A Life of My Own. Donna Wilhelm

next to highway gas stations. On impulse, she’d call home and come clean—about where we were, that is. Only once, when we began to smell really bad, did Edith rent a room so we could take showers.

      “Almost there!” Edith poked at me slumped and snoozing in the passenger seat. I sat up to views of flat and arid landscape, interrupted by Saguaro cacti, clusters of other desert plants and distant surrounding mountains. Driving past isolated homesteads, there were no boundary fences. Who owned what land was revealed by painted family names on hand-hewn mailboxes atop wood or metal posts along the road. Desert craftsmen apparently got inspiration from local lore. Giant scorpion bodies, tubular Saguaro cactus, Hopi rain fetishes and cowboy paraphernalia decorated wacky mailboxes big enough to hold family mail, daily newspapers, and bulky Sears Catalogues. During my year in the desert with Edith, I’d meet desert folks who were as quirky as their mailboxes.

      Suddenly the wagon swerved off the road, bumped down a rocky driveway and halted. Flinging open the passenger door, I staggered out. Heat of at least 115 degrees blasted me like a wide-open furnace. Edith was immune to heat. Maybe dressing like a Hopi maiden in long-sleeved buckskin served both as mythical allure and as sun protection. Leaning on the horn, Edith sent obscene hoots into the desert silence.

      Within seconds, Carl and Reggie rushed from the house, he as tall and skinny as she was short and plump. At most I’d seen Reggie four times in my life on the rare visits when Edith “tolerated” her company for a trans-America road trip. Having stolen Edith three decades before, Carl never returned to face Mother in Hartford. Not that I blamed him. We met, for the first time, in that desert driveway.

      “Glad you’re home.” Carl’s quiet voice held little emotion. “We’ve been waiting.”

      Reggie ran to the driver’s side window. “Mom, it’s good to see you.”

      Edith pushed open the door, extended her long legs and stood up with no apparent effort or physical strain from the long drive. “You can help unload the wagon,” she said giving Reggie a brief hug. She didn’t bother with Carl and marched into the house, leaving the three of us behind to unload and scrub down the wagon.

      My first impression of Carl would turn out to be accurate. He was patient, tolerant, and submissive to Edith as boss of everyone. Like mother, like daughter.

      Reggie and I would be sharing the guesthouse over the garage, a space she’d previously had to herself.

      “Take the back room, you’ll get a closet that way,” she said to me, leaving out a few details. The front room had a picture window with panoramic views of the desert and a direct-entry staircase. The back room overlooking the driveway had a window so small I could barely poke my head out, and the closet was merely a concave wall niche with no door.