Jennifer turns away from Margaret and goes inside with a resolution forming. She will not wait around for Megan to resume their friendship. She can still tell her story any way she wants.
Megan answers the phone. Jennifer’s heart was in her throat, thinking she wouldn’t. “Are you grading papers today?” Jennifer asks.
“No, I’m all caught up. I usually run errands on Friday.”
“Are they important? The errands?”
“Not terribly,” Megan says. “I just wanted to get out of the house.”
“Oh, good,” Jennifer says. “Because I have an idea.”
Megan is reluctant. But she doesn’t outright say no. Jennifer knows Megan has never been to Rock City, despite having lived in Sewanee for four years, and that she’s curious. “But the boys are already at school,” Megan says.
“We’ll go get them. They’ll be thrilled.” Jennifer’s behaving uncharacteristically, pushing in the face of resistance, and it’s making her nervous, but she’s determined. “Don’t you feel like an adventure? Let’s get off this mountain.”
“We’ll just be going up another one.”
“At least it’ll be a different mountain.”
“All right,” Megan says. Not because she wants to, Jennifer thinks. Because she hates to deny anyone anything, poor Megan. It hurts her to have to say no. Jennifer has taken advantage of this, but not with nefarious intent. With positive intent, Megan! In hopes they will have fun.
In the car Megan is turned around in her seat, talking to the boys. Keeping an eye on Milo? Watching for signs of imminent psychotic break? Jennifer doesn’t know. She tries not to care. Megan’s working hard at entertaining them. Do they know where they’re going? Do they know everything they’re going to see there? Gnomes! Real ones? the boys ask, and Megan says, with a parent’s carefully obvious show of pretense, “Maybe.” No, no, the boys say, giggling, they won’t be real. What else are they going to see? Rocks! Big ones. A cave. Waterfalls! How much farther is it, the boys want to know, five minutes after they get on the highway and every five minutes thereafter. Why don’t you count the signs? Megan suggests. Some are billboards. Some are painted on barns. Once you get to fifty, I’ll bet we’ll be there.
“Fifty?” Jennifer asks, and Megan says quietly, “Good round number. Can’t be more than fifty, right?” Then she shouts, “There’s one!” pointing out the window. SEE ROCK CITY in white letters on a barn. Jennifer knows about Rock City only because of these signs. On the long first drive to Sewanee the signs counted down her progress for hundreds of miles. An exhortation. A command. For miles and miles and miles she wondered what the hell Rock City was. “Okay, boys, you know those letters?” Megan says. “You’re looking for S-E-E. Okay? Let’s see who can spot the next one.”
“I will!” Ben cries, and Milo says, “Me too! Me too!”
The road looks as if it intends to dump them straight into Nickajack Lake, sparkling in invitation, and then at the bottom of the incline it’s all sunlight and mountains and water. In the middle of the shining lake small islands of darkly clustered trees. Trying to look without crashing the car, Jennifer fancies she sees Margaret staring out from one of those islands, a white face between the trees.
Rock City is on a twisty road, the kind that curves ahead of you so that you can see the open air beyond it and remember every second you’re right on the edge of the mountain. Jennifer drives slow. At the ticket booth they purchase admittance to Rock City and its neighbor Ruby Falls, and Jennifer doesn’t flinch at the cost. This whole day, nothing will make her flinch. DISCOVER JOY, the billboard just outside the turnoff said, and she’s in a mood to take that seriously. Discover joy. As though no one who comes here has ever felt it before.
Megan continues bright and cheery with the boys, pointing after fairies she claims to have seen darting behind the enormous rocks or fluttering over the arched stone bridges. The boys begin to say they’ve seen them, too. To Jennifer she says nothing. When they make eye contact she offers a quick smile and looks away. Really, it’s impossible not to think she blames Jennifer for what Milo did. If a small child does something bad, surely it’s the parent’s fault. What are children if not evidence of our own worst qualities? They witness them, they replicate them, they remind you again and again of everything that’s wrong with you.