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Show Motherlunge a novel 86 How will I remember this Christmas, I had wondered at that moment. Well, now we know. Two days later, after I had arranged for more time off work, and after Dorothy's car had been tuned up by Pavia's usual mechanics up the street-identical Portuguese twins with Carharts overalls and a shared unwillingness to replace anything that hadn't actually fallen off the car-I set out for Supernal with Dorothy. "You'll be fine," Mauritzio had said, folding his thick forearms across his chest, "and if you're not...." Marcelo finished his brother's sentence-"Pffft"-with a noncommittal shrug of his rounded and presumably hairy shoulders. "Pffft," I said later, as I turned up the onramp to the highway. Dorothy sat in the passenger seat with her hands on her thighs and a look of perfect equanimity on her face. She gazed out the window as the city sank away and I accelerated across two lanes. She was nearly catatonic by now, but no one would know this by looking at her-not the toll booth guy in the beginning of the trip, or the Triple A members whose cars passed ours along the way, or the families at the gas stations where we stopped, or the acne-chinned college students who manned the night desks at the Motel 6s we stayed in. Slo-mo and placid, eating cashews one after the other from the jumbo Mr. Peanut can on her lap, she looked imperially satisfied, almost smug, and I hated this as if it were real. I wanted to get to Supernal as soon as I could, and I wanted to see Walter coming down the porch |
