HONEY
Nana Pete turns back on 15 South. We drive until we see signs for Washington, D.C., and Virginia and then hit a road called I-270, which we stay on for hours. She starts off strong, driving as if possessed, trying to make up for all the missed miles from yesterday. Staring down her own tunnel of vision, she taps her thumbs along the top of the steering wheel, hearing a beat all her own. A few hours later, though, she seems to have fallen into some sort of trance. She doesn’t hear me when I ask her if she’s hungry, and when I ask her a few minutes later if she’s tired, she just gives me a strange look and shakes her head.
Maybe I’m worrying too much. I pull out my butterfly notebook and try to draw one of the Clouded Sulphurs I saw outside of the hospital, but Nana Pete keeps swerving in and out of traffic so sharply that my pencil darts all over the page. Her doggedness at not letting the speedometer fall under eighty-five is really starting to freak me out. I am just about to say something when I notice that her shoulders are sagging like two weighted logs in a pond. Her skin is a pale, ashy color and tiny beads of sweat, like pearls, have broken out along her forehead.
“Hey, Nana Pete?” I say gently.
Her head jerks at the sound of my voice, and she licks her lips. “I’m trying to make it to Raleigh before it gets dark, but I can’t drive another minute, darlin’. Do you think you could give it a try?”
Agnes sits up straight in the back. “Wait, you mean Honey drive?” she asks. It’s the first thing she’s said all day. “The car? She can’t drive!”
Nana Pete looks over at me. Her face is a map of deep lines and shaded circles. I’ve never seen her so tired.
“It’s okay, Ags,” I say. “I’ve driven Mr. Schwab’s tractor before. It can’t be much different.” My voice sounds confident, but as Nana Pete pulls over and I switch places with her in the front seat, I’m shaking like a leaf. Will it be much harder than driving Dorothy? I put my head down and listen as carefully as I can to what Nana Pete is telling me.
“Now, the Queen Mary is an automatic, sugar, which means you don’t have to do much of anything except steer once you put her in drive.” Nana Pete points at the two pedals just under my feet. “Just use your right foot when you want to speed up or slow down, all right? Let your left one sit off to the side. Think of it as just being along for the ride. It’s not going to do anything.” I run the insides of my hands up and down the smooth ridges of the steering wheel. It’s much smaller than Dorothy’s wheel. And there is no clutch, thank God. That was the hardest thing to learn with Dorothy. “Keep your foot down hard enough on the gas so that this little red stick”—Nana Pete leans over and points to the speed gauge—“stays around sixty-five. Don’t go past seventy, no matter what. The last thing we need is to get pulled over by the police. Keep it level. You’ll get the hang of it.”
“What if I have to turn?” I ask.
Nana Pete shakes her head. “We’ve only got another hour on this highway,” she says. “Straight through to Raleigh. No turns.”
“Okay.” I take a deep breath. “I can do this.”
And I really believe I can.
As I step on the gas, my breath collects itself into a pocket at the top of my lungs and sits there like a balloon waiting to be released. My hands grip the steering wheel with white fingers, swerving the car nervously to the left and then to the right and then back again. I try not to think about the fact that Dorothy doesn’t go any faster than twenty-five miles per hour and I am traveling now at almost three times that speed. But after a while, my fingers loosen and my hunched shoulders relax.
“Beautiful,” Nana Pete says approvingly. “Just beautiful. You’re a pro, Honey. I knew you could do it.” Her words relax me even more, and soon I can feel my lower back sinking into the seat. The muscles in my legs begin to unknot themselves and my breathing goes back to normal. Even when I glance over at Nana Pete, whose head is lolling heavily on her chest, I don’t panic. I’m driving a car. I’m doing it!
“Ags!” I whisper, sitting up a little so that I can see her in the rearview mirror. “Look at me! I’m driving!”
Agnes looks away, but Benny, who is curled up against her like a puppy, looks up and grins.
“Hey, Benny boy! How ’bout this? Huh?”
He nods and smiles. I look back over at Agnes. Her face is set like stone.
“You better watch the road,” she says, still looking out the window. “You’ve only been doing this for about thirty minutes, you know. Don’t get smug.”
I bounce up and down in the seat a little. “I think I got it figured it out, though! It’s not too hard once you sit back and relax a little. Take in a little of the scenery, even, instead of staring at the little yellow squares in the middle of the road.”
Agnes rolls her eyes. “Now you’re a pro all of a sudden?”