The Drive
the drive
As if the drive on crowded Route 3 from Boston to the Cape wasn’t enough of a challenge, most of the way down Miranda, almost seventeen and dramatically in love, begged, pleaded, and wept real tears because Blythe, forty-five and feeling every minute of it, refused to agree that Miranda’s boyfriend, Brooks, seventeen and too handsome for his own good, could sleep with her in her bed in their Nantucket summer house.
“Mom.” As the oldest child, Miranda got to sit in the front passenger seat of the Honda Odyssey, the best spot for irritating the driver. The other three children were playing games on their phones or reading.
“We’ve already talked about this, Miranda.”
Miranda argued, “Mom, if we want to have sex, we can do it anywhere, on the beach, in the bushes, anywhere !”
Blythe stayed firm. “I’m thinking of your brother and sisters. I don’t want them—”
“My brother and sisters know more about what Brooks and I do than you ever will!” When Blythe didn’t respond, Miranda said, “ Dad would let Brooks sleep in the guest room! No! Wait! Dad would let Brooks sleep with me ! In my bed! With the door open! Everyone does that now.”
They’d had arguments before about what their dad would let them do, and Blythe had always restrained herself from pointing out that Bob, forty-six with male-pattern baldness, and his girlfriend, Teri, thirty and pretty and sweet, lived in a condo with only two bedrooms, and one was set up as an office. When the four children spent the night with their father, two of them slept on the pullout sofa in the living room. The other two were given sleeping bags to use on the floor. Bob told the kids that someday he’d buy another house with rooms for all the children.
Now Blythe said calmly, “It doesn’t matter to me what other parents do. I have my own standards.”
Miranda took a deep breath. “Mom, please. You don’t understand. We’re really, truly in love with each other. We’re bonded to each other. It’s not just sex. It’s a profound connection. Brooks will be my partner for all my life. I’ll be his. I love him, Mommy. I trust him with my heart.”
Oh, how easy it would be to give in! Blythe reminded herself that Miranda looked like an adult, but she was still a teenager, driven by immense emotions. Blythe vividly remembered those emotions and their power. But Miranda, her beautiful, bright child, had often in her life overreacted to situations. This was this hardest part of parenting—saying no, because Blythe really was older and wiser and the one who made the rules, and rules kept children safe.
Drawing on whatever inner resources she had left in her battered mental parental suitcase of values, Blythe said quietly, “If this arrangement doesn’t work for you, we can send Brooks right back to Boston the moment he arrives.”
“You wouldn’t,” Miranda said.
Blythe said, “I won’t change my mind. Now let me focus on the traffic.”
Miranda huffed, but finally put on her earphones and sank back into her seat.
Blythe gripped the steering wheel harder and concentrated on the six lanes of traffic speeding down Route 3. The truck behind her was tailgating her, its grille looming in her rearview window. The guy was apparently trying to make her drive faster, but if she did, she’d smash right into the Volvo in front of her.
Not for the first time, she wondered why automobiles didn’t come with buttons on the dashboard that would activate flashing neon signs on the back of cars.
Stop tailgating or I’ll go even slower.
If she had the time, Blythe thought she’d invent that device. Only it wouldn’t be so polite.
Back off, asshole.
The Volvo in front of her sped onto an exit ramp and Blythe pressed her foot on the accelerator.
The high metal arch of the Sagamore Bridge over the canal came into view. They rattled over it, went around the rotary to Route 6, and were on Cape Cod. As always, everyone in the minivan cheered. They were closer and closer to their summer vacation. Three months of sunshine and fun time.
But Blythe’s thoughts kept flipping back to the moment two days ago when she saw Teri kissing the man who wasn’t Bob. Blythe kept wondering who the man was and if there was an innocent explanation for the kiss. She knew Teri had a brother, but not even the most adoring brother would kiss his sister the way that man had kissed Teri. Maybe, Blythe thought, it had been an old boyfriend. Blythe could absolutely imagine an old boyfriend kissing Teri that passionately. She and Jill had frozen in place, whispering about what to do. Should they walk right up to the couple? Blythe could say, coolly, “Hello, Teri.” But that could have shattering consequences. Blythe didn’t want Bob and Teri to break up, not now when her children were more or less settled in their new family structure. She didn’t want Teri, who was gorgeous and giddy but also kind, to leave Bob and the children.
And what about Bob? He was suave and confident, brilliant even, at law. But the more successful he became, the more he needed a woman at home to lean on, to adore him, to support him. Teri seemed to be perfect for Bob—but was he perfect for her? That kiss with another man had Blythe worried.
But what could she do about it? What should she do?
While Blythe and Jill had whispered, Teri and the man had pulled apart and walked away together, out of Blythe’s sight.
She wrenched her thoughts back to the present when she glimpsed the exit to Hyannis. She turned onto the congested two-lane road. They crept along Route 132, past hotels and malls and cafés, while the kids yelled out familiar names.
“ Dunkin’! ” Holly, eleven and still sweet, shouted.
“ Tiki Port! ” Teddy, thirteen and growing hair on his legs, hollered. One of the highlights of his life had happened when he was five and the family stopped to eat at the Chinese/Polynesian restaurant. He’d ordered a sugary non-alcoholic drink that was served in a mug shaped like a carving of a frightening god that he got to take home. He still had it on a shelf in his bedroom.
Daphne, fifteen and so over her family, said nothing, but glancing in the rearview mirror, Blythe noticed that her second daughter had stopped reading and was now staring out the window as they approached the Hyannis harbor.
Blythe’s pulse quickened. They turned right, left, right, and entered the Steamship Authority’s parking lot. Blythe showed her boarding pass and was waved into the line of vehicles headed up the metal ramp and into the giant hold of the steamship’s car ferry. Following behind a large UPS truck, Blythe obeyed the deckhand’s signals to park in the far-right lane. As soon as she turned off her engine, the four children jumped out and raced up to the passenger deck, ready to watch the steamship’s engines froth the blue water into white foam as the ship slowly moved away from shore.
For a moment, Blythe remained in the car, relaxing against the car seat. She was troubled by a sense that she’d forgotten something, because it sometimes happened that she had forgotten something. But today, for the two hours and fifteen minutes it took to pass over Nantucket Sound to the island, she would give herself a break.
Blythe left the car, climbed the stairs to the passenger deck, did a quick tour to check on her children, bought herself a cup of coffee, and went out to lean against the railing and watch the sun flashing silver coins on the water. Teddy and Holly were already there, watching ducks and gulls bob and soar. Daphne was in the stern cabin, reading a book. Miranda was in the bow cabin, tapping on her phone.
Once they were well underway, Blythe went inside the cabin on the top passenger deck and settled in a booth. The morning had been exhausting, even though everyone had packed their luggage last night. The kids had been excited and crazy, squabbling and making terrible jokes. Of course, once they were all buckled in with the house locked up, Holly decided she had to go to the bathroom right now even though ten minutes before, when Blythe asked them if they had to pee, they all had said no. Blythe had to undo her seatbelt, unlock the front door, and stand patiently for her youngest daughter. But still, they’d made it in time.
It was always an emotional journey, traveling to Nantucket to live for almost three months. It felt symbolic, significant. It had been hardest three years ago, when Blythe and Bob were first divorced. Blythe had had to make the trip without the children’s father and they all sensed a hollowness around them. The children were accustomed to it now. They had moved on. The school year had passed without problems and now they were on their way to Nantucket. Their beloved grandmother, Bob’s mother, Celeste, lived there and still, thank God, loved Blythe. If anything, since the divorce, Celeste seemed to love Blythe more.
Blythe closed her eyes. Memories of her own youth, when she loved a man as much as Miranda loved Brooks, flooded her senses. The slight rocking motion of the ferry and the knowledge that someone else was in charge of their safety allowed Blythe to dream…and remember.