"What good would that do? She'd already arranged to come in."
"Maybe we could stop off somewhere and phone her."
"I don't have her number with me," Ira said. Then he said, "Maybe we could phone Daisy and ask her to do it."
"Daisy would be at work by now," Maggie told him.
"Shoot."
Daisy floated into Maggie's mind, trim and pretty, with Ira's dark coloring and Maggie's small bones. "Oh, dear," Maggie said. "I hate to miss her last day at home."
"She isn't home anyhow; you just told me so."
"She will be later on, though."
"You'll see plenty of her tomorrow," Ira pointed out. "Good and plenty."
Tomorrow they were driving Daisy to college-her freshman year, her first year away. Ira said, "All day cooped up in a car, you'll be sick to death of her."
"No, I won't! I would never get sick of Daisy!"
"Tell me that tomorrow," Ira said.
"Here's a thought," Maggie said. "Skip the reception."
"What reception?"
"Or whatever they call it when you go to somebody's house after the funeral."
"Fine with me," Ira said.
"That way we could still get home early even if we stopped off at Fiona's."
"Lord God, Maggie, are you still on that Fiona crap?"
"If the funeral were over by noon, say, and we went straight from there to Cartwheel-"
Ira swerved to the right, careening onto the gravel. For a moment she thought it was some kind of tantrum. (She often had a sense of inching closer and closer to the edge of his temper.) But no, he'd pulled up at a gas station, an old-fashioned kind of place, white clapboard, with two men in overalls sitting on a bench in front. "Map," he said briefly, getting out of the car.
Maggie rolled down her window and called after him, "See if they have a snack machine, will you?"
He waved and walked toward the bench.
Now that the car was stopped, the heat flowed through the roof like melting butter. She felt the top of her head grow hot; she imagined her hair turning from brown to some metallic color, brass or copper. She let her fingers dangle lazily out the window.
If she could just get Ira to Fiona's, the rest was easy. He was not immune, after all. He had held that child on his knee. He had answered Leroy's dovelike infant coos in the same respectful tone he'd used with his own babies, "Is that so.
You don't say. Well, I believe now that you mention it I did hear something of the sort." Till Maggie (always so gullible) had had to ask, "What? What did she tell you?" Then he'd give her one of his wry, quizzical looks; and so would the baby, Maggie sometimes fancied.
No, he wasn't immune, and he would set eyes on Leroy and remember instantly how they were connected. People had to be reminded, that was all. The way the world was going now, it was so easy to forget. Fiona must have forgotten how much in love she had been at the start, how she had trailed after Jesse and that rock band of his. She must have put it out of her mind on purpose, for she was no more immune than Ira. Maggie had seen the way her face fell when they arrived for Leroy's first birthday and Jesse turned out not to be with them. It was pride at work now; injured pride. "But remember?" Maggie would ask her. "Remember those early days when all you cared about was being near each other? Remember how you'd walk everywhere together, each with a hand in the rear pocket of the other's jeans?" That had seemed sort of tacky at the time, but now it made her eyes fill with tears.
Oh, this whole day was so terribly sad, the kind of day when you realize that everyone eventually got lost from everyone else; and she had not written to Serena for over a year or even heard her voice till Serena phoned last night crying so hard she was garbling half her words. At this moment (letting a breeze ripple through her fingers like warm water), Maggie felt that the entire business of time's passing was more than she could bear. Serena, she wanted to say, just think: all those things we used to promise ourselves we'd never, ever do when we grew up. We promised we wouldn't mince when we walked barefoot. We promised we wouldn't lie out on the beach tanning instead of swimming, or swimming with our chins high so we wouldn't wet our hairdos. We promised we wouldn't wash the dishes right after supper because that would take us away from our husbands; remember that? How long since you saved the dishes till morning so you could be with Max? How long since Max even noticed that you didn't?
Ira came toward her, opening out a map. Maggie removed her sunglasses and blotted her eyes on her sleeves. "Find what you wanted?" she called, and he said, "Oh ..." and disappeared behind the map, still walking. The back of the paper was covered with photos of scenic attractions. He reached his side of the car, refolded the map, and got in. "Wish I could've called Triple A," he told her. He started the engine.
"Well, I wouldn't worry," she said. "We've got loads of extra time."
"Not really, Maggie. And look how the traffic is picking up. Every little old lady taking her weekend drive."
A ridiculous remark; the traffic was mostly trucks. They pulled out in front of a moving van, behind a Buick and another oil truck, or perhaps the same truck they had passed a while back. Maggie replaced her sunglasses.
TRY JESUS, YOU WON'T REGRET IT, a billboard read. And BUBBA MCDUFF'S SCHOOL OF COSMETOLOGY. They entered Pennsylvania and the road grew smooth for a few hundred yards, like a good intention, before settling back to the same old scabby, stippled surface. The views were long and curved and green-a small child's drawing of farm country. Distinct black cows grazed on the hillsides. BEGIN ODOMETER TEST, Maggie read. She sat up straighter. Almost immediately a tiny sign flashed by: o. i MI. She glanced at their odometer. "Point eight exactly," she told Ira.
"Hmm?"
"I'm testing our odometer."
Ira loosened the knot of his tie.
Two tenths of a mile. Three tenths. At four tenths, she felt they were falling behind. Maybe she was imagining things, but it seemed to her that the numeral lagged somewhat as it rolled upward. At five tenths, she was almost sure of it. "How long since you had this checked?" she asked Ira.
"Had what checked?"
"The odometer."
"Well, never," he said.
"Never! Not once? And you accuse me of poor auto maintenance!"
"Look at that," Ira said. "Some ninety-year-old lady they've let out loose on the highway. Can't even see above her steering wheel."
He veered around the Buick, which meant that he completely bypassed one of the mileage signs. "Darn," Maggie said. "You made me miss it."
He didn't respond. He didn't even look sorry. She pinned her eyes far ahead, preparing for the seven tenths marker. When it appeared she glanced at the odometer and the numeral was just creeping up. It made her feel itchy and edgy. Oddly enough, though, the next numeral came more quickly. It might even have been too quick. Maggie said, "Oh, oh."
"What's the matter?"
"This is making me a nervous wreck," she said. She was watching for the road sign and monitoring the odometer dial, both at once. The six rolled up on the dial several seconds ahead of the sign, she could swear. She' tsked. Ira looked over at her. "Slow down," she told him.
"Huh?"
"Slow down! I'm not sure we're going to make it. See, here the seven comes, rolling up, up ... and where's the sign? Where's the sign! Come on, sign! We're losing! We're too far ahead! We're-"
The sign popped into view. "Ah," she said. The seven settled into place at exactly the same instant, so precisely that she almost heard it click.
"Whew!" she said. She sank back in her seat. "That was too close for comfort."
"They do set all our gauges at the factory, you know," Ira said.
"Sure, years and years ago," she told them. "I'm exhausted."
Ira said, "I wonder how long we should keep to Route One?"