Feeling sorry for himself kept him awake enough to keep driving for an hour. The tape was on its second time through when he started down the steep descent toward Frankfort. Good thing. Bound to be a motel in the state capital. I can make it that far, and DeAnne won't have to wake up till we get there.
"Dad," said Stevie from the back seat.
"Yes?" said Step-softly, so he'd know not to talk loudly enough to waken the others.
"Betsy threw up," said Stevie.
"Just a little bit, or is it serious?"
"Just a little," said Stevie.
Then a vast, deep urping sound came from the back seat.
"Now it's serious," said Stevie.
Damn damn damn, said Step silently. "Thanks for telling me, Steve."
The sound came again, even as he pulled off the road, and now he could smell the bitter tang of gastric juices. One of the kids almost always threw up on every long trip they took, but usually they did it in the first hour.
"Why are we stopping?" DeAnne, just waking up, had a hint of panic in her voice. She didn't like it when something unexpected happened, and always feared the worst.
Springsteen had just sung about the fish lady and the junk man, so for the first time in a long time, Step remembered where his pet name for DeAnne had come from. "Hey, Fish Lady, take a sniff and see."
"Oh, no, which one of them?"
"Betsy Wetsy" said Stevie from the back. Another old joke -- DeAnne used to get impatient with him for the irreverent nicknames he gave the kids. She hated the nickname Betsy, but because of the joke, the name had stuck and now that was what Betsy called herself.
"More like Betsy Pukesy," said Step. Stevie laughed.
Stevie had a good laugh. It made Step smile, and suddenly it was no big deal that he was about to be up to his elbows in toddler vomit.
Step had parked on the shoulder, well off, so that he could open Betsy's door without putting his butt out into traffic. Even so, he didn't like feeling the wind of the cars as the y whooshed past. What a way to die-smeared like pate on the back door of the car, a sort of roadkill canape. For a moment he thought of what it would mean for the kids, if he died on the road right in front of their eyes. The little ones would probably not remember him, or how he died. But Stevie would see, Stevie would remember. It was the first time Step had really thought of it that way -- Stevie was now old enough that he would remember everything that happened.
Almost eight years old, and his life was now real, because he would remember it.
He would remember how Dad reacted when Betsy threw up, how Dad didn't swear or get mad or anything, how Dad helped clean up the mess instead of standing there helplessly while Mom took care of it. That was a sort of vow he made before he got married, that there would be no job in their family that was so disgusting or difficult that DeAnne could do it and he couldn't. He had matched her, diaper for diaper, with all three kids, and a little vomit in the car would never faze him.
Actually, a lot of vomit. Betsy, white-faced and wan, managed a smile.
By now DeAnne was outside and around the car, pulling baby wipes out of the plastic jar. "Here," she said.
"Hand her out to me and I'll change her clothes while you clean up the car."
In a moment DeAnne was holding a dripping Betsy out in front of her, taking her around the car to her seat, where she had already spread a cloth diaper to protect the leather.
Robbie, the four- year-old, was awake now, too, holding out his arm. He had been sitting in the middle, right next to Betsy, and there was a streak of vomit on his sleeve. "Wasn't that sweet of your sister, to share with you," said Step. He wiped down Robbie's sleeve. "There you go, Road Bug."
"It stinks."
"I'm not surprised," said Step: "Bear it proudly, like a wound acquired in battle."
"Was that a joke, Daddy?" said Robbie.
"It was wit," said Step. Robbie was trying to learn how to tell jokes. Step had given him the funny-once lecture recently, so Robbie wasn't telling the same joke over and over again, but the different kinds of humor still baffled him and he was trying to sort them out. If Stevie's experience was a fair sample, it would take years.
DeAnne spoke to Robbie from the front seat. "We'll change your shirt as soon as your father has finished wiping up Betsy's booster seat."
Step wasn't having much success cleaning down inside the buckle of Betsy's seat belt. "The only way our seat belts will ever match again," he said, "is if Betsy contrives to throw up on all the rest of them."
"Move her around in the car and maybe she'll have it all covered by the time we get to North Carolina," said Stevie.
"She doesn't throw up that often," said DeAnne.
"It was a joke, Mom," said Stevie.
"No, it was wit," said Robbie.
So he was getting it.
The baby wipes were no match for Betsy's prodigious output. They ran out long before the seat was clean enough for occupancy.
"When they hear you're pregnant for the fourth time," said Step, "I think Johnson & Johnson's stock will go up ten points."
"There's more wipes in the big grey bag in the back," said DeAnne. "Make sure you buy the stock before you announce it."
Step walked around to the back of what the Renault people called a "deluxe wagon," unlocked the swing-up door, and swung it up. Even with the bag zipped open he couldn't find the baby wipes. "Hey, Fish Lady, where'd you pack the wipes?"
"In the bag somewhere, probably deep," she called. "While you're in there, I need a Huggie for Betsy. She's wet and as long as I've got her undressed I might as well do the whole job."
He gave the diaper to Stevie to pass forward, and then finally found the baby wipes. He was just stepping back so he could close the wagon when he realized that there was somebody standing behind and to the left of him. A man, with big boots. A cop. Somehow a patrol car had managed to pull up behind them and Step hadn't heard it, hadn't even noticed it was there.
"What's the trouble here?" asked the patrolman.
"My two-year-old threw up all over the back seat," said Step.
"You know the shoulder of the freeway is only to be used for emergencies," said the cop.
For a moment it didn't register on Step what the cop's remark implied. "You mean that you don't think that a child throwing up in the back seat is an emergency?"
The patrolman fixed him with a steady gaze for a moment. Step knew the look. It meant, Ain't you cute, and he had seen it often back when he used to get speeding tickets before his license was suspended back in '74 and DeAnne had to drive them everywhere. Step knew that he shouldn't say anything, because no matter what he said to policemen, it always made things worse.
DeAnne came to his rescue. She came around the car carrying Betsy's soaked and stinking clothes.
"Officer, I think if you had these in your car for about thirty seconds you'd pull off the road, too."
The cop looked at her, surprised, and then grinned. "Ma'am, I guess you got a point. Just hurry it up. It's not safe to be stopped here. People come down this road too fast sometimes, and they take this curve wide."
"Thanks for your concern, Officer," said Step.
The patrolman narrowed his eyes. "Just doing my job," he said, rather nastily, and walked back to his car.
Step turned to DeAnne. "What did I say?"
"Get me a Ziploc bag out of there, please," she said. "If I have to smell these any longer I'm going to faint."
He handed her the plastic bag and she stuffed the messy clothes into it. "All I said to him was 'Thanks for your concern,' and he acted like I told him his mother had never been married."
She leaned close to him and said softly, affectionately, "Step, when you say 'Thank you for your concern' it always sounds like you're just accidently leaving off the word butthead."