It's All Relative

Chapter 7: On the Road

Chapter 7: On the Road

When I stand at the foot of the stairs, my suitcase in hand, and call up to Caitlin because I’m ready to go, she comes bounding down with a bag slung over one shoulder, her pillow and a stuffed dog clutched to her chest. “Who’s this?” I ask, poking at the dog’s scruffy ear. She’s had that thing for years—I know, because I gave it to her when she turned six. It’s a light purple dog, well worn, with a row of safety pins holding shut the seam up its back. I’m surprised she even still has it. “You still sleep with that?”

With a meaningful look past me at Dan, she says, just loud enough for our mother in the kitchen to overhear, “I’m too young to sleep with anything else.”

“Caitlin!” Dad cries, anger in his voice. He stomps out of the living room and into the foyer to glare at us—he’s mad because my mom is still getting ready and it’s almost ten in the morning. He wanted to be on the road already. To be honest, I did, too.

Caitlin shrugs like she doesn’t know what she said wrong, then pushes through us out the door. “Do you believe her?” I ask Dan as he takes my suitcase. I keep my voice quiet so my dad won’t answer, not that I have anything to worry about there. He barely knows I’m alive.

But somehow, miraculously, he’s taken a liking to Dan. My lover heads out to the car with the suitcase and I trail behind him, one finger hooked through the belt loop on his jeans, and my dad is right behind me, catching the screen door when I let it slam shut and blinking in the early Sunday morning sun as we hurry down the porch steps to my car in the driveway. Caitlin leans against the side of the car, waiting for us, and my dad surprises us all by following us across the lawn. “You heading out soon?” he asks as I pop the trunk.

I look up at him and he’s talking to Dan, not me. Swinging the suitcase into the trunk, Dan looks up and, seeing that my dad’s waiting for him to answer, nods. “Yes, sir. Soon as we’re ready to go.” Then he gives me an amused glance that makes me turn away before my dad can see the smirk on my lips.

“Let me tell you how to get there, son,” Dad says, calling Dan son like he’s the one home for the weekend and I’m the errant boyfriend he’s brought along to show off. With another glance my way, Dan puts on his stoic soldier’s face and nods as he shuts the trunk. This is the face he wears when his CO is going on and on about something that doesn’t interest Dan in the least, but the man outranks him and he knows better than to brush him off, even when I’m in the parking lot waiting. As if the back of my car’s a huge map, Dad draws a line from the keyhole up towards the rear window. “Take 95 all the way up to D.C.—you ever been to Philly?”

“Yes, sir,” Dan answered quickly.

Dad likes that sir, I just know it. Walking around behind them, I lean over Dan’s shoulder and frown at the line drawn in the faint dust on my car. “Dad, he’s from Ohio,” I point out. Sugar Creek is in the western part of Pennsylvania, not far from the border. “He knows his way around up there.”

That earns me a hateful look from my dad, as if I’ve just interrupted him and made him lose his train of thought. Seeing that glance, Dan reaches back to me, his fingers tickling over my stomach playfully. “Shh,” he admonishes, before Dad can tell me the same thing in harsher words.

It doesn’t stop him. “Do you know how to get there, Michael?” my dad asks, the challenge thick in his voice. He hasn’t opened a beer yet—this is his usual level of meanness.

Like a chastised little boy, I reply sullenly, “I’ve been there often enough.” True, it’s been awhile, and I’ve never actually driven to Sugar Creek before, but I would swear the pathway there is carved into my heart.

We stand like two alley cats about to fight, my dad bristling and me trying hard not to pout, when Dan asks cautiously, “So you head up 95 like you’re going to Philly?” It’s directed at my dad but he looks at me as he speaks, and when I meet his gaze, there’s a hint of a smile on his lips and a gleam in his eye that says simply, Humor him.

Diffused, my dad nods and I’m forgotten again. Turning back to the car, he taps the trunk like it’s a map he’s reading and says, “Actually, you don’t go that far. Best way is to get off outside of Baltimore, 695 to 83, take that into Pennsylvania and keep to it. Past Harrisburg it turns into 322, then into 80. We’re talking country roads here, boys.” The front door opens and the three of us look up as my mom comes out onto the porch, enough bags in her hands to last an entire week. “If you wait a bit, you can follow us,” Dad murmurs. Then, as Mom struggles with the luggage, he calls out, “We’ll only be there three days, Laura. Jesus. Raymond! Help your mother. Mike—”

I don’t wait to be told—I’m already halfway across the yard when my brother peers out from the door above the garage. “I’ve got it,” I tell him. It’s obvious he has his hands full with his own bag and pillow. Three days, is that all we’ll be? What do these people need to pack?

As I take two of the bags from my mom, she gives me a tired smile. “Thanks. Do you two have pillows? You might need them.”

Pillows, no. “I can stop by the house—” I start, but she shakes her head.

“It’s okay,” she tells me. I follow her to her small Ford Escort and wait as she unlocks the trunk. “We should be one of the first to arrive. Just grab a bedroom when you get there and don’t let anyone throw you out. We might have to double up.”

I toss the bags into the trunk and frown at the thought of sharing a room with one of my relatives. Doesn’t matter who—I’m with Dan. Growing up, kids had to share rooms at Aunt Evie’s—there were so many of us, the easiest thing to do was just group the girls in one room, the boys in another. The oldest usually managed to get the bed, while the rest were left with sleeping bags and blankets on the floor, like a weeklong pajama party. The only sure way to get a room of your own was to be married—Mom and Dad were afforded some privacy, along with other couples, but I remember a few summers when Aunt Bobbie was between husbands and she had to bed down with Penny. And Ginger, one of Aunt Billy’s girls, always brought a boyfriend along, always. Once she told me it was just so she didn’t have to room with anyone else.

But I’m with Dan. Not married, no, but together in the same way Ginger was with her guy friends, and she was always given a room apart. “Mom,” I start, sure this is going to lead to an argument in the middle of the street—then what will the neighbors think? “Dan and I—”

That’s as far as she lets me get. Holding up one hand, she tells me, “I don’t want to hear it. It’s not my house, Michael. They aren’t my rules.”

No, it’s Evie’s house, she made the rules, and I don’t have to point out that she’s no longer there. Which of her sisters can possibly hope to fill her shoes? Without children of her own, she was an impartial ear whenever there was an argument, judge and jury while we were guests at her home. Who would we turn to now?

Slamming the trunk shut, Mom sighs. “I guess we’ll just see when we get there,” she says. End of discussion.

Pissed, I brush by Ray as he comes up to the car. “Mom, my stuff,” he whines because she’s already closed the trunk, and just because I’m mad and he sounds so damn childish, I kick his shin as I pass. “Hey!” he cries. “What’d I do?”

At my car, I unlock the driver’s side door to let Caitlin in. “Good hit,” she mutters as she climbs into the back seat. “You should’ve gotten him right behind the knee, though. He goes down every time.”

I don’t bother to answer her. Instead, I trail around the back of the car, where Dad is still giving Dan directions, as if he has a photographic memory and can possibly remember all this. Holding out the car keys, I interrupt, “You want to drive?”

Dan hears the anger in my voice but doesn’t comment on it. Instead, he takes the keys and gives me a small frown, one that tells me we’ll talk once we’re alone. Only we’re not alone, are we? My little sister is camped out in the back seat of my car for the next eight hours, and once we get to Evie’s, my mom’s going to do anything she can to make sure there’s someone else in the bedroom we’ll share. Knowing her, she probably already thinks she can pawn Ray off on us. He’ll lie awake in the dark and ask us stupid questions about gay s*x and blowjobs and “Are you two going to do it when I fall asleep?” God, I can almost hear him now.

On the passenger side of the car, I pull up the handle and Caitlin reaches over to unlock the door. When I slide into the seat and slam the door shut, she asks, “Do you think Aunt Jessie will be there?”

I’m not in the mood to talk. I stare out the side mirror at Dan’s reflection and tell her, “No.”

She digests that for a moment as she fiddles with her Walkman. Tinny music blares through her headphones, I can hear it from here. Then she turns the volume down a little and says, “Mom told me it was heart failure.” She means what killed Aunt Evie. I look at her in the rearview mirror and see tears shining in her eyes. “She seemed okay in August.”

“Yeah, well,” I say, my voice gruff with sudden emotion. “Sometimes things like that just happen.” Caitlin studies the Walkman in her hands and nods, her chin crumpling as she struggles not to cry. Hoping to cheer her up, I add, “Aunt Evie’s a big lady.”

That gets a smile. “Yeah, I guess,” she murmurs, wiping at her eyes. Her hand comes away streaked with black eyeliner, and she blinks quickly, dotting at her face. “f**k, this s**t stings.”

There are napkins in the glove compartment, leftover from the last time Dan and I ate from a drive-thru. I hand her one and look away—I don’t want to watch her cry. “Maybe you shouldn’t be wearing that,” I say softly. She’ll just cry it all off, it’s a waste of make-up.

“Maybe,” she concedes as she dabs at her face.

The driver’s side door opens and Dan slides in behind the wheel. I give him a bright smile that feels like plastic on my lips. “Know where we’re going?” I ask.

He buckles his seat belt and starts the car. “Mostly,” he tells me. With a glance at Caitlin, still rubbing her eyes, he leans across the gearshift and whispers, “Come here.”

I lean closer. His lips touch my mouth in a tender kiss. When I start to pull away, he stops me with a hand on the back of my neck. He stares into my eyes until I can count the tiny black lashes along his lower eyelids. “You okay?” he wants to know.

I smile again, sad. “Fine,” I assure him. “Just…” I take a deep breath—I won’t mention the room situation, not until I know for sure we won’t be able to sleep alone. Then I’ll tell him look, there’s a Super 8 over in Franklin, we’ll see everyone at the funeral. I don’t want to stay anywhere else, though. To me, Sugar Creek is Evie’s home. With a soft sigh, I say again, “I’m fine.”

He doesn’t believe me, but he doesn’t press it, either. He knows I’ll tell him when I’m ready. Putting the car into reverse, he glances at Caitlin and then smiles at me. “Are we all set?”

My stomach churns with a familiar nervousness as he backs the car out of the driveway. “You know where we’re going?” I ask again.

Dan puts the car into drive and takes my hand in his. “I’ve got it covered,” he says, giving my hand a light squeeze. He slows the car as we pass my parents. “Or do you want me to follow your dad?”

Ray is the only one in the other car—my mom is heading back into the house, my dad leans on the open driver’s side door and shouts at her to hurry the hell up. “Just go,” I murmur. There’s no reason to wait. I’m certain I can navigate the way to Aunt Evie’s in my sleep.

“Yeah, go,” Caitlin pipes up. I thought she said she wouldn’t be bothering us? “Maybe we’ll get our pick of rooms, if we get there first,” she says, talking loud over the noise in her headphones. “Mom’s all about getting someone in with you guys, you know that, right? I heard her with Penny on the phone this morning. I think Doug’s already at the house. He lives in what, Pittsburgh?”

I don’t want to think about sleeping arrangements just yet. “We’ll see when we get there,” I tell her, sounding just like my mom, I hate that.

There’s an exit for the interstate off the boulevard, not five miles from the house. Dan remembers the way through the convoluted streets of our subdivision without my having to guide him, and he takes the northbound lane headed towards D.C. For a crazy moment I think we’re going home, and Evie’s still alive, there’s still next summer to bring Dan up to Sugar Creek.

But then Caitlin’s arm snakes between us, reaching for the radio. She cranks up the volume, blaring George Michael’s latest hit, and then she starts flipping through the stations. “Hey, do you think we can get DC101 from here?” she asks. Without waiting for an answer, she settles on something by Metallica, and the volume gets turned up another few notches. “So you think they’ll stick Gordie in with you? Does he still wet the bed? Jeez, maybe you can send the kid out when you wanna get it on—”

I snap the radio off and slap her hand away. “Look,” I say, growing angry again. “You said you’d leave us alone, Caitlin. Cat.” I correct myself before she can. “Let’s get something straight here, okay? Two things. One, do not touch the radio. This is my car, Dan’s driving. We’ll listen to what we want to hear, at the volume we want to hear it. Understand?”

She flops back in the seat and crosses her arms defiantly. “Damn,” she mutters. “Got it. Two?”

“Two,” I say, turning to look at her so she knows I’m not kidding here, “no more cracks on my s*x life. Not one, you here me? I’m not discussing it with you, it’s none of your goddamn business. What Dan and I have is between us, him and me, got that?” She rolls her eyes and I feel a dull ire rise in me. How can my parents put up with this? “I’m sick and tired of comments from the peanut gallery, Cat. You want to pick on someone? Stick with Ray.”

“Ray has no s*x life,” she says. Beside me, Dan smirks. Caitlin cries out, “He doesn’t!”

Somehow I think she’s missing the point. I know at sixteen, it’s hard for her to believe that what I feel for Dan is more than just s*x—it’s the media’s fault, really, they portray gay men as s*x hungry fiends who f**k anything with a d**k. But I’m not like that. I’ve only had two lovers, Matthew when I was twenty and Dan. No one in between. Not that I didn’t date, but no one held my interest for long.

Until Dan.

He tells me I’m the only one he loves. He holds me when we make love because it’s not just intercourse to him—he wants as much of my body touching his while I move in him, he wants my breath on his skin, my lips, my hands on him. “I don’t want s*x,” he told me the first time we slept together. “It has to be love or nothing at all. I want every last bit of you, Michael. If I can’t have you completely, then I’ll wait. You’re worth waiting for.”

I’m not telling Caitlin that. Instead I just give her what I hope is a withering look, though it doesn’t seem to phase her. “Well,” I say, turning back towards the front of the car again, “I’m not going to talk to you about mine.”

“Fine,” she huffs. “Then I won’t tell you about mine, either.”

That gets a laugh from Dan, but I don’t take the bait. “Eight hours,” I mutter under my breath. I know he hears me, it’s in the way he squeezes my hand gently in commiseration. “Think you can get us there faster than that?” I ask, only half joking.

“I’ll try,” he promises. From the back seat I hear Caitlin’s music, she’s turned her headphones up as loud as they’ll go, but I pretend I don’t hear it. I wonder if I’m ready for this. I don’t think eight hours will be enough time to prepare myself for facing Sugar Creek without Evie there to welcome us.