The Wangs vs. the World(47)

二十一

El Paso, TX





1,038 Miles


GRACE POINTED her foot and dipped a toe in the acid-green pool. The water was hot. The night air smelled like gasoline and burnt sagebrush. All around them the flat desert streets lay still; just out of reach, a cicada spun itself in circles, drowning.

“We should rescue it,” said Andrew, not moving.

“It’ll just die later.”

“Still.”

“‘Someone has to die in order that the rest of us should value life more.’”

“What?”

“It’s Virginia Woolf.” She tipped the little airplane bottle of Jack Daniel’s to her lips, waiting for the last drops to drain out as she stared at the striped roof of the Whataburger across the street. The layered Ws of the sign looked like a Missoni-ish chevron pattern. Maybe she could start a website that found fashion influences in fast food places. She’d name it Couture Road Trip. Or Couture by Car. And then some designer would call her his muse and make a pattern out of Whataburger signs and then she’d be famous and could do a shoe collaboration and wouldn’t need to inherit any money anyway.

Because she probably wasn’t going to. Somewhere between driving away from Kathy’s house in Ama’s car like a family of thieves—her stolen laptop banging against her knees in the backseat, the U-Haul filled with lifted merchandise rumbling along behind them—and walking in on Andrew playing with himself, Grace had admitted that she was lying to herself. There was no show, no party. Instead, this was the end. It couldn’t be, but maybe it was.

Checking into this crappy Texas motel had somehow clinched it. They had gone up to the room, the four of them, standing still as the hollow door creaked shut. Barbra had taken out a handkerchief and used it to pull aside the plastic-backed drapes and then their father had looked at the two queen beds, and said, “One for boys, one for girls?” She and Andrew had been horrified. What did he think would happen if they shared a bed? Grace had looked at Andrew, who nodded at her, and said, “You guys take your own bed. We’re going to go out to the pool.” Andrew grabbed his backpack and one of the key cards, and they ran out, leaving the grown-ups to figure it out for themselves. A narrow escape.



“Gracie, do you think they’re asleep yet?”

“What if they’re having sex?”

“Oh god, why would you say that? Brain! Burning!”

“Does it really gross you out that much? It’s just sex.”

“Yeah, but it’s Dad and Babs! I don’t want to picture them all naked and saggy on a motel bed!”

“I don’t know . . . it kind of doesn’t gross me out. I can picture pretty much anyone doing it without getting grossed out.”

“But your own father!”

“I know! Logically, it’s gross, but when I picture it, it’s like picturing someone eating or something. You know, just like a normal, everyday thing.”

“That you do with someone else. Naked.”

“Yeah . . .”

“And sweaty.”

“Eew! Okay, now it’s gross!”

“Thank god, I was starting to think you were some kind of perv.”

Grace waggled her eyebrows at him. “I could picture you and some lovely young coed.”

“Grace, stop it! Seriously! Maybe I’m too innocent to share a bed with you after all!”

“Oh, I blur out all the private parts in my mind.”

“God, I can’t even picture me having sex.”

“What do you mean?”

“I just can’t. I mean I can, I do picture it, but then I kind of can’t, you know?”

“Wait, have you not?”

“You have?”

“Well, yeah. But what about you and Eunice? I just thought for sure . . .”

“You know how religious she was.”

Grace shrugged. “I haven’t seen that matter much with other people.”

“Wait, you’re kind of skipping over the more important revelation here.”

“Andrew, I’m sixteen! It’s not a big deal. You just think it’s a big deal because I’m your little sister.”

Andrew looked at her for a second the way some other guy might. She was pretty, of course. When she was a kid, she’d looked like a doll, with her pink cheeks and rosy little lips. But now, though Andrew hated to even think it, little Gracie was kind of sexy. Oh god. She was. He knew that guys liked Saina, but that was different. She was his older sister, which meant that she was always part of a vague, adult world that swirled just slightly above his head, alluring and unreachable. Even when he’d hit sixteen, and then eighteen, and now twenty-one, all the ages that had seemed so wise and fun when Saina occupied them, it felt as if he were failing to tap into all the adventure those years promised. Road trips! Cigarettes! Drunken adventures! Saina had done all that with abandon, and now Grace seemed to be following her easy lead in a way he’d somehow talked himself out of doing.

“Hey, big brother,” Grace singsonged, “are you ruined forever? Have I blown your mind by admitting that I’ve blown other things?”

“Oh my god, Grace! Stop it!”

“Okay, okay! I’m sorry, that was too much—I just kind of couldn’t resist. C’mon, it was a good joke, right? Like, from a professional standpoint?”