All That's Left to Tell(39)

“Wow. Can’t see a damn thing,” she said.

Out of the hot sun, the tunnel cooled the inside of the cab and filled it with exhaust fumes, and they both rolled up their windows. When they emerged, Genevieve was squinting in the bright light.

“Nice while it lasted,” Claire said, and cracked the window again. The bluffs and rocks along the highway were dramatic, but bled of color in the middle of the day.

“Getting closer to getting there, aren’t we?” said Genevieve.

“Still a long way yet.”

“Nebraska will seem closer. Flat. More like home for you.”

“I guess that’s true. It was my home for a while.”

“It’s funny. You leave on a trip like this only with your destination in mind, and only thinking about getting there, and what it will be like, and then along the way you start enjoying the road, and you wish you had another day or two of solitude with nothing to do but drive.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” Claire said. She had made it through the morning mostly without thinking of her mother and father.

“You think I’m being impulsive?” Genevieve asked. “Moving to Chicago like this with a guy I haven’t seen in a year?”

“I don’t know. It’s not like you’re trailing a moving truck behind you. It’d be pretty easy to change your mind.”

“He’s lonely,” she said. “All those people in Chicago to remind him.”

“Seems like all those people would make it a little less lonely.”

Genevieve looked at her and smiled.

“Maybe,” she said. “But not when he stops to watch couples walking along the lakeshore holding hands.” She still hadn’t rolled her window all the way back down, and she leaned her head against the glass pane. “I wonder,” she said. “The guy back at the campsite. He was kind of lonely, too.”

“I don’t know about that, Genevieve.”

“No, seriously. I have some sympathy for him now. Going down to the lake every morning. Floating on the water like that. Wanting to feel buoyant, like he said. I think he meant boy-ant. B-o-y. Like he felt when he was a boy.”

“That doesn’t make him lonely.”

“No, I know. I bet if two women pulled into his little campground tonight, and slept in the bed of their truck, he’d walk over and then do the same thing. Maybe loneliness becomes something else once night falls. Or after you’ve been lonely for a long time.”

“I don’t know, Genevieve. He seemed a little creepy.”

“Maybe he was a little desperate,” she said.

“You can be both.”

“I’m not trying to excuse him. I’m trying to explain him. Loneliness can be a pathology.”

“All right, Professor.” Claire realized Genevieve had two ways of speaking—one when she talked about herself, and another when she talked about others. But Genevieve smiled at this, took her head from the glass pane, and rolled down the window. She sat up straight.

“But it wasn’t that kind of loneliness for your father, I don’t think.”

“Genevieve, we don’t need to—”

“It’s a long drive,” she interrupted.

Claire tightened her hands on the steering wheel. They were passing a small lake where a deer was wading among the reeds in the water, and Claire glanced over as it lifted its head.

“Okay. All right.”

“Do you think it’s different, falling in love when you’re older?”

“It was different when I fell in love with Jack.”

“I don’t mean that. You’re still young. Your dad’s over sixty. He falls in love with a woman he meets in the supermarket.”

“That’s certainly romantic.”

“It’s because he isn’t looking, Claire. He only goes there once every two weeks because he doesn’t need much. And on the lake where he lives is a little store that sells bait, some lettuce and tomatoes in the summer months, and some canned goods. More expensive, but he feels a loyalty to the old man or the local kids he hires who are usually behind the cash register. The woman at the supermarket is standing in the self-checkout lane, and he is waiting to go next, since he always checks his own groceries through because of his impatience with the cashiers and baggers who sometimes chat distractedly while scanning things.”

“I remember that about him,” Claire said. “His impatience.”

“Is that right?” Genevieve said, and smiled. She sat back and let the wind through the car windows blow the hair away from her long neck. Claire already felt completely pulled in.

“She is staring at the checkout computer, holding a plastic bag of yellow delicious apples in her hand, trying to figure out how to scan it through. She’s aware of your father’s impatience, and smiles apologetically at him, and she tells him that she never buys apples, she just needs something that reminds her of summer. She’s wearing a full-length wool coat, since it’s a cold February in a cold winter, and she is pretty, maybe a few years younger than he is, her eyes made up, her hair cut short but over her collar, her earrings silver, catching light as they dangle alongside her neck. He tells her you have to punch in the code, that it’s on the little stickers. 4-0-2-0. ‘What, are you the store manager or something?’ she says, smiling. He laughs lightly at this and tells her, ‘I’ve been through this checkout line a few times.’”