would. In a heartbeat. “We shouldn’t be having this conversation.”

That lit it on fire for Tamara. “Who would you do, if you had to: Bon Jovi from back then or”—she crinkled her nose, thinking—“the dude who supposedly stomped on baby chickens on stage.”

“Alice Cooper?”

“Yeah, him.”

“He didn’t really do that. Urban legend.”

“Good. Him or Bon Jovi?”

Colleen bit her lower lip, then said, “Not an appropriate game for us to play.”

“So Alice Cooper, then?”

“No way.”

“Bon Jovi! I
knew
it!”

“Easy guess. And his name is Jon.”

“Jon Jovi?”

Colleen laughed. At least they had something to talk about. “No, Jon Bon Jovi.”

Tamara sighed. “Points off for the stupid name.”

Colleen could have explained that his real name was John Bongiovi, and that it was kind of a hot, romantic, sexy Italian thing, but that would have been revealing way too much about her old pop star knowledge in general and her Jon Bon Jovi knowledge in particular, so she let it go.

Then, just as quickly as it had come on, the moment was gone. More stiff silence.

Colleen tapped the volume-up button on the steering wheel with her thumb until the music was loud enough for them to listen to without being ultraconscious of the lack of conversation. They passed quite a few miles that way, and Colleen wondered how on earth she was going to get through the next couple of weeks like this. Every minute passed like an hour. And it was probably even worse for Tamara because all she could do was sit there and mess with her phone; she didn’t even have the distraction of driving the car.

After they’d been on the road for about four hours, they stopped at Colleen’s first marked stop, a salvage yard just south of Richmond, Virginia. The Yelp description had mentioned all kinds of intricate carved wooden pieces from buildings that had been glorious at the turn of the last century but which had been renovated recently. So Colleen wound around the back roads off I-95 to find it, turning around repeatedly on the road it was supposed to be on until finally she realized she’d passed it repeatedly. Far from the huge, glorious treasure trove described in the book, it was a small space with linoleum floors that had once been a foreign legion hall. It smelled like glue and mildew and something else Colleen couldn’t quite put her finger on, but which made her want to run away. Light filtered dimly through old plate-glass windows, illuminating more dust in the air than merchandise for sale.

It had a lot of doorknobs.

Not interesting doorknobs, by the way, just the sort of handles you’d see in a 1970s elementary school or other public building on a budget.

“Is this the kind of thing you’re on this trip to look for?” Tamara asked, clearly trying to be tactful.

“No. This isn’t the kind of thing anyone is looking for. Except maybe someone looking for a quick fix in a cheap rental property.” Who else would buy any of this crap? How did this place even stay in business? Was it just a tax loss for someone?

Tamara looked relieved. “I thought this was a little strange.”

“Disappointing.” It was.

“I’ll say.”

Colleen looked around and sighed. There was nothing of any interest whatsoever here. Nothing she’d even take for free.