Outside Chicago, the Dan Ryan Expressway isn’t crowded, but everyone drives too damn fast. John tries to stay in the right lane, but lanes are continually added on or taken away. I’m sorry now we didn’t just catch Route 66 out by Joliet, as I had originally planned. It’s just that part of me needed to do this trip from the very beginning to the very, very end.

Unofficially, Route 66 starts right at Lake Michigan, at Jackson and Lake Shore Drive, which we find without much trouble. It’s more difficult locating the official Route 66 starting point at Adams and Michigan. When we finally find the sign, I have John pull the van over. We could never do this on a workday, but this street is deserted today.

BEGIN HISTORIC
ILLINOIS U.S. 66 ROUTE

I lean out the window to take a closer look, but I don’t get out of the van. My wig could not survive this wind. It would be rolling down Adams like tumbleweed in a matter of seconds.

“This is it,” I say to John.

“Yes sir,” he says, with great enthusiasm. I’m not sure he understands what we’re doing.

I direct us down Adams. We drive between buildings so tall that the sunlight can’t reach us. This skyscraper twilight makes me feel strangely safe. Once we get onto Ogden Avenue, I start to see Route 66 signs.

In Berwyn, there are Route 66 banners hanging from the lampposts. I spot a place called Route 66 Realty. When we get to Cicero, Al Capone’s old stomping grounds, everyone just seems to be waking up. Folks are out driving around, but in no hurry, taking their Sunday morning time.

I realize that if John and I want to survive this trip, we must behave the same way. No rushing, no pressure, no four-lane superhighways if we can help it. There were too many vacations like that with the kids. Two days to get to Florida, three to California—we’ve only got two weeks—rush, rush, rush. Now there’s all the time in the world. Except I’m falling apart and John can barely remember his name. But that’s all right. I remember it. Between the two of us, we are one whole person.

Along the side of the road, two small children fresh from church wave to us. John honks the horn. I hold my hand up and wave at the wrist like I’m Queen Elizabeth.

We pass a statue of an enormous white chicken.

 

Did you know that there are parts of Route 66 that are buried directly beneath the freeway? It’s true. They paved right over it, the heartless bastards. That’s why Route 66 is a dead road today, decommissioned, emblems torn off its shoulders like a disgraced soldier.

When we reach one of these freeway stretches, John naturally accelerates, an instinct bred in the lead foot of a Detroit boy.

“Goose it, John!” I say, feeling freer than I have in years.

From our lofty vantage in the Leisure Seeker, the entombed Route 66 flies beneath us with a billowy roar. Suddenly sleepy, I crack the window, releasing a vacuum rush of balmy air, a sound like the flick of a newly laundered top sheet. I want the wind in my face. In the glove box, I find a fold-up plastic babushka, an ancient giveaway from a dry cleaner in our old neighborhood in Detroit. I wrap it around my wig, tie it under my chin, then roll down the window. The bonnet bellows out like it’s going to launch off my head, wig and all. I roll the window back up most of the way.

Morning is well established now, the weather quite perfect. A brilliant September day, that gaudy Crayola Yellow sunny, like you find at the uppermost corner of a child’s drawing. Yet I can still detect the breath of fall in the air, damp-dry and musky. It’s the kind of autumn day that used to make me feel as if anything was possible. I remember a road trip years back, when the kids were still with us, looking out over the plains of Missouri on a day like this and feeling for a moment that life could continue indefinitely, that it would never end.

Strange what a little sunshine can make you believe.

These days, autumn is no longer my favorite season. Dead, shriveled leaves don’t hold quite the appeal they used to. I can’t imagine why.

The layer-cake freeway ends and we’re back on Route 66. I can tell by the giant green-suited spaceman standing alongside the road.

“John, look!” I say, as we approach the emerald colossus, his massive noggin in a fishbowl helmet.

“How about that?” says John, eyes barely straying from the road. He couldn’t care less.

As we pass the Launching Pad Drive-In, again I want to crank down the window all the way. Then I realize that if I want to feel the wind and sun on my face, there is no reason why I can’t. I rip off my babushka, then unclasp my helmet of synthetic lifelike fiber (the Eva Gabor Milady II Evening Shade—75% white/25% black) at the back where it is tentatively tethered to my last remaining hair of any thickness. I reach underneath, then pull back and up to unsheathe my head.

I roll down the window and throw that goddamned thing out where it tumbles and flops along the side of the road like a just-hit animal. Such blessed relief. I can’t remember the last time my scalp saw direct sunlight. What little hair I have on top is thin and delicate like the first frail wisps of an infant. In the delicious wind, the long strands twist and dance around my scalp, a sad swirled turban, but I don’t care today. It had bothered me so much when my hair thinned out after menopause. I was ashamed like I had done something wrong, afraid of what everyone would say. You spend your life so worried about what others think, when in reality, people mostly don’t think. On the few occasions when they do, true, it is often something bad, but one has to at least admire the fact that they’re thinking at all.

I look back at my Styrofoam wig stand. The head is still taped to the counter, no longer my companion, but now staring at me, judging, wondering “What the hell did you just do?” I don’t look at myself in the mirror. I know I look like death warmed over. It doesn’t matter. I feel lighter already.

 

Up ahead, I spot a building that looks somehow familiar. Low slung and sprawling, its peaked turquoise roof is blanched from decades of sun. There’s a faded horse and carriage on the side of the building. Finally, I notice the sign.

STUCKEY’S

On our vacations with the kids, Kevin and Cindy, we’d often stop at those places with their pecan logs and acrid coffee. Sometimes the signs would start a hundred miles away. There’d be a new one every ten, fifteen miles. The kids would get all worked up and want to stop and John would say no, we had to get some miles under our belt. They’d beg and finally when we were a half mile away, he’d give in. The kids would scream yay, and John and I would smile at each other like parents who knew how to spoil their children just enough.

A semitruck roars past us. In a moment, it’s silent again, except for the wind. “I haven’t seen one of those places in years,” I say. “Do you remember Stuckey’s, John?”

“Oh yeah,” he says, in a tone that almost makes me believe him.

“Come on,” I say. “Let’s go. We need gas anyway.”

Nodding, John pulls up to the pumps. No sooner do I get out of the van than a man, neatly dressed in a beige sport shirt and copper-colored slacks, approaches us.

“We don’t have gas anymore, but there’s a BP up the road,” he says, his voice raspy, but not unpleasant. He tips his puffy white cap back on his head with his thumb.

“It’s okay,” I say. “We really just wanted a pecan log.”

He shakes his head. “We don’t have those anymore, either. We’re just gone out of business.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” I say, clutching my armrest. “We used to like Stuckey’s. We came with our kids.”

He shrugs forlornly. “Everyone did.”

As he walks away, I wrestle myself back into the van. By the time I’m buckled up and ready to give John the go-ahead, the man is back at my door.

“I found one,” he says, handing me a pecan log.

He’s gone before I can even thank him.

 

I find out now that Route 66 was already starting to fall apart the time we traveled on it in the ’60s. Much of the old road is closed now, buried or bulldozed, long ago replaced by Highways 55 and 44 and 40. In some places, the original pink Portland concrete is so decrepit you can’t even drive on it. Yet there are maps and books available now that show the old route, turn-by-turn directions, guides to the trailer parks. It’s true. I found it all on the World Wide Web in the library. Turns out people didn’t want to let go of the old road, that a lot of the kids who were born after the war, who traveled it with their parents, want to retrace their steps. Apparently, everything old is new again.

Except us.

 

“I’m hungry,” says John. “Let’s go to McDonald’s.”

“You always want to go to McDonald’s,” I say, poking his arm with the pecan log. “Here. Eat this.”

He looks at it with suspicion. “I want a hamburger.”

I stash the pecan log in our snack bag. “We’ll find you a hamburger somewhere else for a change.”

John loves McDonald’s. I’m not that crazy about it, but he could eat it every day. He did for quite some time. McDonald’s was his hangout for a number of years after he retired. Every day, Monday through Friday, right around midmorning. After a while, I started to wonder what the big attraction was, so I went with him. It was just a bunch of old farts sitting around, chewing the fat, drinking Senior Discount coffees, reading the paper and bitching about the state of the world. Then they’d get a free refill and start all over again when new old farts arrived. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. I never went with him again, which I think was what he wanted. Frankly, I think John just needed somewhere to go to get away from me after he retired. Truth be told, I was happy to have him out of my hair, synthetic or otherwise.

Yet once we both settled into the rhythm of retirement, we had a good time. We were both in pretty decent shape then, so we did a lot. After John would return from McDonald’s, we’d take care of things around the house, run errands, chase down the sales at the supermarkets or Big Lots, catch a matinee, have an early dinner. We’d gas up the Leisure Seeker and take off for weekends with friends or take the long trek to the outlet mall at Birch Run. It was a good period, one that didn’t last long enough. Soon, we started spending our days going from doctor’s office to doctor’s office, our weeks worrying about tests, our months recovering from procedures. After a while, just staying alive becomes a full-time job. No wonder we need a vacation.

We manage to avoid McDonald’s long enough to stop for lunch somewhere outside Normal, Illinois. I grab my four-pronged cane and lower myself from the van. John, still pretty spry, has already gotten out on his side to help me. “I got you,” he says.

“Thanks, honey.”

Between the two of us, we do all right.

Inside, the diner is meant to look like the 1950s, but it doesn’t look anything like how I remember them. Somewhere along the line, people became convinced that that decade was all about sock hops, poodle skirts, rock and roll, shiny red T-birds, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe. and Elvis. It’s funny how a whole decade gets reduced into a few seemingly random pictures. For me, that decade was about diapers and training wheels and miscarriages and trying to house and feed three people on $47 a week.

After John and I sit down at a table, a girl dressed as a carhop walks up. (Why a carhop? We’re inside, for Christ’s sake.) She has long bottle-blond hair, bow lips, and eyes like a kewpie doll.

“Welcome to the Route 66 Diner,” she says, in a whispery voice. “I’m Chantal. I’ll be your server.”

I don’t know what to say to this, so I just say something. “Hello, Chantal. I’m Ella and this is my husband, John. I guess we’ll be your customers.”

“I want a hamburger,” says John, abruptly. He’s lost a few of his social skills along with the memory.

I try to laugh it off. “We’ll both have plain hamburgers and coffee,” I say.

Chantal looks disappointed. Maybe she works on commission. “How about some Fabian Fries? A Pelvis Shake?”

“What is that?”

“A chocolate milk shake.” She gives me a little nod. “They’re good.”

“All right. You don’t have to twist my arm.”

“Pelvis Shake, coming right up,” she says, pleased to have made a sale.

After our new friend Chantal leaves, I excuse myself to make a phone call.

“Mom, where the fuck are you?” screams my daughter over the phone, right there in the lobby of the diner.

I look around, almost embarrassed to be listening to her. I don’t know where she got this mouth, but it wasn’t from me, I assure you.

“Cindy honey, don’t use that language. Your father and I are fine. We’re just taking a little trip.”

“I can’t believe you went through with this. We all discussed this and decided that you and Dad taking any kind of a trip was out of the question.”

I can hear the exasperation in her voice. I don’t like it when Cindy gets all worked up. She’s been having blood pressure problems lately, and getting all frantic certainly doesn’t help.

“Cindy. Calm down. Your father and I didn’t decide anything. You and Kevin and the doctors decided for us. Then, Dad and I decided that we should go anyway.”

“Mom. You’re sick.”

“Sick is relative, dear. I’m way past sick.”

“I can’t believe you’re doing this,” she says, indignantly. “You can’t just stop going to the doctor.”

I look around the restaurant to make sure no one is listening. I lower my voice. “Cynthia, I am not going to let them do their treatments on me.”

“They just want to try to make you better.”

“How? By killing me? I’d rather go on vacation with your father.”

“Damn it, Mom!”

“I don’t like being yelled at, young lady.”

There is a long pause while Cindy gives herself a time-out. She used to do this when she was frustrated with her kids, now she does it with John and I.

“Mother,” she says, newly composed. “You know Dad shouldn’t even be driving in his condition.”

“Your father still drives just fine. I wouldn’t go with him if I didn’t think that.”

“What if you guys get in an accident because of him? What if he hurts someone?”

I know she has a point, but I also know John. “He’s not going to hurt anyone. If they let sixteen-year-olds on the road to run wild, then your father, who has an excellent driving record, should be able to do the same.”

“Oh God. Mother,” she says, her voice rising, signaling surrender, “where are you?”

“It doesn’t matter. We just stopped for lunch.”

“Where are you going?”

I don’t appreciate the “20 Questions” from my daughter. I’m not even sure I should tell her, but I do anyway. “We’re going to go to Disneyland.”

“Disneyland? In California? You cannot be serious.” This is where I realize that my daughter still has the flair for the dramatic that she developed when she was a snotty teenager.

“Oh, we’re serious.” I think I’m going to end this call soon. Who knows? They could be putting a tracer on the call, like on the television.

“Oh God. I can’t believe this. Do you at least have the cell phone we bought you?”

“I do, but I don’t like that thing, honey. But I’ve got it in case of an emergency.”

“Would you please at least turn it on,” she says, pleading, “so I can keep in touch with you?”

“I don’t think so. Don’t worry so much. Your father and I will be fine. It’s just a little vacation.”

“Mom—”

“Love you, honey.” It’s time to hang up, so I do. She’ll be fine, but she’s crazy if she thinks I’m going to turn on that cellular telephone. I’ve got more than enough cancer, thank you.

Back at the table, John and I eat our Route 66 burgers. My chocolate Pelvis Shake is not half bad.

 

Back on the road, the fatigue comes on hard and sudden. I want to tell John to call it a day, but we’ve only been driving for about four hours. I try to ignore it. After the phone call with Cindy, I want to put more distance between us and home. Yesterday I was afraid to leave home for all the obvious reasons, but now that we are gone, I want us to be really gone.

John turns to me, looking concerned. “Are you all right, miss?”

“Yes, I am, John.” He is having one of his moments where he knows I am someone dear to him, but he’s not entirely sure who I am.

“John. Do you know who I am?”

“Of course I do.”

“Then who am I?”

“Oh, knock it off.”

I put my hand on his arm. “John. Tell me who I am.”

He stares at the road, looking annoyed, but worried. “You’re my wife.”

“Good. What’s my name?”

“For Christ’s sake,” he says, but he’s thinking. “It’s Ella,” he says, after a moment.

“That’s right.”

He smiles at me. I put my hand on his knee, give it a squeeze. “Keep your eyes on the road,” I say.

As far as what John does and does not remember, I cannot say. He does know who I am most of the time, but then we have been together so long that even if he is slowly working his way back in time, forgetting as he goes, I’m still there with him. I wonder: are the eyes deceived along with the mind? If it is, say, 1973 to him, do I look as I did back then? And if I don’t (which I most certainly don’t), how does he know it’s me? Does that make sense?

 

Route 66 is the frontage road of I-55 for this stretch. To the left of us, telephone poles, blackened with age and exhaust and crowned with blue-green glass insulators (the kind you sometimes see in antique shops), run parallel to the highway. Some of the poles are broken and splintered, toppled or teetering over in some places, the lines long snapped and dangling; yet many still retain their wires, and they somehow connect us to the road like an old streetcar, as if we are tethered to the air.

On the other side: the freeway and the railroad tracks that will follow the road pretty much all the way to California. Between our road and the freeway, I see barricaded patches of what must be a very old alignment of 66, a narrow pinkish path that barely looks wide enough for one car. Nature is slowly reclaiming it. Vegetation creeps in from the edges, narrowing it like an artery. Weeds grow in the crevices roughly every six feet or so, where the slabs were poured. In a few more years, you won’t even be able to see this old highway.

When we’re not on the frontage road, we pass through tiny, desperate towns. Once everyone stopped taking Route 66, there was no reason for anyone to stop and spend money in these places, so they just languished. In one burg called Atlanta, we pass another fiberglass giant (as they refer to them in my guidebook). This one is Paul Bunyan holding a gigantic frankfurter.

“Well, look at that,” says John. It’s the first one he’s shown any interest in.

“They just moved it here from Chicago.”

“What for?” he says.

I look around this street, all boarded up and joyless. “That, my dear, is the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.”

We pull over, roll down our windows to look up at the giant’s bulging forearms. According to my guidebook, he was originally holding a muffler, so now the wiener sits on the top of a clawed left hand withered shut. It looks like Bob Dole holding a jumbo hot dog. It makes me sad to think of these people pinning all their hopes on this thing to bring their little ghost town back to life.

 

Outside Springfield, we stop for the night. The park is not so much a campground, but a trailer village, with a few extra spaces that they rent out to folks with campers. Basically, it’s like camping in the middle of someone’s crummy neighborhood. But we were tired and it was available.

We settle in, hook up our electricity, water, and septic lines. (Between what John remembers and what I remember him teaching me, we muddle through the various plugs and connections.) We have sandwiches and take our meds, then John lies down for a snooze. I let him sleep because it feels good to be by myself sitting at the picnic table.

Next door, our neighbors arrive home for the night. First the man of the house arrives in a beat-up Olds, the hood and roof covered with a vast landscape of rust, a corroded map of the world. When I wave hello, he stares right through me and heads inside the trailer. Minutes later, the woman shows up on foot. Still in her Wal-Mart smock, she’s tanned and rail thin—that kind of beef jerky look that I associate with either two-pack-a-day smokers or those people who run long-distance races. When I wave to her, she marches right over.

“Hey, neighbor!”

I smile at her. “Just for the evening, I’m afraid.”

“I’m Sandy,” she says, holding out her hand.

“Ella,” I say, shaking it.

She lights a butt, then launches right into it. “Lord, what a day I’ve had. My manager was on my ass from the moment I punched in till the moment I walked out of there. He searched me out while I was eating my lunch, I swear it! I was sitting there, nice as you please, eating my Salisbury steak when he comes up to me and starts giving me grief about the inventory we’ve got coming up. He’s screaming at me during lunch! Can you imagine? I just sat there and shoveled food into my mouth right in front of him. And I didn’t close it, either. I just left it wide open and chewed while he bitched away. I even let a little fall from my mouth onto my plate. He didn’t even notice. I figured, hell, I’m on my lunch hour and I’m gonna eat my lunch whether he likes it or not…”

This goes on for quite some time. Smoking and talking. Talking and smoking. She just lights one off the other. I feel sorry for her at first, that she needs to do this with complete strangers, but after about twenty minutes, I was afraid that I was going to be out there all night. Poor thing, I know she just wanted to make a noise, have someone to pay attention to her, know she was there. She didn’t understand that it didn’t matter that I knew she was there. I would be gone tomorrow. You need to have it matter to people who count.

“My first husband, he gave me gonorrhea for our fourth anniversary. He was a sonofabitch, that one. He about wore me out with his hijinks—”

Right then, her husband comes out, and without a word, grabs her arm and starts pulling her back to their little place.

“Ow! Donald! What are you doing?”

He didn’t say a word, but she chattered and smoked all the way there. After the door shut, I could still hear her talking.

 

Twilight slips in like a timid creature. Lights tick on around the trailer village. The air grows cooler. I grab one of John’s old jackets and throw it over my shoulders. In a storage bin, I find an old gray wool winter cap to put on my head, which is freezing, unaccustomed to being without its hat of hair. The cold and the musky smell of John’s jacket make me think of a night after we were first married in the winter of 1950. We were living on Twelfth Street just off West Grand Boulevard. It had rained all night as the temperature plummeted. At about midnight, it stopped, and John and I, for some reason, decided to take a walk.

It was frigid, but so beautiful. Everything was coated with a thick layer of brilliant clear ice, as if the world were preserved under glass. We had to take tiny hesitant steps, so as not to slip. Above us, power lines crackled and tore from their poles; a streetlight globe, laden with ice, dropped and shattered in the street with a muffled pop. We walked and walked under a brittle black sky, jagged with stars, moon shining hard and bright on the crystal buildings that lined the boulevard. The world looked fragile, but we were young and invulnerable. We kept walking, at least a mile, toward the golden tower of the Fisher Building, not knowing why, knowing only that we needed to get there. We returned to our flat that night excited, our hair glistening with shiny flecks of ice, full of a deep thirst for each other. That was the night that Cindy was conceived.

Right now, I hear the loudening trill of crickets and the sizzle of gravel as cars slowly pass. I can smell microwave popcorn coming from somewhere. There is no reason to, but I feel safe with all these people around us. John is awake now and I can hear him talking under his breath. He is telling someone off. I hear him whispering obscenities, threats to enemies, accusations. All our lives together, John was a passive, quiet man. But now, since he started to lose his mind, he says the things that he always wanted to say to people. He is forever reading his personal riot act to someone. It often happens this time of the day. When the sun sets, the anger rises in him.

He appears at the doorway of the van. “Where are we?” he says loud, voice full of fight.

“We’re in Illinois,” I say, ready for it.

“Is that home?”

“No. Home is Michigan.”

“What are we doing here?” he barks.

“We’re on vacation.”

“We are?”

“Yes. And we’re having a great time.”

He crosses his arms. “No, I’m not. I want a cup of tea.”

“I’ll make one in a little while. I’m resting.”

He joins me at the table. It’s quiet for about a minute, then he speaks again. “How about a cup of tea?”

“We’re going to wait a little while for a cup of tea.”

“Why?”

“Because you’ll be up all night peeing.”

“Goddamn it, I want a cup of tea!”

Finally, I give him a look and talk to him in that same hushed, threatening voice he was using a minute ago. “Keep your voice down. People live around here. Why don’t you get up and make it yourself? You’re not crippled.”

“Maybe I will.”

He won’t. I don’t think he really knows where anything is in the camper anymore. He just sits there stewing. This is the price I pay for him being sweet as pie all day long. Maybe it was just that he had something to do. We never usually drive this much. It seems to help when he has something to occupy him.

“How about a cup of tea?” John says, like it’s a new idea that came to him just this second.

“All right,” I say.

I get up and make us both a cup of tea.

 

It’s night and John is miraculously sleeping again. I, of course, can’t doze off to save my life. I’m not used to the camper yet, how closed in it is, like some rolling tan-and-brown striped recreational sarcophagus. The Leisure Seeker really is quite small. At the moment, I’m just across from the side rear door, sitting in our social area. It’s a little Formica table with a plaid cushioned bench on either side. This is where we eat or play cards (or sometimes sleep if you’re me). Across from here is my kitchen with a three-burner stove (which I never use), a tiny radar range, a sink about the size of a dishpan, and a little fridge. The bed where John is sleeping is at the very back just under the rear window. It’s a couch that folds out to a double bed. The world’s smallest bathroom is right nearby, which is helpful when you get up as much as we do in the middle of the night. There’s another sleeping space above the driver’s compartment that hasn’t been used in years, as well as various closets, storage spaces, and cubbyholes. At the very front are the captain’s chairs, big overstuffed adjustable seats for the driver and the passenger. They’re by far the most comfortable seats in the house.

We got the Leisure Seeker a long time ago, so while the decor isn’t exactly current, it’s still pretty. It’s done in earth tones—wood-grain paneling; harvest gold and avocado green curtains; nubby gold, green, and brown plaid upholstery, all still in beautiful Scotchgarded condition. We take care of our things.

I know some people don’t consider what we do to be camping, and I suppose it’s not particularly rustic, but I’ve always found it to be a happy medium between hotels and really roughing it. The only reason we ever really started was to save money. We had a little Apache pop-up camper that we hauled around for quite a few years. We could camp for about two dollars a night. It was cheap and fun and I always thought that the kids loved it. But neither Kevin nor Cindy camp now. They tell me now that when they were kids, they would have much preferred to stay in motels with pools and TV and restaurants. Oh well, tough titty.

I pull myself up from the table, open the side door, step outside, and listen to the night. It’s quiet now and I can hear the semitrucks highballing down the freeway in the distance. That sound makes me yearn for something, but I don’t exactly know what. I used to find it soothing back when we had a camperful and would pull over to some trailer park next to a freeway, bone tired, but pleased over how much distance we’d covered.

I decide that maybe a drink would help me get to sleep. I drag out the bottle of Canadian Club that I made sure we packed, and I mix myself a little highball with some 7UP. It goes without saying that I’m not supposed to drink, but hell, I’m on vacation. I settle back down at the table with my drink, listen to the faraway grind of the trucks, and start to feel more comfortable right away.

 

I wake up at 6:40 with a headache and a bladderful. After I visit the bathroom, I fill our electric kettle and plug it in. Outside, it’s just getting light. I hear chickadees chattering over the sound of car doors slamming shut. John, still in bed, is a little restless. When he opens his eyes, he turns to me and speaks in a surprisingly matter-of-fact voice, as if resuming a conversation we started last night. It is the old John, come to visit.

“Haven’t slept in the camper for a while, have we? Feels pretty good. How’d you sleep, hon?”

I walk over to the bed, sit on the ledge next to it. “Not great. But it is nice to be camping again, isn’t it?”

“Sure is. Where are we again?” He rubs his cheeks and pulls at his bottom lip.

He’s like this in the mornings sometimes, normal as can be. “We’re in Illinois,” I say. “About a hundred miles from the Missouri state line.”

“Wow. We’re making good time, aren’t we?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Boy, it feels good to be on the road again. Feels right.”

“Yes, it does.”

The ridges in his forehead ripple and furrow. “Have you talked to the kids?”

“I spoke to Cindy yesterday at lunch. She’s worried about us being on vacation.”

“Why’s she worried?” He gets up, arches his back to get the kinks out. “Uggh,” he groans. “Old man Mose.”

“Oh, you know Cindy. She’s a worrier.”

He smiles at me. “I wonder where she got that from.”

I smile back, wrangle myself off the ledge, and kiss him good morning. I touch the ruddy mottled skin of his head, smooth back the wisps of dampish gray hair on both sides of that endless forehead. On these days, morning is like a return, a meeting up again.

“Hey, is there water on for coffee?” I nod, then head back over to the counter and pour us both a cup of instant. I stir in a half packet of Sweet’n Low in his mug and take it over to him. He has lain down again, closed his eyes.

“John?”

He opens them and looks at me. “Where are we?”

“I just told you, honey. We’re in Illinois.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Yes, I did, John.”

“Is this home?”

And just like that, the old John is gone. This is how it happens. Sometimes I get him for a few minutes in the morning, wonderful moments when he actually acts like himself, as if his mind has forgotten to be forgetful. Then suddenly it’s like our whole conversation never happened. I should get used to this, but I just can’t.

“Why don’t you get dressed, John? And put some clean clothes on.”

“All right.”

I step outside and sit on a lawn chair to take my meds. This morning, I seem to be in some “discomfort,” as my doctors love to call it, so I take one of my little blue oxycodone pills along with the fistful of meds I usually take. I don’t really want to cloud my judgment since I’m the commander of this ship of fools, but it’s quite a bit of discomfort, take my word for it.

I hear John inside the trailer, getting dressed. He could probably use some help, but I don’t want to talk to him for a while. I want to enjoy those few lucid minutes with him while they’re still fresh in my memory.

 

Soon, we’re as cleaned up as either of us are going to get. John is wearing a loud green plaid shirt and beige plaid pants. I almost tell him that it looks like he belongs at the Barnum & Bailey circus, but these days I’m just happy to get him into clean clothes. Who am I to talk, anyway? I’ve replaced my wig with Kevin’s old wool baseball cap, one that he used to wear constantly when he went camping with us. I almost put it on backward like I see the kids do, but then I change my mind. There are degrees of foolishness, after all. Maybe later I’ll make do with a babushka, but for now I love this old Detroit Tigers cap.

Back on 66, John is in good spirits, not like he was this morning, but cheery and driving well. As for me, I feel both the caffeine and the drugs work their magic on me. My fingertips tingle. My heart whirrs like a thrush. I am alert, euphoric just to be traveling. The thrum of our tires on the pavement is joyous music to me, quelling my fears, transiting my discomfort to a place far up the road, a shuddering speck on the apparent horizon.

Here now, we have entered another state.