So Long, Chester Wheeler(82)

“It’s still controversial.”

She ignored me.

“But did I ever get to see it? No I did not. He was afraid the car would break down, he said. Maybe we’d get a flat tire, he said. Granted, it was a lot of nothing out there all those years ago, but seventy miles away is not the dark side of the moon, you know. I mean, show a little courage, am I right? Then he moves us to Buffalo but he says, ‘Don’t worry. When I retire, I’ll take you there on a plane. Business class.’ Listen to the big spender for once in his life. Business class! Seventeen years go by, he retires, and three months later he drops dead of a heart attack. Did I ever get to see Mount Rushmore?”

“No you did not,” I said.

“No I did not,” she repeated.

I hadn’t literally counted, but if I’d had to guess, I’d say she’d told me that same story somewhere between fifteen and twenty times. A word or two might have changed here or there, but I could nearly have recited it right along with her by then. I didn’t, so as not to offend her. It wasn’t her fault that she couldn’t remember what she’d already said.

My response to the story was the same as it always was. I figured if she didn’t remember telling me the story before, she wouldn’t remember my response.

“I just worry that it’ll be a disappointment to you. I mean . . . after building it up in your imagination all those years. It’s bound to be a little anticlimactic.”

“It couldn’t possibly be,” she said. “Those are famous American presidents. It’s an American tradition.”

All things she had said before.

Then she added something new.

“Patriotism meant something in my day.”

Then she paused. I glanced over to see her face fall. Her sturdiness seemed to dissolve.

“Then again,” she added, “as you so rudely pointed out, this is not my day.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings with that,” I said.

“No, no. It’s fine. You are who you are, and you’ve got a perfect right to be.”

I drove with my mouth open for a minute or so.

“Estelle,” I said when I’d gotten my words together. “Your mind is very sharp today. I’m impressed.”

“What are you so impressed about?”

“What you just said.”

“What did I just say?”

“Never mind,” I said. And I tried to keep my sigh as quiet as possible. “It’s a long trip and we don’t want to tire you out too early in the game. Maybe just put your head back and close your eyes.”

She did as I’d suggested, and I was able to drive most of the day in perfect, healing silence.



We stopped for the night at an RV park somewhere in Wisconsin. I didn’t note where, exactly, but we were on the 90 and had made it through Chicago and out the other side, and the 90 had turned decidedly north. We were between that northern turn and the place where it turned west again for a straight shot into South Dakota.

I’d been driving for over ten hours, and I was exhausted.

Unfortunately, Estelle had been sleeping sitting up in the passenger seat for most of that time, and she could not have been more wide awake.

She needed to use the toilet, but she didn’t want to use the one in the Winnebago, though she could articulate no clear reasons why not. I walked her and her oxygen tank to the women’s restroom provided by the RV park. I wanted to walk her in and help her sit down, which is legal for a caretaker, but she insisted on going in alone.

I hovered outside, wincing, waiting to hear a crash, and wondering if I’d made a dreadful mistake.

A minute later I heard the toilet flush, and she came teetering out, towing her own oxygen tank behind her.

“I didn’t wash my hands,” she said, “because I’m just about to take a shower anyway.”

She pointed to a cinder block building behind me, and I turned around to look. It was a building that housed two individual showers, requiring several dollars in quarters to get inside.

I could have told her we didn’t have quarters, but it would’ve been a lie, and I didn’t like to lie to her.

“I’d be more comfortable if you’d shower in the Winnebago.”

“I need more room.”

“I think room is just what you don’t need. You could take a fall.”

“You’ll be right outside the door. I won’t lock it. I’ll let you guard it instead. If I take a fall, I’ll call out to you. You can be there in two seconds.”

“But by then you would already have taken a fall.”

Over her head I could see the sun setting through the trees, sending shafts of dusty-looking light out between their branches. It was beautiful, and I think I was reaching for beautiful. Because this situation was making me nervous.

“I could fall in the Winnebago’s shower, too.”

“No, you couldn’t. And that’s what I like about it. It’s too small to fall down in.”

“And that’s what I don’t like about it. It’s not even big enough to fall down in. I get claustrophobia, you know.”

I thought, Now you tell me. I didn’t say it.

“Wait right here,” I said. “Lean one hand on the side of that building and don’t move a muscle. I’ll be right back.”