“I have to go. Bye.”
I hung up, waited for the knock that never came, and cursed myself again. I knew I should have dealt with Rita then and there, insisted that she stop with the calls, been adamant. But adamant had never been my forte. Besides, I had some guilt there. The affair had been my fault, my responsibility. I had invited lovely and lonely Rita into my crazy life then unceremoniously dumped her. I probably deserved this and more.
I peered out the peak, confirmed an empty hallway, then lay back down in bed, sifting through the grainy residue of my philandering ways. I indulged in a good ruing of my many mistakes (meeting Rita, screwing Rita), as well as an intense evaluation of my character (final analysis: I was two-parts decent guy, one-part slime bucket), while Ethan continued to quietly leaf through the magazine. I beat myself up for a while, really went at it from every angle, until spent, I pushed out of bed to go run his bath.
*
After the girls had breakfast, and after we arranged to have some of our things shipped back to New York and Wilton, we slowly caravaned to the Richmond Airport, where we dropped off two of the two rental cars.
In the parking lot, I pulled out my old-school Rand McNally to determine our route and destination for the evening.
“Fredericksburg,” I said, pointing. Mindy and Mary were uninterested in the planning process, but Karen was fully engaged. She intently studied the map, checking then rechecking it against some app on her phone.
“We should go farther; that’s too close,” she said.
“I know what he can handle, and I think Fredericksburg is as far as we can get today.”
“That’s crazy. We should get to DC, or even Baltimore. It’s only a few hours.”
“We’ll never make it,” I said.
“Yes, we can. I’ll drive with him. I’ll sit with him the whole way.”
“The whole way.”
“Yes.”
“And I won’t have to sit in the back and play games, or do the bears or pretend to make phone calls with him?”
“No. Absolutely not. I guarantee.”
“You guarantee.”
“Yes.”
“Okay, well, if you can do that, then we might be able to make it to DC.”
“Baltimore,” Karen said. “We can make Baltimore for sure.”
“We won’t make it to Baltimore.”
“Yes, we will.”
“Trust me, we won’t.”
*
Three minutes into our drive, Karen, who, as her teachers constantly reminded us, was programmed to achieve, who always thought big, who ran her first marathon after five weeks of training (Karen: “It’s just running”), who always thought she could do things other people couldn’t (note: she usually could and did), decided that the middle seat of a minivan, in the middle of a two thousand five hundred-mile road trip, was the perfect place and time to do something dozens of therapists and teachers (not to mention Mary and I) had tried and failed to do: teach Ethan Nichols to read.
“What does this spell? E-A-T.”
“Shit.”
“It doesn’t spell that, Ethan. Think now. Come on. I know you can do this. Come on, what does this spell?”
“Shut. Up. Idiot.”
“I need you to focus, Ethan. E-A—”
“Where. Stinky. Bear?”
“He’s not here. Now come on, think.”
I lowered Dolly Parton’s version of “Silent Night,” checked the mirror, and saw Karen furiously jotting down words on a yellow legal pad. Watching her, I felt a range of emotions: as always, love—she was my queen bee after all; sadness—she was supposed to be getting ready for her honeymoon; and finally irritation—she could be so goddamn stubborn.
“Hey, sweetie. He probably doesn’t want to do that.”
She kept writing. “So? You should make him do it.”
After a few minutes I glanced back again. She was still determinedly going at it with the pad and marker, hair hanging in her eyes, while Ethan picked at his nails, thoroughly uninterested. “Hey, sweetie, I appreciate what you’re doing, really do, but you might want do yourself a favor and play with the bears. He’s not really into that. But thanks for trying. You’re the best.”
She continued to assault the pad like a coach diagraming an intricate, last-second, inbounds play. “Stuffed animals won’t help him,” she said. “He needs to be challenged.”
“Teach him new fart noises then.” I smiled in the mirror.
“You treat him like he’s a child. Are you still dressing him in the morning? Are you still giving him a bath?”
I didn’t say anything but kept up with the smile.
“Dad, you need to stretch him.”
“That’s a little easier said than done, sweetie. Play with the Etch A Sketch. He likes that.”
“That’s not going to help him. You have to teach him new things, help him be more independent. You’ve given up on him.”
“I haven’t given up on him. I teach him things.”
“Like what? What’s the last thing you tried to teach him?”
“Well, let’s see. Oh, just last week, I taught him how to play the French horn. He picked it right up.”