Lucy looked at the ceiling, then she began to shake her hands as if she had just washed them and there was no towel. “I can’t stand it,” she said. “Oh God help me. I can’t stand it, I can’t stand it, I can’t—”
And then Pete understood that she could not stand the house, or being in Amgash, that she had become frightened, the way he had been frightened to get his hair cut, only Lucy was so much more frightened than that.
“Okay, Lucy,” he said. He stood up and went to her. “Just relax now.”
“Yes,” Lucy said. “Yes. No. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know—” It seemed she was panting. “You guys,” she said, looking from one to the other, and her eyes were blinking hard. “I don’t know what to do. Help me, oh God—” She kept shaking her hands, harder and harder.
“Lucy,” said Vicky. She hoisted herself up from the couch and walked over to her sister. “Now you just get hold of yourself—”
“I can’t,” Lucy said. “I can’t. I just can’t— Oh, help me.” She sat back down on the couch. “See, it’s just that I don’t know— Oh God—” She looked up at her brother. “Oh dear God please help me.” She stood up again, shaking her hands furiously. “I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what to do—”
Vicky and Pete glanced at each other.
“I’m having a panic attack,” Lucy said to them. “I haven’t had one in ages, but this is a bad one, oh God, oh dear God. Oh Jesus, oh God— Okay, now listen to me, you guys, listen to me. Pete, can you drive my car, and, Vicky, I’ll drive with you? Can you, please, oh, please can you, I have to—I just have to—”
“Drive you where?” Vicky asked.
“Chicago. The Drake Hotel. I have to get back, I just have to—”
“To Chicago?” Vicky asked. “You want me to drive you to Chicago? That’s like two and a half hours away.”
“Yes, can you do that? Oh God, I am so sorry, I am so sorry, I can’t I can’t I can’t—”
Vicky looked at her wristwatch. She took a deep breath, widened her eyes for a moment. Then she turned and picked up her red pocketbook. “Let’s go to Chicago,” she said to Pete.
“Oh God, thank you, thank you—” Lucy was already opening the door.
Pete mouthed the words to Vicky: I’ve never been there. Vicky mouthed back: I know, but I have. Pointing to her chest.
In spite of the sun, the day was not hot. There was a clarity to the air that spoke of the autumn to come; Pete felt this as he got into Lucy’s white rental car and waited while Vicky turned her car around; Lucy’s car smelled new and was clean. Then he followed his sisters out to the main road. He could not believe he was to drive to Chicago. He sort of thought he might die. He drove along the narrow roads that were at first familiar, then he followed his sister’s car to the highway. As the sun went slowly across the sky, he drove steadily behind his sister; more than an hour passed by. He could see them, Vicky, her shoulders broad, every so often turning to look at Lucy, who, her head lower, sat in the passenger seat. He drove and drove. He drove past oak trees and maple trees, he drove past big barns with American flags painted on their sides, he drove past a sign that said FIREARMS AND MEMORIES; he drove past an enormous place filled with John Deere trucks and machines, he drove past a sign that said ONE DAY DENTURES $144, he drove by an old shopping mall, no longer in use, that had grass growing up through the cement parking lot. On the steering wheel, his palms were sweating. There was a lot more time to go.
But his sister’s car was suddenly blinking its light, slowing down, and Vicky pulled the car over into the breakdown lane. Pete had to step on the brakes quickly, and even then he went past his sister, but he pulled the car over in front of her.
As he stepped out of the car a truck went by him so quickly that a storm of air blasted over him. Lucy was getting out of the passenger side of Vicky’s car, and she ran up to him. “I’m okay, Pete,” she said; her eyes seemed smaller to him. She threw her arms around him briefly, and her head bumped his chin. “Thank you with all my heart,” she said. “Now you go, I can drive myself into the city.”
“You sure?” He felt confusion and some terror as another truck went by so fast, so close. “Lucy, be careful.”
Lucy said, “I love you, Pete,” and then she was gone, getting into her white rental car, and he waited while he saw her adjust the seat up. She stuck her head out of the open window. “Go, go,” she shouted, waving her arm. Then she shouted something else, and Pete walked partway back to her. “Tell Vicky to remember about Anna-Marie, tell her, Pete!”
So he waved at her, and then turned back and got into Vicky’s car, the seat slightly warm from where Lucy had been sitting. On the floor were empty soda cans, and he had to move his feet around them. Pete and Vicky followed Lucy until they came to the next exit, then they turned off to head back. In Pete’s mind was the image of Lucy’s white car going down the highway into the city. He felt stunned.
In a few minutes, when they were headed back on the right road, Vicky said, “Okay. Well, here’s the story.” She glanced over at Pete as she drove. “Lucy is coo-coo.”
“Seriously?”
“She’s completely coo-coo. She kept crying and saying, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, and I finally said, Lucy, stop being sorry, it’s okay. And she kept saying, No, it was wrong of me to come, it was wrong of me to leave, it was all wrong of me, and I said, Lucy, stop this right now. You got the hell out, and you’ve made a life, stay out, it’s okay. She wouldn’t stop crying, Pete. It was a little scary. I said, Why don’t you give your husband a call? And she said he was at rehearsal or something and she’d speak to him later, and I said, Well, try one of your girls, and she said, Oh no, she couldn’t let her girls hear her like this.”
Pete stared at the glove compartment; there were streaks down it, like coffee had been spilled there long ago. “Wow,” he said. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Nothing.” Vicky passed a car, pulled back in to the lane. “Anyway, she took a pill, and then said how panic attacks were— I can’t remember what she said, but she calmed down and made me pull over so we wouldn’t have to drive into the city. But, Pete, that was sad. She’s so small, and she’s— You see her online and—” Vicky fell silent. She sat up straighter and drove with one hand; the other hand was touching her chin; her elbow was on the armrest next to her. They drove along for quite a while.
Finally Vicky said, looking straight ahead at the road, “She’s not coo-coo, Pete. She just couldn’t stand being back here. It was too hard for her.”
On his trips to the soup kitchen in Carlisle with the Guptills, Pete had noticed how they were affectionate toward each other; Shirley would often put her hand on Tommy’s arm as he drove the car. Pete wondered about this, what it would be like to be that free, to touch people so freely. He would have liked—only not really—to put his own hand on his sister’s arm right now, this sister who had put on lipstick to see the famous Lucy. Instead he sat quietly next to her.
Eventually Vicky said, “I never should have mentioned that stuff from the past.”
“No, Vicky. How would you know? And I said the stuff about the clothes.”
As they drove, the sun was glaring to their side. They passed once again the barns with the American flags painted on them, only they were on the other side of them now, and Pete saw once again, from across the road, the huge John Deere place with all its green and yellow machines. He felt awfully safe sitting next to Vicky. He kept wondering how he could tell her this, and he finally said, “Vicky, you’re great.”
She made a sound of disgust and glanced at him, and he said, “No, really, you are. Lucy said to remind you of the Anne-Marie woman.”
“Anna-Marie.” Then Vicky said, “What did she mean by that?”