Notes From the Backseat (5 page)

“I can't believe you didn't come out there,” she told Coop as we climbed back into the car. There was a pouty note to her voice. Looking at her profile, I thought I could see the ghost of the gangly girl she'd once been. “It was like double overhead, dude.”

“Did you have fun?” He tousled her wet hair affectionately and it didn't even bother me at all.

“It was a blast.” She definitely didn't sound happy. “You totally missed out.”

He shrugged. “I was busy.”

I couldn't help giggling a little, and Dannika shot me a look over her shoulder. “Whatever.” She jabbed the key into the ignition violently and the car roared to life. “Your loss.”

She drives even worse when she's pissed.

Every ten miles or so I have to clench my jaw and cling to my seat belt as she passes another RV on a blind curve. To add to my discomfort, her surfboard's dripping little salt water drops onto my shoulder and the fog is making me shiver. All the same, I'm smiling as I write this.

I'm pretty sure I won't need this notebook anymore. Coop's provided me with an infallible cure to my jealousy. From now on I'll be the picture of sisterly sweetness. If I feel myself slipping, all I need are those two magic words: Donna Horney.

Anyway, thanks for suggesting I write all this down. If I hadn't, who knows how this trip would have turned out? You could be reading about me in the papers:
Jackie O Strangles Yoga Diva.
Now I can safely say my petty insecurities are behind me.

Hugs and Kisses from a New and Improved Gwen

10:10 p.m.

 

D
ear Marla,

You're absolutely not going to believe this, but I'm writing from MY MOM'S HOUSE.

Oh, horrors.

How did this happen?
you ask.
Gwen hardly ever visits her parents. She finds her stepfather inane, her mother loud and the dogs deeply depressing.

Precisely my point. Yet here I am, at my mother's house in western Sebastopol, with my leopard-print car coat covered from collar to hem in dog hair. The parakeets are screeching off-key and Carrie, the Irish wolfhound, is drooling on my shoes. This is not my idea of a romantic weekend away.

You want to know how this happened? I'll tell you how it happened. Dannika Winters, that's how.

There we were, cruising up Highway 1, shivering in the fog. Shouldn't we take the shortcut on 101 from San Luis Obispo to Salinas, I asked. Dannika was horrified at the mere suggestion; of course we couldn't, that would mean missing Big Sur, the most dramatic, remote, beautiful stretch of coastline in California. Did she also mention
the most deadly?
At one point she was messing with her CD player, heading for a cliff that dropped at least two hundred feet straight down to the sea. After Coop saved us by grabbing the wheel just in time, he waited a discreet three or four minutes before suggesting she must be tired of driving by now. I doubt she was tired, since she never gave the road more than seven percent of her attention, but
I
found her driving exhausting. I had to keep slamming the brakes on in the backseat and my thigh muscles were beginning to cramp.

I'm sure if it was anyone but Coop, Dannika would have bristled at the suggestion, but he seems to have a magical, almost narcotic effect on her. He makes her laugh. As much as I hate to admit it, I can see why they've been friends for so long. I guess it's just that irresistible tension of opposites. Marla, you know how you and I are so different, yet somehow we work, like sweet and sour, or tulle with taffeta? You're sloppy, I'm structured; you're go-with-the-flow, I'm paint-by-numbers? Well, that's how Dannika and Coop are, in a way. He's Mr. Steady—he smells like sawdust and pipe tobacco. He's warm all the way through, not just on the surface. She's madcap, impulsive, spoiled and self-absorbed. She smells like a very expensive health food store. I guess I'm screwing up their delicate balance and that's why my presence is making us all so nervous. It's like they're perched on opposite ends of their teeter-totter and I'm the new kid, demanding they make space.

Anyway, there we were, cruising through Big Sur, then Monterey, then Santa Cruz to San Francisco. With Coop driving, I found I could relax and the afternoon took on a dreamy quality as the road lulled us all deeper and deeper into our private worlds. The windy roar of the convertible made it difficult to talk much, so we didn't try, and after Dannika's Wilco tape CD ended nobody bothered to put in another one. The fog dissipated, and the sky turned a deep, pensive late-afternoon blue.

I found myself remembering, for some reason, a night when my father didn't come home. I was seven, and my mom was cooking meatloaf. I remember that, because when she took it out of the oven, she burned the inside of her wrist on the loaf pan. She was standing there by the freezer with a piece of ice pressed to the blue veins on the inside of her wrist and I was crowding her, going, “Let me see, Mom. Let me see.” I was sort of a morbid kid, fascinated by injuries, especially burns—I spent hours with my father's book on Hiroshima—but she wasn't in any mood for my dark curiosity and I remember her saying, “Jesus, Gwen, just get back. Fuck.” Hearing that edge in her voice, hearing her swear, which she never did, made me feel suddenly cold. There'd been something in the air all night, but in that moment it went from an amorphous sadness that might dissipate with a joke or a really good episode of
Murder, She Wrote
to a black force that had to be reckoned with.

Wow, that was weird. Don't know where that came from. I guess that's why I never come back here. The farther north I get, the more memories assail me. By the time I hit Sonoma County, they're coming at me like bloodthirsty bats.

Anyway, as I was saying, we were driving along in silence for hours. I'd been scribbling furiously, trying to keep you updated, and every once in a while Coop would glance over his shoulder, saying, “What you got going there, kitten, the great American novel?” to which I'd reply, “Just notes.” Once Dannika said, “At this rate, she's going to have
War and Peace
by the time we hit Mendocino.” I guess she thought that was funny. I speculated about whether I could “accidentally” dig my kitten heels into her surfboard. At least she'd have something to remember me by.

When we finally crossed the Golden Gate Bridge, the sun was sagging toward the water, soaking the ocean and the cars and even our skin in tangerine light. Coop and Dannika looked like movie stars with their sunglasses on and the red, curving lines of the bridge swooping past them. The left-out feeling that had haunted me most of the day started to creep back in. They just looked so perfect together up there—so natural and salty and wild. It was hard not to imagine how photogenic their little surfer children would be. Everyone driving past us must have wondered what I was doing in that picture. They probably assumed I was the wacky cousin visiting from some obscure Eastern European country that hadn't yet discovered denim or Lycra.

When we got across the bridge and were getting closer to the turnoff for Highway 1, I was astounded when Dannika said, “Let's take the coast again.” I mean, God, the sun was halfway down and we still had a couple hundred miles to go. Even if we took 101 and headed northwest at Cloverdale, we were still looking at four, maybe five more hours in the car, depending on traffic. Taking the coast would mean five or six, at least, most of it in the dark on hellish-curvy roads.

I couldn't help it; I leaned forward and said, “Why don't we just take 101?”

She looked at me with disdain. “I don't believe in freeways.”

“You live in San Diego and you don't believe in freeways?” I punctuated the remark with one raised eyebrow. There were things she could learn from me.

“I don't,” she said. “They're evil. Coop, don't you think we should take the coast?”

We both looked at him.

“If it were up to me, I'd go for 101. It's twice as fast.” He shot Dannika his don't-be-mad-I'm-only-being-honest look.

She shook her head and laughed. “You're just siding with her.”

“It's only logical,” I said. “Why take the scenic route in the dark?”

“Well, sorry, folks, but it's my car and my car doesn't take freeways. End of story. Here's the turnoff.” Her tone was brusque, but underneath it you could hear the warning:
my way or the highway
—which in this case turned out to be the same thing.

When Coop turned off obediently I wasn't surprised. I mean yeah, it was a little wimpy, but we all knew if he didn't we'd have a major tantrum on our hands and I don't think any of us were up for it.

Of course, the gods of Highway 1 had a few surprises in store for us, so if we were looking to get off easy, we could forget it.

We were just passing Point Reyes Station, getting close to Tomales Bay. The sun was long gone but there was still a fiery pink clinging to the underside of a few smudgy clouds—the leftovers of a messy sunset. The air was turning a harsh, coastal-cold against our faces. I'd been debating for the past twenty minutes about asking if we could put the top up, but I hated to be the hothouse flower amongst tough native shrubs. The irony here was that
I
was the native. I'm the one who comes from apple country; Coop's from Philadelphia and Dannika spent most her life in Ventura—what do they know about the strange, hostile territories north of the Golden Gate Bridge?

As I sat there freezing my ass off in my wool chemise suit and my yummy little leopard-print car coat, I kept dreaming about the full-length mink I'd almost run back to grab this morning. If I had that, I could bury my face in its silky depths until the numbness in my nose and ears went away. Again, it was Dannika who had kept me from following my instincts. All day we'd been bending to her will—why? Because she had a perfect, perky little nose, gleaming blond hair, a supple, pinup girl body? And what part of all that wasn't store bought? Even if it wasn't—even if she was as all-natural as that gag-inducing juice I'd choked down earlier—what right did that give her to call every shot?

Suddenly, I didn't care if it was her car or if they thought I was a total city girl. I was going to ask them to put the damn top up. What was this, some kind of naturalists' boot camp?

I was just leaning forward to make my request when two things happened at once. Coop turned his head slightly and said, “You cold, kitten?” The words weren't even out of his mouth when the engine coughed a few times, sputtered briefly and died.

Coop guided it onto the crumbling, almost nonexistent shoulder and stared at the dash. “That's weird,” he said. “Sounded like we ran out of gas, but the gauge says we're still half full.”

There was a pause.

Dannika broke the silence. “Actually, the gauge is sort of…broken.”

I leaned back and sighed.

Coop just looked at her. “You're kidding me.”

“No,” she said. “It's busted. It hasn't worked for months.”

He ran a hand through his hair. “Why didn't you mention this before we got all the way out here?”

“I thought you knew!”

His voice turned incredulous. “How would I know this, Danni?” I didn't like the nickname, but I relished the tone of their conversation. They were bickering and if they kept it up the exchange would escalate into a proper fight. Usually I hate violence, but in this case, I thought I could make an exception.

“Jesus, I'm sorry, okay?” Her voice didn't sound very apologetic. “I forgot you haven't driven my car in a while.” The subtext was complicated but clear:
I forgot you've been so wrapped up with the little bitch in the backseat that you've neglected me and my precious car for months.

Coop backed off. “Never mind, it doesn't matter. Who's got a cell phone?” We all looked at each other blankly. “Dammit,” he said, slapping the steering wheel, but he was laughing a little now. “A couple of technophobes and a retro purist. Why couldn't we have one normal, mainstream American on board?”

It was kind of funny. I laughed with him.

Dannika didn't even crack a smile. “Great. So what now?”

“You have a map?” he asked.

She shook her head, no.

“Shit.” Coop wasn't laughing this time.

“It's a straight shot up the coast,” she told him. “Why would I need a
map?
” She was whining now, and I thought,
careful, girl, your Donna Horney's showing.

We all looked around at the sloping hills turning rapidly darker. There were a few stars out, now. The stretch of highway disappeared around curves both ahead and behind. There were scraggly coastal trees, bent over like old people from all those years of wind. We were truly out in the sticks. The air smelled of cypress and salt—clean and cold. In the distance, I could hear seals barking.

I closed my eyes and visualized where we were on a map. Remember how you used to call me Navigation Girl? You always said it was my superpower. This time it was easy, since you and I used to drive this stretch a lot in high school, although usually we'd head south at Point Reyes Station so we could sit on the beach in Bolinas and watch the hippies surf, scanning the waters for sharks. We were maybe four miles north of Point Reyes Station now; the stretch ahead was pretty desolate.

“Our best bet is to backtrack to the last town we passed,” I said.

They both looked at me in surprise, as if they'd forgotten I was back there.

“We haven't passed anything for miles,” Dannika snapped.

“Yeah, we did,” I said. “Point Reyes Station. It's easy to miss, but I'm pretty sure they have a gas station.”

“I would have noticed,” she said.

Coop smiled at me in the lengthening shadows. “That's right. You grew up around here, didn't you?”

I nodded reluctantly. “Yeah.”

I know you're proud of being a Sonoma County girl, but for me it's a lot more complicated. I never talk about the past with Coop if I can avoid it. I know it's beautiful up here, rustic and quaint and all that shit, but in my mind it's a big tangle of memories and misguided impulses, most of which I'd rather just put behind me. You were the best thing Sebastopol ever gave me and I got to take you with me when I left. Everything else I'd just as soon never talk about again. I guess that's why Coop had half forgotten—didn't even really know—that we were only about fifteen miles from the town where I was born and raised.

“So, what's the plan?” Dannika was the princess waiting for her incompetent advisors to suggest a solution. I suppose it didn't occur to her that our current situation was entirely her fault.