Chapter Eight
Leanne should have paid more attention to the route.
Though they’d left just after sunrise, they didn’t pull into the Howard Johnson’s Motor Lodge until well after sunset—bone-tired, bleary-eyed, and running on fumes.
Dean’s secretary—ever efficient, never intuitive—had mapped out an itinerary that called for more than eight hundred miles on the first day.
New York to Chicago in a single shot. On paper, it looked tidy.
In reality? Utter hell.
They’d stopped once for watery coffee and a blue plate special at a truck-stop diner somewhere outside Cleveland.
The eggs had been rubbery, the toast cold, the butter like paste.
Both of their stomachs had protested ever since.
The only other sustenance came in the form of hamburgers from McDonald’s speedy-service drive-in, and Cracker Jacks and potato chips that Nora picked up at a gas station and tossed casually onto the dashboard like they’d be enough to carry them through Illinois.
They weren’t.
By the time they stumbled into the motel lobby, both dragging overstuffed suitcases behind them, Leanne felt like her bones might crack, and Nora was walking like hers already had.
“Miller,” she said to the woman behind the desk, voice hoarse.
The clerk—a woman with bright blue eyeshadow and a teased beehive—flipped through the reservation ledger, then reached behind her to pull a key, dangling from an oversize orange tag, off a wooden hook.
“Room number six,” she said, with the tone of someone who hadn’t slept in two shifts.
Leanne took the key and gave a nod of thanks.
As they turned to go, the clerk called out, “Breakfast is from seven to nine. Sharp. If you want it.”
“What’s for breakfast?” Nora asked, swaying where she stood half asleep on her feet.
The woman shrugged. “We have a wide variety. Eggs, bacon, hotcakes. A Toastee Club.”
“I’m getting all of that in the morning,” Nora said with a laugh.
They made their way to the room, walking past brightly painted orange doors under a buzzing neon strip of light.
When they reached number six, Leanne unlocked the door and stepped inside, flipping on the light, which flickered then solidified, revealing a clean room with teal curtains, matching chairs, and two beds with vibrant carroty bedspreads. A television stand was in the corner.
Leanne let out a long breath she didn’t know she’d been holding and slipped into the motel bathroom and flicked on the overhead light, which buzzed faintly yellow.
She turned on the tap and splashed cold water on her face, attempting to wash away the strain of hours on the road.
Her skin felt tight and travel-worn, like she’d been living inside the car’s upholstery.
How in the world was she going to climb behind the wheel again in the morning?
She used the toilet, dried her hands on a fresh towel, and took one last look at herself in the mirror—faded lipstick, tired eyes, and hair that had started to fall from its pins.
When she emerged, Nora was curled on the bed.
“Look, a remote!” she said, flipping channels with the black box they didn’t have at home.
“Oh my gosh, The Ed Sullivan Show!” Nora rolled onto her stomach, suddenly awake.
Her feet kicked lazily in the air, crossed at the ankles, her chin resting in her palms. She looked impossibly young—like the girl she used to be before college acceptance letters, eyeliner, and existential sighs.
Ed Sullivan introduced a comedian, his voice as energized as his wave for the audience to welcome the entertainment. The studio audience clapped on cue.
“I’m going to find a pay phone to call your dad,” Leanne said, reaching for the room key.
Nora nodded, barely looking up.
Leanne stepped out into the night and headed for the front desk.
“Where’s the pay phone?” Leanne asked the woman at the desk.
Looking up from the TV Guide she was reading, the clerk hooked her thumb over one shoulder toward a window. “Just around the side.”
“Thanks.” Leanne nodded and headed outside. The air had cooled slightly, though the pavement still radiated the day’s heat. A buzzing neon sign above the lodge cast a glow over the parking lot.
She rounded the corner, passing another family finding their way in late on the road.
The red-painted phone booth stood in a pool of light from a distant streetlamp. Leanne grabbed the handle and gave the door a tug.
Not even a budge.
“What in the world…” she muttered, tugging harder this time.
From inside came a low, guttural groan.
Leanne froze, goose bumps rising on her arms.
She stepped closer, squinting through the foggy glass. Her eyes adjusted slowly to the shadow inside. A man was lying curled on the booth floor, his knees drawn up, one hand clutching the receiver as if it were still connected to something—or someone.
“Are you okay?” she called, tapping the glass with her knuckles.
No answer.
Only another low groan.
Her pulse kicked up, sharp and sudden. She considered running back to the room, grabbing Nora, telling the motel attendant, doing something, anything.
“Jush leave me alone. Shtopp hitting me.”
The man’s slurred voice inside the phone booth was thick with alcohol and confusion. He flopped an arm against the glass, smacking his palm to the door with a dull slap that had Leanne flinching.
“I just need to make a call,” she said, teeth clenched. “Think you can step out for a minute? I’ll be quick. Promise.”
He answered with a groan and a raised middle finger, his body folding deeper into the booth’s corner like he was trying to disappear into the floor.
Leanne sighed sharply through her nose. She turned on her heel and marched back to the motel lobby.
The clerk smiled. “Did you find it?”
“Is there another phone I can use? Inside? There was someone…indisposed outside.”
The clerk wrinkled her brow. “Oh, dear me.” She bit her lip, glancing at the sign tacked on the wall that said PATRONS MUST USE PAY PHONE. “I’m not supposed to…”
“It’s fine. I’ll call my husband in the morning. But you ought to get someone to help the fellow out of the booth outside.”
“If you’re quick,” the clerk said, lifting her telephone up onto the raised part of the desk.
Leanne shook her head, too exhausted to try.
She returned to the room, her key clicking in the lock.
Inside, the glow of the television filled the dark, and Nora was exactly where she’d left her—stretched out on the bed, face lit up in the soft flicker of the black-and-white screen.
Only now instead of watching Ed Sullivan, she was watching Bewitched.
Leanne recognized it immediately. Nora was giggling as Samantha twitched her nose and made the dishes fly into the sink.
Leanne pulled her dress for the next day out of her suitcase and hung it from the doorframe, hoping gravity might handle the worst of the wrinkles.
She peeled off her stockings, changed into pajamas, and scrubbed the day off her face and dried it with the motel towel, which smelled faintly of pine and mildew.
She crawled into bed just as Samantha Stephens wiggled her nose and made a pile of dirty dishes disappear with a twinkle and a chime.
If only, Leanne thought.
If she had magical powers, she might’ve managed less stress about spotless house and dinner on a loop and instead found a hobby she could enjoy. Gotten more books from the library and spent endless hours reading.
She turned slightly to look at Nora—her daughter still giggling, her hand fishing out the last sticky caramel-covered peanut from the Cracker Jack box.
Please, Leanne thought, let her have more options than I did.
Yale was Ivy League. A degree from Yale meant job security. More choices for Nora.
Leanne hadn’t the opportunities afforded to Nora. Her education had been a secretarial course. Getting hired depended less on your skills and more on whether the man behind the desk thought you’d look good typing in heels.
Nora’s future would be completely different. Her daughter wanted to go into advertising like her father. A job that would allow her to use her creativity and receive a paycheck.
Leanne hoped her daughter would be happy.
Nora had always been creative—sketching in the margins of her notebooks, writing stories on the backs of napkins. Leanne had encouraged it when she could. But Dean? He thought it was a phase. That she needed something “practical.” A real plan.
She couldn’t blame Dean, not really.
He wanted Nora to be able to support herself—if it ever came to that.
Not that either of them believed it would.
Dean thought it was only a matter of time before Nora got married, just like Leanne had.
College was a stepping stone, not a destination.
Eventually, the degree would grow xanthic in its frame, collecting dust above the washer and dryer while Nora kept house and raised children.
Just like Eleanor. Just like Leanne.
Leanne didn’t want Nora’s fire to be dimmed by duty. Not the way hers had been. Not the way, now that she considered it, her own mother’s had as well, if, perhaps, not as obviously.
Leanne pulled the covers up to her chin and closed her eyes.
She wasn’t sure what was waiting for them in California.
She wasn’t even sure she’d recognize her mother when they found her.
My God, please let her be okay. Every stop they’d made, she’d asked if anyone had seen an older woman with a hairless dog, but all she got were quizzical looks and slowly shaking heads.
She told herself that no news was good news.
Leanne rolled away from the flickering television and stared at the wall, her eyes settling on a hairline crack in the wallpaper. A narrow little fissure that begged to be scratched with a fingernail. Peeled back. Exposed.
She had the sudden urge to do it.
To tear it down.
To see what was underneath.
Because the real question wasn’t about Dean or the job market or how many female undergrads Yale had finally agreed to admit.
The real question, the one whispering at the back of her mind, was why shouldn’t Nora get to do what she wanted?
Why shouldn’t she have a career and a life of her own choosing? Why shouldn’t she skip the housewife part entirely if she wanted to? If she could?
She thought about the road trip. About what it meant—not just miles logged in a Lincoln Continental but the space it created. For conversation. For discomfort. For possibility. They were unraveling, bit by bit, the old stitched-together assumptions of their lives.
All while pursuing Eleanor Bell Strickland, the runaway grandmother.
Something had cracked in Eleanor too—made her pack a bag and walk away from everything she’d known with little clue as to where she’d gone.
Was it the dementia? Or was it something bigger.
Something truer?
The last flickers of lucidity? Or the first real act of clarity her mother had made in decades?
Leanne stared again at the crack in the wallpaper.
And wondered how many of them it would take to finally peel everything back.