“U!… S!…” Ethan cried from the back.
Mindy and I both reflexively yelled, “A!”
Mindy opened her paper. “Okay, I’ll go, but I don’t want to spend the whole trip talking about Karen and Roger, okay? I’ve been hearing about this wedding for six months. It’s off, so I don’t need to hear about it anymore. If you want me to come along now, then that’s the one condition, okay? Is that a deal?”
“She’s your sister. You should show some compassion.”
“Deal?”
I was disappointed in her offer. But since we had a long drive ahead of us and since I was confident that the conversation would inevitably head back toward Karen, I agreed. “All right, fine, deal. But you need to change your attitude when it comes to your sister. She loves you.” I glanced in the mirror, checked to see if Ethan was buckled, pulled out of the parking lot, and passed by the huge ball in front of the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame.
“Hoops!”
Mindy looked up at the ball. “What the fuck?”
“Okay, now it’s my turn to make a deal. Stop saying that word, okay? I don’t want Ethan picking it up. That’s the last thing I need, him walking around saying that. He’ll say it hundred times a day. No more f-bomb. Deal?”
“I don’t know what the big deal about that word is.”
“Deal?”
“Okay, fine,” she mumbled.
I merged onto the interstate, and we drove in silence. Traffic was predictably light; it was midmorning, and no one was heading east toward the mountains. I stepped on the gas, determined to make time.
“So,” I said after a while.
“So.”
“How’d you sleep?”
Mindy, head in the paper, shrugged, so I shrugged back.
“Where. Mom. Be?”
“She’s with Karen,” I said. “Your poor, oldest sister, Karen.”
Mindy took another large slug of coffee, said nothing.
I made tracks, hanging in the left lane, passing anything that moved, and waited for Mindy’s morphine, the coffee, to kick in. After a few minutes, and after a few more slugs, I deemed her properly medicated and made another run at conversation.
“What are you reading?”
Mindy’s eyes remained on the paper. “What?”
“The paper. You’re engrossed. What’s so interesting?”
“Nothing. This study.”
“What study?”
“About fat people. It says that four percent of Americans are morbidly obese.”
“Oh, well, that’s interesting.”
“Morbidly obese,” Mindy said. “That’s a really weird description, morbidly obese. I mean, what’s with the morbidly? Do we really need to distinguish between obese and morbidly obese?”
I didn’t say anything.
“Do you think obese people make fun of morbidly obese people, go around saying, ‘Hey, at least I’m not morbidly obese.’ Or do you think morbidly obese people walk around saying, ‘God, if I could just become obese, I could fit into those jeans!’”
I laughed a little. “Good point.”
Mindy finally looked up from her paper, and I noticed that in the very top of her left ear, she was sporting a tiny gold stud. More evidence of her growing celebrity stature. My heart sank. Earlier in the year, a prominent entertainment Web site had done a “rising star” feature on her, and she had also recently been on a late-night talk show. I had been detecting signs of a swollen head ever since. I didn’t want to lose my little buddy to stardom, gossip magazines, tattoos, heavy drug use. I decided that her bright red high-tops also were a bit showy. I changed lanes and made a silent vow to somehow keep her grounded, remind her that she was the president of the math club in high school, used to have hamsters as pets.
“So this is Tennessee,” she said.
“Yep. The South.”
“Looks like the North to me.”
“It’s not. People are different.”
“What, you’ve made a lot of friends?”
“Nice. Outside,” Ethan said.
“Very nice,” Mindy said. She returned to her paper.
“Hot. Out.”
“Not too bad,” I said.
I passed a semi with Georgia plates, hauling a load of lumber, then flicked on the radio and found a country music station, which I thought appropriate.
“Off!” Ethan yelled after he realized it wasn’t Merle Haggard singing “Silent Night.”
“So, is Will Ferrell a nice guy?”
“What?”
“Will Ferrell, the actor.”
“Why are you asking about him?”
“Just trying to keep the conversation going. I’ve been alone a long time.”
“You’ve been with Ethan.”
“He’s not exactly Larry King, okay?”
She folded her paper and tucked it between the armrest and her seat. “Yeah, he’s okay. Has kind of a big head.”
I glanced at her. “Staying grounded must be hard when you’re a big star. But’s it’s important.”
“No, I mean, literally. He has a big head. Like, physically. When you’re working close to him, it kind of throws you off; it’s like this big thing, staring down at you. But he’s okay. Pretty funny.”
“Oh.” I drove another minute. “Is he married?”