“No super-heroic guy I’d ever hang around with, that’s for sure.”
And then he takes me in his arms and kisses me, and I just want to collapse in them, right here, right now. And I do. But then the coffeemaker makes that spitting noise that sounds like Dad in the morning when he has a cold, which means our caffeine is ready and it’s time to go. I kiss him one more time, then tear myself away. Stan and Dave find and fill some travel mugs, while I go grab a phone charger, three changes of underwear, and some other essentials and throw them in my purse, the big one, because we don’t know exactly how long we’ll be gone or even where, exactly, we’re going. But because we suspect the far north, I also grab both my and Callie’s warmest winter jackets and two of Dad’s for Stan and Ted, and I throw them in the biggest duffel bag I can find, along with a bunch of random hats, scarves, and gloves. I feel like I’m forgetting something but I don’t have the time to worry.
We head out to the driveway. Stan packs the trunk and gets in the car, leaving me and Dave alone to say goodbye. Dave pulls me in for another hug and then he tells me he loves me. I say, “I know,” and I make my eyes as serious and as sad as I can, and then we kiss, and all of this makes my heart feel so heavy. I join Stan in the car and buckle up, making sure Callie and Ted are strapped in as well, and I blow Dave a kiss. He smiles and puts his palm against the glass, and I match it with mine.
THE SUN IS up. We’re on the road. We’re drinking coffee. The radio is spitting out a song that I hated when I first heard it at the beginning of the summer but that has grown on me in the strangest, rarest way. Stan’s turning onto the freeway, headed away from where our homes are.
I allow us about an hour of pure, destination-less driving before I ask the big burning question of the day. “Any idea where we’re going?”
“Nope,” says Stan.
I nod, mostly because if I really think about it, this whole trip was mostly my call, but what I really want to do is press him on this. I really, really want to say something like Well, let’s make a plan then! But Stan beats me to it.
“Probably we should have wondered about that sooner? Like before we left?”
I let out a weak snorting laugh, then find I have nothing else to say.
“But,” Stan goes on, “I figure if all this noise is about the Arctic, then we can just take 476 up through New York as far as those two let us. And we just keep going, maybe into Canada? That’s cold, and north. The Hudson Bay, maybe. I don’t know.” And then he kind of sighs, and under his breath I think I hear him say, “Shit,” and this is my cue to start dealing with other people’s feelings again.
“No, that’s good! It’s something! That’s more or less what I was thinking, but I never take 476, and that’s totally a better route. Less traffic. We do that, what you said. That’s what we’ll do. West-ish and north. It’s a plan!” But then a few minutes pass, and while I’m looking back at Callie gazing sweetly through the window, it occurs to me that Canada is a whole other country entirely, isn’t it? Quietly, I say, “Uh, don’t we need passports for Canada? Or if we don’t, won’t we at least maybe have to deal with Customs? When we cross the border?”
“Oh. Damn,” says Stan. This is rapidly turning out to not be the easy road trip romp I maybe imagined it would be earlier. “You’re right.”
The car slows down, and we grind over the rumble strip as Stan pulls over. I hear Callie fuss in the backseat, so I reach back and put my hand on her knee in a pathetic attempt to calm someone who doesn’t necessarily even understand that when someone puts their hand on your knee, it means they are trying to comfort you, and it’s polite to pretend that it’s working.
Stan pulls out his phone. He starts zooming in and out on the route he mapped out. “I don’t want to deal with New York City, so . . . how about we just get on 80, and then take that to 84 and go through New England? They’ve gotta give us some kind of clues once we start making our way up there, right? And if they don’t, then, well . . . maybe this road trip isn’t what they want after all, and no harm done?”
I smile and nod at that, though my stomach sort of falls into this sad, anxious somersault when Stan suggests that maybe this isn’t what they want from us after all. I don’t really know why—it’s not like I want to drive up into some forbidding, freezing, unknown territory with two non-lingual kids and a guy who is basically half a conversation away from being a stranger. But I still can’t shake the feeling that turning around after coming this far—even just an hour away from home—would be equivalent to giving up entirely. It would be my hard and fast proof that Callie and I were never meant to understand each other.
“We can keep checking the map as we go to see if we’re near any islands that seem like they’d be anything like their sculptures. And if we end up near the border then . . . I guess we’ll figure the rest out from there. Right?”