Chapter 3 #2
“I wouldn’t call an RV luxury, but… it’s… better than I expected.” Alice searched the bathroom with narrowed eyes. She opened and closed a cabinet. “Marginally.”
“So, can we all agree I’m brilliant and this is going to be the best trip yet? A road trip to New Orleans! Think of all the fun we can have along the way!”
I’d only been on a road trip once with my parents when I was in middle school.
We’d driven around the east coast on a historical trip since my dad was a history buff.
Washington, DC, the battlefields of Virginia, the Liberty Bell.
We’d seen it all, and it had been fun to see the world passing us by.
And that had been in our little station wagon, not something of this caliber.
I hated to admit a tiny part of me thought maybe this was a good idea.
Turning the journey into part of the adventure.
“Well?” Marge prompted again, glancing at each of us.
Doris and I looked at each other first and shrugged, both giving our approval. Then we all turned to Alice and waited.
She looked around at the interior of the RV, her face unreadable as she took it all in. Then finally, she sighed. “Fine. We can do the RV.”
“Yes! Road trip, baby!” Marge pumped a fist in the air, snaked an arm around Roxie’s waist, and bent her back in a kiss.
Roxie kissed her back, and I turned to look at Tom, who still grinned madly, and shrugged. “I guess we’re going on an RV trip.”
He laughed and moved through the RV to get to me, giving me his own kiss that I felt right down to the tips of my toes.
The other spouses and my family crowded in with us for the send-off, and for a few minutes, Bertha became a full and loud motorhome as Emma got passed around and kissed approximately a hundred times by each of us before Blake finally retrieved her. Everyone filed off, Alejandro the last to go.
He held Alice for a long moment and whispered something against her temple that I didn’t hear and wasn’t meant to. She briefly pressed her face into his shoulder before straightening up and kissing him like she meant it.
“Come back to me, carino,” he said.
“I always do,” she answered.
He paused on the step, blowing her a kiss, then walked away.
Then it was just the four of us.
“So, how does this work?” I asked as Marge dropped into the driver’s seat.
“Well, I’ve got the whole route mapped out here.” She tapped the paper map taped to the dashboard.
Alice recoiled. “A paper map? We all have GPS. If we’re taking an RV, I don’t want us getting lost.”
Marge snorted. “Psht. I could get us to New Orleans with nothing but a compass and a paperclip. Trust the process, Alice.”
“Trust the process to get us all killed,” Alice mumbled under her breath.
“Do we take turns driving?” Doris asked.
“No!” we all echoed while we simultaneously spun toward her, eyes bulging wide as no doubt we each remembered our last experiences with Doris’s driving.
She frowned and crossed her arms, dropping into the chair beside the table.
“Only I’m on the insurance to drive. None of you have experience with a craft of this size. I do.”
“A craft?” I arched an eyebrow. “This isn’t a boat.”
“Well, don’t say that, because if Marge drives us off a bridge, it could be,” Alice pointed out.
We all laughed as Marge grumbled she was a good driver. Then she turned the key in the ignition. The engine rumbled back to life.
“Okay.” Marge rubbed her hands together, and I wasn’t sure if it was because they were cold or she was up to something terrifying. “Here’s the plan. We have seven days before the main Mardi Gras weekend when Alice will earn her beads.”
We all listened as Marge kept talking. “That means we’ll spend six days on the road, staying in campsites at night and driving or exploring along the way.
It’s only an eighteen-hour drive, which gives us plenty of time to stop along the way and have some fun.
No wishes from the basket this year, so we need some kind of system where we each get to pick a couple things to do. ”
“Oh, kind of like mini wishes?” I asked, the idea warming in my mind.
“Yeah, like mini wishes. We all have to do what the wish maker wants. As long as it’s on the route, roughly, we are all game. No exceptions.”
“And who gets to make the wishes?” Doris asked.
“Well, why don’t we take turns? Make it fair,” Marge said. “Since Alice’s wish is New Orleans, then that leaves the three of us. So, six days on the road, two days each for doing wishes. How does that sound?”
“Sounds fair!” Doris smiled. “Who goes first?”
“We need a captain system.” Marge pressed a finger to her chin, and then her eyes brightened. “Oh! The Viking helmet! Whoever wears this helmet is the captain and gets to pick what we’re doing and where we’re going.”
I smiled and reached over, plucking the Viking hat off Marge’s head and putting it on my own. “I can get behind that. Captain’s choice. Two days each.”
“Oh hell yeah!” Marge grinned. “And since you’re wearing it now, how about you be the first captain, Sylvie?
I’ll show you the route, and you can do your little research to see what’s along the way that you want to do, or if you see something as we go, just call out and I’ll go wherever you want.
Just… not far off the route. I’ve got the map to stick to. ”
“We have GPS if we need it.” Alice held up her phone.
“I prefer old school.” Marge patted the map. “Now, we ready, ladies? Get this impromptu Wilder Widows road trip started?”
Doris clapped.
Alice sighed.
I shrugged. “Let’s go.”
Marge grinned, then pushed a button on the radio. “Born to Be Wild” poured out of the speakers as she shifted into drive. “We’re born to be wilder, ladies! The Wilder Widows ride again! Whoo!”
“Doris, you’d better pray hard we arrive safely in New Orleans.” Alice slid into the swivel seat behind Marge. I jumped into the passenger seat and buckled myself in tight, and Doris hopped into the seat behind me.
Through the big windshield, I could see our little crowd on the sidewalk—Tom with his arm around Rachel, Blake waving, Rachel waving Emma’s tiny hand, Roxie already crying and blowing kisses.
Axel tipped his hat at Doris while she waved back, and Alejandro just smiled softly, those brown eyes shimmering, and I knew he was fighting back tears.
I couldn’t imagine how hard it was for him to let her go away for even a week during this time, but he knew we needed to be with her too.
He was a good man, and she was lucky to have him at her side for this rough patch in her life.
Marge checked her mirror, the tires squealing as she pressed the gas too hard.
“Careful!” Alice scolded. “This isn’t a freaking race, Mario Andretti!”
“Calm down. I got ’er under control.” She swerved around a pothole, and the motion sent something sliding in one of the overhead compartments. There was a thump, and Doris flinched.
“What was that?” she asked.
“Probably just stuff settling,” Marge said.
Another thump.
Doris furrowed her brow. “It’s our suitcases in the overhead storage. Are you sure they’re safe up there? I don’t want them to fall on our heads.”
“It’s fine,” Marge said. “I checked the latches myself. You can trust me.”
A third thump, and then the overhead compartment above the dining booth swung open and Doris’s suitcase—the one with the knitted cover—dropped directly onto the table in front of her with a crash that sent its contents flying.
Silence.
“So, what was that about trusting you?” Alice asked flatly.
Marge didn’t answer, instead reaching over and cranking up the radio, belting out the chorus to “Born to Be Wild” but adding “wilder” at the end instead.
We all shared a look. Then I shrugged and bellowed the “born to be wilder” chorus with her.
“Well, when in Rome,” Alice said, then sang too, and Doris joined just after.
Marge hit the horn again, which played its little melody out into the gray winter morning, and with the four of us singing our theme song, Bertha rolled on south toward New Orleans.
That was if Marge could get us there alive.