tree, reaching up. He was trying so hard not to look nervous over the steering wheel.
‘’That’s a thought,” I said, which made George turn around in the seat and stare at me. Ever since he could talk, he’d driven me nearly to the end of myself with questions, and usually at the worst times. The year before I had written him a poem that, every once in a while, I’d recite, when my batteries were running low.
You are three, George.
And all day have queried me
with the intensity of Socrates.
And you know what happened to him.
The first time he’d answered: “I don’t know Socrates. He live in Palm Key?”
Quickly and without thought, as though George was fifty years old and sitting at my right hand in Hell as my punishment, I had thrown back: “Keep it up, and you’ll find out.” Which meant that immediately afterward, I bought him two packages of Oreos out of a vending machine, along with three packages of gum, which, when they ended up stuck to the living-room rug, I cleaned up without a bit of complaint.
But now I was brought back to thinking about the road and to what Drew was about to do to us. I screamed: “Slow down, Drew! Slow down! You don’t have to kiss his bumper!” Drew was gripping the wheel, his knuckles like clamps. “I don’t want to look like a wuss,” he said. “You’re not a wuss,” I said. “Yes, he is a wuss, “ George looked at Drew. “Pass him, Drew. Pass the old fart.”
For three weeks, George had latched onto the word fart with the same sort of attachment he had given to his pacifier. I had, with great calm, explained to him that it was not a word adults liked hearing little children use. That didn’t do it. I had, without calm, told him that if I heard him say it again, I would give him Time Out in his room and no cookies for a week. That didn’t do it.
Every time I brought attention to his using it only seemed to make it more attractive to him. It was a word I had decided I was going to have to just wait out. And meanwhile keep him out of public as much as I could.
“Why do the license plates have different colors?” George pointed in front, then whirled around and pointed in back.
“They’re from different places,” I said.
“Why are they from different places?”
“Because they have jobs there.”
“Who got them the jobs?”
“Socrates. “
‘’Socrates is an old fart,” he said.
I sat in the back, watching the back of his head. Maybe I’d be a better person if I had plenty of money and understood electricity. And for certain if I ever won the lottery, I’d have to give it all away to the Child Abuse Society.
Just before the main intersection in Palm Key, Drew turned right and headed to the First (and only) Palm Key Methodist Church. From a block away, we could see Mandy sitting on the top of the concrete steps. The car lights lit her up, and the church porch lights threw a circle behind her. Her little body in her new green Girl Scout uniform (she had just flown up from Brownies) looked so lonely that I had to swallow. Of all my children, Mandy is the most like me. She has George the First’s blond hair and his nose. But her eagerness to please, her desire for a world where there is only peace, no pain, and for all eggs to be laid golden, without a whiff of rot, is—up and down and all over—me.
Behind her, Mrs. Farrigut, who was up for the Volunteer of the Year Award and had won it for the last five years, and who was now also the scout leader, stood guard over Mandy. I leaned out of the window, ‘’Thanks for staying with her.”
“No problem.” Mrs. Farrigut patted Mandy on the back. “I just had to call and cancel a dental appointment and tell Fred to pick up some fast food and reschedule my Blood Drive meeting. But I wouldn’t have left one of my girls here alone for anything in the world.”
“Sorry,” I said.
Mandy got in the back beside me and handed me a potholder woven out of fat tubes of yarn.
“Why’re you so late?” She had an edge of complaint in her voice that I’d noticed when she started the sixth grade.
“It took a long time for Drew to get his permit.”
“So, he bombed it.”
“No.”
Drew was pulling into the church parking lot to turn around. “What else would you call it?” he asked.
“I didn’t know he bombed it.” George the Second looked at Drew. “You didn’t tell me you bombed it.”
“He didn’t,” I said. “Except for a while. And it’s not what you need to tell anybody, anyway.”
“Yeah, I had to take it three times,” Drew added. “A lot of people do,” I said. “Your own father had to take it five times.” Mandy and George turned to look at me, and Drew would have, but he was too busy pulling the car into a vacant place and backing out headed in a new direction.
“He did?” George asked. “Did he really?” Drew added. And then Mandy: “I didn’t know that.”
“Yeah, well, it’s the truth. Ask him,” I said. One of my favorite pastimes had become pinning a less-than-perfect past on George and then enjoying imagining him getting out of it in front of the kids.
Mandy leaned against me. I could feel the tiny little swellings of her breasts as she pressed against my arm. In the last few weeks, her body had begun to change, her breasts becoming about the size of infected mosquito bites. And they seemed as foreign to her as my own had become to George the First.
About a dozen cars were lined up at the stoplight at the main intersection in Palm Key.Drew put on his left blinker, so he could turn toward our house. There was no green arrow at this light. Palm Key would never get so busy or complicated to add that. It was just a plain old light, three colors, and half the time even turned off. But today there was too much traffic for it not to be on: too many tourists, bumper to bumper, coming toward us. “Go ahead, inch out,” I said to Drew. I pointed. ‘’That’s right, just sit here under the light and, when you get a chance, turn.”
But the line of traffic was so long, he didn’t get to turn before the light changed.
“It’s okay,” I said. “Just put it in reverse and back out of the intersection. We’ll be first in line when the light changes again.”
“Wuss,” George said. “Shut up, George,” said Drew. His ears were red. “It’s all right, Drew,” I said, patting his shoulder. “We all have to remember that George is only four.” “May not live to five,” Mandy said.
I pointed as the light turned. None of us knew it, but Drew had left the gear in reverse. So when he put his foot down on the accelerator, we knocked the hell out of whoever was behind us. And ourselves. I sat up, grabbing my head, my neck still wobbling.
Smoke was oozing out of the hood of the car behind us. George was bracing himself against the dashboard. Drew looked sick. It was a good thing we’d all been wearing
