Chapter 5
If Rachel hadn’t been pregnant, it would have been overwhelmingly likely that Will would’ve found a way to wind their route through Sandusky, Ohio, so they could go to Cedar Point. Pretty ambivalent toward his home state as a whole, he would go to odd lengths to defend the greatness of the amusement park known as “the roller coaster capital of the world.” Trips to Cedar Point weren’t just a staple of his growing up, a long weekend on Lake Erie being far more affordable for his single mom than a Disney vacation, but he’d also spent the summer between his freshman and sophomore years at Michigan as an operator on the Gemini, a two-track wooden coaster dating from the late 1970s. A not insignificant part of that job involved telling riders to enjoy the rest of their day at “America’s Roller Coast” approximately 20 times an hour.
“I thought you said it was ‘the roller coaster capital of the world,’” Ali had said when they were back on campus recounting what they’d been doing over the previous three months.
“It is,” Will had replied with an unmistakable trace of reverence in his voice. “It’s both. It has two nicknames. Crazy, right? That’s how sick the coasters are.”
“Sick coasters?”
“Totally.”
“Maybe keep that to yourself when we try to talk to girls.”
Will’s love of aggressive thrill rides may have been a conversational liability when speaking to a fledgling romantic interest, but it was downright useless once that person had married you and you were trying to plan things for her to do that wouldn’t violate the restrictions imposed by pregnancy. That meant the closest Will and Rachel would get to an amusement park on this trip was driving by Six Flags Great America before they’d even crossed the Illinois-Wisconsin border. It was impossible to miss, right there off I-94, and seeing it prompted Rachel to tell a story about her and her friends going there the day after prom.
“Seth rode the Superman roller coaster like five times,” she said while opening a box of Dots, inexplicably her road trip candy of choice. “After the last one, I literally had to help him walk to a bench.”
The mystery man Rachel may (or may not) have had sex with at a concert in college was one thing. He existed almost entirely without context, which made him hard to picture and therefore easier to forget. But Seth? Will had heard a lot about Rachel’s high school boyfriend over the years, such that Seth, or the idea of him, had taken up permanent residence in Will’s mind as Rachel’s first true love and some sort of standard he’d forever be competing against.
It also didn’t help that they had run into Seth at a Cubs game a couple of years earlier, and he’d been reminded that Seth was basically a slightly older, more believable Timothée Chalamet.
“Superman,” Will said with a mirthless laugh as he changed lanes to pass a semi. “Please. I once rode the Mantis nine times in three hours. That was a standing roller coaster.”
“So you’ve told me. On multiple occasions. What was that place called again? Cedar Grove?”
“Cedar Point. Cedar Grove sounds like a cemetery.”
“Seems fitting. Given how harrowing your experience there was, I think we should be thankful you made it out alive.”
“Well, that was the day I learned to never underestimate a crotch harness. I’m actually surprised I was able to get you pregnant.”
Rachel kicked off her sandals and put her feet up on the dash, her toenails freshly painted in a purple that matched her highlight. “This baby really is lucky to have us. You’re not getting these kinds of life lessons in school.”
In reality, Will thought about that a lot—not the crotch-harness thing, because that would be strange, but generally, what kinds of lessons he, as a dad, would be entrusted with imparting. It’s not like anyone could really tell you. Take God, for instance. Will knew he wasn’t an atheist, but he also knew he and Rachel weren’t religious. So what was the right thing to teach someone else? Did you just act like you believed all the stuff that you didn’t until your kid was old enough to hear you admit you’d just been going through the motions? That didn’t seem right. But neither did offering nothing on the subject.
His excitement about becoming a dad had been tempered by questions like these ever since they’d begun talking about the potential of having children, long before Rachel had gotten pregnant. There was a part of him that knew two things could be true, that you could feel both anticipation and fear. It wasn’t unlike how he both wanted Rachel to be able to read his mind about his anxieties and was also grateful she couldn’t, because he didn’t want to burden her with them. Because he was embarrassed, maybe even ashamed by them, sometimes worrying that not knowing what to do meant he’d be no better at all this than his dad had been.
But she was doing all the work carrying that baby, not him. His job was to support her in that and wrestle with his demons on his own time. Which meant that anytime Rachel started to steer the conversation toward this or that insecurity about the day-to-day, practical realities of becoming a parent, Will pushed down his desire to voice his own worries and shifted into cheerleader mode. Wanting her to focus on the fun they were going to have on this trip only exacerbated that.
“On the subject of school,” she said once they’d crossed into Wisconsin, “have you thought about that at all?”
“You mean for our child who will think twice before ever buckling her- or himself into a nonstandard roller coaster car?”
“That’s the one.”
“Don’t we have some time?”
“Fair point.” She was quiet for a few seconds. “What about day care then? What do we even look for? Should we be looking now, or do we wait until the baby is born?”
Will had no idea and wanted to say that maybe they could ask their pediatrician. But they didn’t have one of those yet either. And there were no answers to be found out there on the open road, where it was just them and, off to their left, the Mars Cheese Castle, another I-94 landmark that looked exactly like it sounded.
“I mean, I guess it wouldn’t hurt to get started,” he said.
“Yeah. Maybe I could ask Alicia. Her boys are eight and six, but at least she did all this somewhat recently.”
Alicia was one of the writers in Rachel’s office. Rachel routinely found her exasperating—you did not want to get this woman started on the Oxford comma or her passion for her Peloton—but she did have a combined 14 more years’ experience raising kids than they did. Will was grateful to Alicia in that moment for allowing him to not have to dig too deeply into his lack of knowledge on the subject of day care—one his dad would’ve been similarly worthless on—and make it easy to feign confidence.
“See?” Will said. “We got this.”
“I don’t know if picking the brain of my so-called gluten-free coworker who was definitely eating a Panera bread bowl Thursday qualifies as us having it, but I appreciate the sentiment.” Rachel got a thoughtful look on her face. “Ooh, Panera. That sounds good. What time is our tour again?”
“One,” he said, looking down at the clock. (There hadn’t been any spots left on the two o’clock tour.) It was a few minutes before 11:00 a.m., and they were a little over half an hour away. “So we can definitely eat first.”
“Awesome. I heard they have a grilled mac and cheese sandwich now, which sounds both ridiculous and like it’s about to be the best meal of my life.” She pulled her feet back down and readjusted in her seat. “Oh—I know what I forgot to tell you. So, this Clemens house?”
“Yeah?”
“She considered it her least successful design.”
“What do you mean?”
“I sort of remembered reading about Milwaukee when I was doing my thesis research, so I looked it up last night after I got in bed. She called it the Milwaukee Mistake. Never even finished the interior. She sold it to this family who ran a funeral home there for like fifty years.”
“A funeral home?” Will asked. Erstwhile mortuary didn’t scream fun road trip. “Not quite what I was picturing when I suggested it.”
“I know, but these volunteers are working on restoring it to look like other things she was designing at the same time. I think it’s actually kind of inspiring.”
“Oh, yeah, well, that’s what I was going for.”
Rachel laughed. “Where are we staying?”
Provided they weren’t at sea, Rachel was not at all picky about accommodations. When everyone else, including Will and Ali, had been headed to beaches for spring break, she and her roommate spent a week hiking and sleeping in a tent in the Appalachian Mountains. The only reason he’d been looking at the Grand Hotel in Mackinac was because he wanted their stop there to be memorable, not because Rachel had a real thing for concierge service. But on the heels of the least-successful-design conversation, it would’ve been nice if the hotel didn’t have a number in its name.
“Uh, it’s called 3W Suites,” he said, grateful that it at least wasn’t a chain. “It’s in this neighborhood called the Third Ward, and there’s supposed to be all these awesome restaurants.”
“Sounds great.”
“Plus it’s walking distance to Summerfest.”
“Babe, you don’t have to keep selling me. I’m showered, I’m not in pajamas, and I’m not ordering something on DoorDash. With all due respect to the Week of Nothing, this has already wildly exceeded my expectations for today.”
She smiled at him, and he was about to ask her what she thought she might be in the mood for at dinner—there was an Italian place that had caught his eye, but he didn’t know if pasta was the right energy before a concert—when her phone dinged with a text from her sister. Rachel had texted Isabel and their parents that morning to tell them that she and Will were hitting the road for a week. Rachel and her mom had been planning to go shopping for baby clothes at Old Orchard on Tuesday or Wednesday, and her mom had been thrown off by the idea of this last-minute trip getting in the way of that. No fewer than three times, she’d reminded Rachel to pack her prenatal vitamins, while cautioning her not to stay out “until all hours,” a turn of phrase that prompted Rachel to mutter that she sounded like a grandma already.
Isa, as Rachel (but not their parents) called her, was just responding to that first text saying they were going on the trip.
“My sister says she’s jealous and that the last thoughtful thing Owen did for her was buy them a couples’ package for one of those sensory-deprivation tanks for Valentine’s Day.”
Will’s face wrinkled. “Odd choice. For several reasons. Including her claustrophobia.”
“Yes, it was. And you know that, but somehow her own husband doesn’t.”
“Well, comparing Owen to me really isn’t fair. It’s like saying Nicholas Sparks is no Jane Austen.”
“You’re Jane Austen here?”
“I think that’s pretty obvious.”
“Because I have to say, spur-of-the-moment”—Rachel gestured out the window just as they happened to be passing a large, indeterminate piece of roadkill next to an orange construction barrel—“maybe-not-romantic-right-this-second-but-in-general-fanciful type of getaway? It’s a little Notebook-ish.”
“How is this in any way like The Notebook?”
“It’s not. But it’s the only one I’ve seen.”
“Uh, false. You sobbed at that one with Miley Cyrus too.”
“Oh, right,” she said, looking wistful. “The Last Song. And so did you, by the way, Mr. Tough Guy.”
“Yeah, but I get emotional over everything, so it’s less embarrassing.”
“Mmm, is it?”
“Yes, it—crap.”
“What?”
“My phone,” he said. “I think it just slipped out of my pocket and fell between the console and my seat.”
“On it,” she said, reaching over and starting to fish around with her hand. He didn’t think much of it until she pulled the phone out a few seconds later and caught a glimpse of a text on the screen.
“Why is Ali asking if you came to your senses about the thing with my job?” Rachel said as she handed the phone back.
She was looking at Will with an expression that was somewhere between curious and suspicious, waiting for an explanation as to what exactly this text was referencing, and he was doing his best to keep the car out of the ditch that his brain had already metaphorically careened into.
“Oh, I ... uh ...” She’d called her job boring. Had he just been supposed to ignore that? What would she think in another year or two? “I told him about the Creative Vices thing, and how it was in LA, and that I didn’t think moving would be that big a deal but you did. He told me to listen to you.”
Will tried to assuage his guilt by telling himself it wasn’t a total lie: Ali had told him to listen to her. Will just happened to be doubling down on that and purposefully misleading his wife about the true extent of his and Ali’s conversation. And leaving out the part where he’d gone on the Creative Vices website earlier that morning and figured out [email protected] was Rochelle’s assistant, Beatriz, who was likely in charge of scheduling interviews.
His stomach churned against his will.
“This sounds a lot like work talk,” she said.
“This was last night. It was before the work-talk embargo took effect.”
“All right,” she said, unable to completely hide her skepticism. “As long as you’re not getting ideas. I still remember the look on my parents’ faces when they forced me to apply to the University of Chicago, and then I didn’t get in. I think that was their first inkling I wasn’t going to be a lawyer. Unmet expectation is that much worse when it’s thrust upon you.”
“What’s that from, the Declaration of Independence?”
Rachel laughed, but it felt ill-gotten to him since the joke was aiding in covering his tracks. He was like a magician who’d traded sleight of hand for being a shady spouse.
Still, it had worked. Because the next thing he knew, they could see the Milwaukee skyline. Soon thereafter, he was easing the car down the exit ramp into the city in pursuit of Panera and a macaroni and cheese sandwich. Rachel alternated between speculating how the sandwich would hold up when dipping it into the tomato soup she was also going to get and whether their baby would grow up to be an indie-pop fan after attending a concert in utero.
“I mean, it’s possible, right?” she asked. “Or at least not impossible?”
“No, not impossible,” Will said.
He was answering her question. And in doing so, he was also offering up a silent prayer for what the week ahead might accomplish.
See?he said telepathically to their future child. Not an atheist.