The Animators(55)

“I said eat it, Wonder Bread.” Mel gives her crotch a quick tug.

The kid stands. His chair clatters to the floor.

We scramble to the car and dive in. Mel swings onto the road just in time for the group to emerge in my rearview. The kid in the hat throws a rock. It hits the trunk.

“Mel,” I yell when we’re on the road.

“What.”

“Mel.”

“What, goddammit.”

All I can do is make fists and show them to her. I need to remind her of the world we are both from, where a man will hit a woman in public just as easily as he’ll open the door for her. And if that woman is dressed like a man down here, he could do worse, and get a pass for it.

“That was stupid,” I tell her. “That was really dumb.”

“You’re not wrong.” She pats her pockets with one hand. “Did she even give me my change?”

We enter Kentucky and abandon I-75 at its very center for county routes: 52 to 82 up to Clay City, then Old Kentucky 11 and beyond—from there, it is an instinct operation, me giving Mel directives from memory. We pass mammoth paintings of patchwork quilts on barns. Cattle graze beyond barbed-wire fences, ponies saunter around mossy ponds. We crank the windows down as long as we can stand it, the dampness under our arms freezing.

There’s change. On a patch of land east of Hazel Green where a fragmenting gray barn has always been is a blocky, castlelike elementary school. In the county over from Faulkner, the state road is more congested than it ought to be; we proceed to find a Lowe’s there.

The turnoff to Mom’s is just before Faulkner town limits. I direct Mel through the woods, past a large, flaking RC Cola sign by the bend, and finally up the incline into my mother’s front yard. “Pull up,” I tell her. “Keep going.”

She looks out the window and swallows. “We’re gonna fall back down the fuckin hill.”

“No, we’re not.”

“Look at it out there. We’re almost perpendicular.”

“We won’t fall,” I tell her. “I’ve gone up this mountain in cars far shittier than this one. We will not roll. I promise. Gas, Mel. Press.”

At the top of the hill, my mother watches, legs spread apart, hands on the backs of her hips. Her tennis shoes are puffy and pink. Through her T-shirt—one of those designed for older ladies, with ribbed stripes and a small bow at the collar’s center—I see a new roll of fat above where her jeans button. New wings of gray around the crown of her head, streaks of it in her ponytail, more prominent jowls. All those Christmases and Thanksgivings I was breezing in and out, those lines must have been deepening. Here in the sun, I see myself in her face.

She sees me and her hand goes to her mouth. I didn’t warn my family about my lack of hair, my thinness. Whoops.

“Whoa,” Mel says. “That’s your mom.”

“I know.”

“That’s what you look like when you get mad.”

“Thanks.”

“Where do I park?”

I gesture around. Car skeletons are strewn throughout the yard. Our family has had a long-standing devotion to the American sedan, mammoth boats whose coughing tailpipes and wheezy engines elicited cusses from the men circling their hoods. It’s a little woebegone car museum here: the Plymouth Duster, its more austere brother the Reliant K, the Pontiac Phoenix with its sloping pointer’s nose. The incidentally sexual Buick Skylark—I recall a maroon ’72 in a cousin’s backyard propped up on cinder blocks, sad and bloated like a widow. Dinosaurs, all.

“Park anywhere,” I tell her.

A new car sits in the driveway, large and humped, gleaming in the sun like the severed head of Snoopy. A PT Cruiser. There’s only one person who would buy a monstrosity like that. Sure enough, the porch door bangs open and my sister, Shauna, still in the scrubs she wears for work, steps out. She stands behind Mom, hands on her hips, watching.

Shauna was once run over by a ’77 Ford Granada. She was two years old, so tiny the build of the car missed her completely. Just sailed over her body as it dropped backward down the mountain and crashed into a ravine. I lied to Mel—if you leave a standard in neutral, it’s totally possible to fall off a mountain. I made a decision to omit that information. Those synapses must be repairing themselves like gangbusters.

We pull in behind the Cruiser. I climb out while Mel pretends to fuss with our bags, head down, weirdly shy. I hold on to the car hood to stretch out my legs, shake my ankles loose. “Hi.”

Shauna presses her hand to her mouth exactly like Mom. A tennis bracelet twinkles on her wrist. “Oh my God,” she says.

Mom bursts into tears.

“What,” I say. “What.” I hold my hands up. “I’m fine. Really. I’m okay. Look.”

Mom sobs, her hands grasping together. Her belly roll seizes.

“You look like a cancer patient,” says Shauna.

I run my hand over my head. My hair’s in a pixie cut. I thought it looked good. “Well, shit. Thanks a lot.”

“I didn’t mean it that way.”

“Yeah? How did you mean it?”

She’s silent for a beat. “I guess I did mean it.”

Mom slings her arms around me. She breathes in waves, shaking. I hug her back. For a moment, I let myself sink into being held by my mother. It’s been years since it has happened.