“But what about the things you have to be doing?”
“Not so much for those, Sloane.”
We are quite uncertain about his future at college. He and I are both worried and frankly not optimistic. Fortunately he’s going to New Rochelle, just five miles away, and will commute, so if he flunks out, he’ll still be in his own bed.
Things don’t get away from me.
Guess what kind of person Gina is?
“Four hundred and seventy miles,” I said to Gina in the hall as we walked from Health to English. “From Bakersfield to Mendocino.”
“Well, how would I get there?”
I said nothing. I was providing the use of my outrageous wheels all the way across the country. I wanted to suggest the use of a Greyhound bus all the way across the country. Or perhaps an airplane ticket. I said nothing, hoping she would see reason all by herself, but she spent two or three minutes until the bell rang heartily complaining, after which I said, “Gina, you’ll have to get on a bus. It’s just a few hours.”
“If it’s a few hours, why can’t you drive me?”
“I’m being metaphorical about the few hours. It’s incredibly out of my way.”
“Just a few miles.”
“Four hundred and seventy few miles to be exact. And I don’t know why I have to point out the obvious, but you do realize I have to drive back to Mendocino? That’s two extra days for me. You’re staying in Bakersfield, but I’m actually driving back.”
“I’m not staying in Bakersfield,” she said, sounding defensive. “I’m coming back here. With him.”
“With who?”
“With Eddie, of course. Who do you think I’m going to Bakersfield for?”
I said nothing. Really, there are times in your life when it’s better to say nothing. This was one of them.
Gina’s blue eyes stared at me for a second longer than I was comfortable with, and then ran to class.
My hands itched all through English, I couldn’t hold a pen. What I wanted to say was, are you kidding me? I’m not bringing you and him back to New York. I’m not spending a week with him and you in my car. You might as well ask me to start speaking French or type sixty words a minute. It ain’t happenin’. Mais non. Jamais. Jamais.
Instead of talking about this, the important thing, Gina and I had an arithmetic lesson. An elementary physics lesson. A time and distance lesson. We took minutes, divided them into hours and siphoned miles through time, and time through miles, taking 470 of them, which was almost 480, dividing them by 60 minutes, and concluding with 8 hours without stops, each way, but after 30 minutes of this, Gina still couldn’t grasp what 60 minutes had to do with how fast the car was traveling, as if time and distance were in no way related. She didn’t understand why my 350 horsepower Mustang, traveling at nearly 137 miles per hour, couldn’t get from Mendocino to Bakersfield and back in 55 minutes. While explaining it to her, I could barely understand it myself, and it certainly didn’t help me to understand the most important thing—was she really expecting me to bring her and Eddie back to New York? Jamais!
The preparations were monumental. Maybe it was because I’d never been anywhere. Or because I was a planner and couldn’t plan for two weeks I couldn’t foresee in my pedestrian imagination. I didn’t want Emma to know I was having trouble because I didn’t want her to say, if you can’t pack and plan for a little trip, how are you going to pack for college? I wanted to reply to her unasked question that it’s a lot easier to pack all your stuff than to selectively pack some of it. Like, how am I supposed to know what I’m going to wear in Nevada, on an indefinite tomorrow? Is the temperature the same in Nevada as in Larchmont? “Probably a touch warmer,” said Emma.
Are there mosquitoes? “There are mosquitoes everywhere.”
“Really, everywhere? But there’s no water in Nevada. Aren’t mosquitoes swamp creatures?”
“Well, then, you’ve answered your own question.”
“No water?” said Gina when she heard. “What about Lake Tahoe?”
“What do you know about Lake Tahoe, Reed?” exclaimed Marc. He called all the girls by their last name. Took the sex right out of them. And mine stuck. This took place during lunch.
“Nothing,” Gina defended. “Except Fredo Corleone was killed on it, and it was in Nevada.”
“Oh, Fredo Corleone. Well, then, absolutely. Better bring repellant.”
Did it get cold at night? No one knew, not even Gina; that part wasn’t in “The Godfather.”
Was it windy? We decided it was. We packed some breakers.
Do I bring hairspray? Extra underwear? Warm socks?
“I don’t think it’s ever a bad idea to pack extra underwear and socks,” said Emma. “But you don’t wear hairspray here; why would you start there?”
Maybe I was going to be a different person there.
Challengingly I bought hairspray.
Are hotel rooms warm or cold? Do they give you towels? Extra blankets? Sometimes I get cold at night.
“In the summer?”
We circled the horses around to the original question. Did it get cold at night and are hotel rooms warm or cold?
“Does it get cold at night where?” said Marc. “In Nevada? You’ll blow through the state in four hours. What about South Dakota? Iowa? Utah? Wyoming? Why don’t you care if it gets cold there?”
What did Utah have to do with my business, and should I bring my favorite pillow?
Should I bring a camera, my Kodak Instamatic? Or will Emma lend me her Polaroid, and what’s better, the top-notch quality of my Instamatic, or the stick-it-in-the-darkroom-of-a-partially-closed-drawer quality of the Polaroid?
Should I bring books to read?
“Do you plan to be doing much reading while you’re driving?” Marc asked. He asked this slowly to convey what he really thought of my question.
“Aren’t you all Walden Pondy,” I said, shoving him. “Go sketch something while I do all the work.”
He was sitting in my room doing nothing. He sketched me packing.
“Perhaps a book for a rainy day?” I asked. Why did I always sound so defensive, even with my friends?
“You won’t be driving in the rain, then?”
Should I bring cash?
“Yes, Sloane,” said Marc even more slowly, the wretch. “You should bring some money. After all, you might need gas.”
I threw my pillow at him, knocking the coal pencils out of his hands.
“I mean,” I said, “cash or Travelers’ checks? And if I bring cash, where do I stash it? Do I hide it?”
“Hide it from who? Gina?”
“Well, I don’t know. Can I trust her?”
“Can she trust you?” said Marc, and I didn’t have a pillow left to throw.
“One more comment like this, and you’ll have to walk home.”
“Where