“Right,” I say.
“Hooray for plans,” says Stan.
Hooray for plans, I think. There’s movement in the backseat as we pull back onto the highway, and I turn to see my hand is still on Callie’s knee. I remove it, sensing for no good reason at all that she doesn’t want it there anymore.
THE HIGHWAY IS about to split. We have to make a choice.
I’m about to ask Stan which way he thinks we should go when suddenly Ted reaches up from the backseat, lurching his big arms forward. He grabs the wheel and tugs it toward 276 EAST, which will eventually head to 295 and north, bringing us onto the on-ramp headed way up there, to the vast unknown or whatever comes closest to that. Stan looks at me, and I look at Stan, and our eyes sort of shrug, and on we go.
And for the first time in my life, I feel like I’m doing something for Callie. Really doing something, not just spotting her while she negotiates the space around her, or trying to help her in the garden but really probably just getting in the way, but actually helping her find something. Something real and important and that’s for once a part of her world, not mine. I can do something, right now, for my sister, for once in my life. I catch her eyes in the rearview mirror, and she’s looking right at me, and she’s smiling.
TEN
IT’S PAST NOON. We’ve been driving north since we left my house at dawn. The last sign I remember paying attention to was for an exit toward Providence. After he got us on 95, Ted stopped reaching forward as much, so we’ve decided just to stick with it. The fact that we ended up going through New York City wasn’t exactly thrilling to Stan. And I’m not exactly thrilled—though not exactly not thrilled—about the fact that when we match Ted’s route with the moving maps on our phones, it seems to suggest that we’re headed up to Nova Scotia.
But all I notice now is that I’m hungry. I mean, I’m that kind of hungry where thinking about anything other than the fact that I’m hungry is nearly impossible. Probably we’re all hungry. There is no way I am alone in this. And come on. Of course I packed snacks. But we already ate them.
“Stan,” I say, pointing with a trembling finger at a sleek, chrome roadside diner. “Look. Oh man, look what’s coming up ahead.”
“Are you hungry?” says Stan.
I nod vigorously, because I don’t even have the energy to say, “Duh.”
“I guess I could eat,” he says, and then everyone applauds. Even the radio.
THE BEST THING about roadside diners is that they have got those large and deep booths, the kind you can hide in with your siblings who don’t respond to language and who aren’t always great at responding to new and outside stimuli. Plus, their menus usually have a lot of pictures you can just sort of point at, which is great when, again, you’re traveling with two people over whom language just washes like rain on a raincoat covered in grease.
Did I mention how hungry I am? Or that there are complimentary rolls on the table, brought to us by some kind of goddess named Betty, who smiled and said she would keep them coming? Betty the goddess takes our order, and we don’t even wait until her back is turned to pounce on the rolls and tear into them. It’s not at all pretty, it’s kind of an animals-at-the-watering-hole type of scene, but I couldn’t care less about table manners right now, because these rolls are maybe the most delicious things I’ve ever tasted.
We order chicken fingers and mozzarella sticks and French fries and cheeseburgers and grilled cheeses and a few very large salads, because Callie doesn’t go as crazy over greasy diner food as the rest of us do. After downing a few rolls each, the clouds part, and the lights shine down from heaven or the ceiling, because the food has come, and we eat.
We approach our main courses the way we approached the rolls, which is to say hungrily, and with vigor. I only slow down once I feel my hunger has been about 40 percent satiated, at which point I take a break to sip some water and look around the diner. It’s about three-quarters full. Whenever I’m with Callie, I’m always watching out for people sending dirty, confused looks our way, but the patrons here don’t seem to be all that fazed by our unusual siblings. Most of the families look like they’re on trips, which I surmise based on the way the parents seem really good at tuning out whatever frequency their kids' voices seem to exist on.