The Last of the Stanfields(99)
“So? Where to?” I asked.
“Back where it all started, at least for me. Something we would have tried from the start, had I been more persistent.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means we’re going to my mother’s nursing home. She does have little windows of lucidity—always brief, and extremely rare. But hey, you’ve had some wild luck so far. Maybe some of it can rub off on me. I don’t expect you to come along. If you don’t, I’ll totally understand. Especially considering everything I said earlier.”
“So . . . that whole diatribe was just your way of telling me you want to introduce me to your mum?” I sighed. “All you had to do was ask. Getting to meet my mother’s long-lost love? I wouldn’t miss it for the world!”
George-Harrison gaped back at me, trying to figure out if I was messing with him. I responded with a look that said pretty clearly, Yes, you dummy.
“Well, we’ve got a solid ten-hour drive ahead of us, so you’d better make yourself comfortable,” he grumbled. “Or rather, try to make yourself comfortable. Lord knows, in this pickup, it ain’t easy.”
We left Maryland and crossed through New Jersey. As we passed the outer limits of New York, the Manhattan skyline came into view in the distance. I couldn’t help but think that one of those buildings had an apartment with a view of Central Park, where my grandparents, two strangers I would never know, once lived.
The whirlwind of the city soon gave way to the forests of Connecticut. The branches of the white oak trees were already bare, but it didn’t make the landscape any less stunning. After merging onto a new expressway at Westport, we stopped at a little place for lunch right on the banks of the Saugatuck, where the river rises at high tide with water from the ocean. The geese meandering by the gentle banks of the river had already flown away by the time we finished our meal. Their squadron formed a large V in the sky, pointing south.
“Those guys come from back near where I live,” George-Harrison remarked. “Good old Canada geese. When I was a kid, my mother told me that when the geese leave, snow falls from their feathers . . . then they splash into the waters of the southern hemisphere and turn it blue, swallowing liters of it and coming back our way to paint everything in spring colors. It wasn’t total make-believe; every year when they take off, you know winter is on its way, and then they come back and bring the nice weather with them.”
I looked to the sky at the geese shrinking smaller and smaller in the distance, until they were little more than tiny specks that soon disappeared altogether. I wanted to fly away with them and touch the soft sand on a southern beach, where I could turn off my racing thoughts and bask in the warm glow of the sun.
After filling up somewhere in Massachusetts, George-Harrison asked if I would take a turn behind the wheel.
“Do you know how to drive?”
“Yes. Mind you, back home we drive on the left.”
“Well, on the highway it shouldn’t make that big of a difference. I’ve got to take a short break or I’ll fall asleep. It’d be a lot safer if we took turns. We’ve still got a ways to go, after all. We’re only halfway.”
It wasn’t until we crossed over into Vermont that he finally drifted off to sleep. I glanced over at him from time to time as he slept, still keeping an eye on the road. He looked so peaceful. It made me wonder how he managed to stay calm the way he did. That kind of stillness had always eluded me; I needed to be in motion nonstop. I had such a hard time with silence that I sometimes found myself talking just to fill the space. And yet, I no longer felt that need when I was with George-Harrison. It was as if his calm was rubbing off on me. His mere presence made me want to embrace the silence head-on.
We passed by a town called Glover, and I felt a small pang of sadness at the sight. An English art dealer so humble he wanted his name to disappear with him? Imagine how he would have reacted, seeing a whole town bearing his name!
I found that I quite enjoyed driving the pickup. The steering was tough to handle, but the low hum and purr of the engine made me feel like I was in control. And—unlike Dad’s Austin, which nearly scraped the tarmac—the truck was high up off the ground. I checked my reflection in the rearview mirror, smiling at myself like an idiot in the silent car. At least, for once, I didn’t look all that bad. Maybe life was nice up in the True North. Vast lakes, endless forests, open spaces, wild animals—somehow, everything seemed so wholesome up here. Once more, I could hear Maggie’s voice telling me that I watched too much TV.
The last remnants of daylight burst out over a mackerel sky. Night was on its way, the treetops darkening as we climbed further north. I opened the window and filled my lungs with air so pure and fresh it was intoxicating. As I fumbled to turn on the headlights, George-Harrison reached out and hit the switch on the dashboard without even opening his eyes.
“You’re not too tired?” he asked, groaning as he woke up.
“I think I could go all night. I’m really enjoying myself.”
“Luckily, we don’t have that far to go. Won’t be long before the Canadian border. We can cross over just after Stanstead. At this time of night, there shouldn’t be much of a wait. Once we’re in Canada, we have less than an hour to go.”
The officers at the border checked our passports. We had nothing to declare at customs, and my backpack interested them even less than George-Harrison’s little suitcase. Two passport stamps later, we had crossed over into Quebec. George-Harrison directed me onward, glancing quickly at the clock on the dashboard.