“She was one of the first ones here, wasn’t she?” Thomas heard himself continue. “She came with Root.” He hoped that this might indicate a respect for their mythology, that he had not arrived to beg without understanding what they risked by giving, but the mention of the lean man in the forty-year-old photographs made them lower their heads.
“I’ll take you to see Song,” said the one Thomas now understood to be the eldest, “but after, it will be time for you to go.” He rose without checking to see whether Thomas was following, used a careful thumb and forefinger to open the door. Thomas, who hoped to express some thanks, stood to speak, but their heads were pressed into their laps, and their long hair in grays and browns ran over their ears and onto the dusty hardwood. The man he was meant to follow was already outside, and the day was already losing its downy heat.
EDWARD AND CLAUDIA took turns at the wheel, slipping in and out of the driver’s seat without much discussion: he could tell by the change in her breathing, low and shallow, when she’d grown tired, and she knew when he became quiet, no longer mocked billboards and bumper stickers. Paulie alternately napped and enthused, woke into excitement and wore it out again. He resembled a maladroitly assembled angel under the staticky corona of hair that encircled him, and he glowed with the dew of sleep in the refracted sun. As he drooled on the bright blue sweatshirt pressed against the window as a pillow, Claudia periodically looked over and gave thanks for the temporary quiet. It was as though every time he regained consciousness, he remembered not only their destination and the much-anticipated dance of the fireflies, but also every moment in his life that had amused or satisfied him, every song and birthday and windless afternoon.
First his unnaturally long eyelashes fluttered, then his eyelids snapped up like blinds. His slack fingers twitched, then all straightened at once, like something being turned on, and clapped his face. “Oh my god!” yelled Paulie, so loud that Edward jammed his index fingers into his hairy eardrums. “We’re getting there, aren’t we!”
In Edward’s few moments alone—pissing in increasingly squalid gas station bathrooms, the rare occasion of focused thought made possible when both Claudia and Paulie had fallen asleep, on stretches of highway shoulder where they stopped occasionally to move their legs and establish some distance from one another—he admitted to feeling a little worried. Claudia looked towards her brother with a fierce adoration, yes, but she also assaulted the gas pedal with the unyielding force of a waterfall, she also seemed unconcerned with the existing flow of cars when merging onto the freeway. He had stopped suggesting she glance over her shoulder, which only made her driving more aggressive.
For the first three or four hours of the trip, her cell phone had rung and shaken at a near-constant rate. She had turned up the stereo and sung louder to Sticky Fingers, she had insisted on an inane car game in which one alphabetically listed the fictitious people they knew. Paulie had strained to remember: “At the party, I saw Aranda . . . Bernard . . . Caligula . . . Dan . . . Eloise.” Finally, without fanfare, she had turned off the phone and let it slide down her glistening palm, past her chipped blue fingernails, and onto the freeway.
Edward mentioned it later, at a cinder-block marriage of a Subway-KFC-ARCO where eleven-year-olds congregated to suck down cigarettes and a voice bleated over damaged speakers when a rented shower became available.
“What were you thinking? Just get rid of your phone? Think that was whimsical? What if mine was stolen! What if—”
He realized his mother and the anxiety he had inherited were glinting in his grating tone, and he recalibrated his voice. “Claude,” he said, unsure of when he had adopted the shortened version of her name, but certain some milestone of intimacy had been stomped over. “Wanna tell me why you’re acting like the entirety of Thelma and Louise sped up and played on loop? Mid-Life Crisis: The Musical? Should we do some screaming in headscarves, cut off our hair, prank call our exes? Is that it?”
Paulie slumped against the passenger window of the car, exhausted after singing to Jagger’s yowl, and they could see him napping from where they sat. Claudia brushed some crumbs of fried chicken off the table’s oily surface, folded her hands on the plasticked red, and put her head down and started to cry.
“I just want to have this. Can I just have it? Will you just let me have it?” She bolted upright again, and her fingers were straight and quick as knives as she passed them across her wet face.