“North,” I said.
“Oh. Are we going to keep going and going?”
“Not that way,” I said, pointing toward the border. “I don’t know anymore.”
I sat on the fender and cleaned my face with my shirtsleeve.
She turned around. “If we kept going, where would we be?”
“Canada,” I said.
“And after that?”
“Baffin Bay. I think.”
“And after that?”
“Greenland?”
“And after that?”
“Jesus, Meadow, nowhere. The ocean. Come here. You need a puff.” I retrieved her backpack from the trunk, took her inhaler from the outside pocket of her knapsack, and shook it. She leaned forward and accepted two spritzes. I tucked the inhaler back where I’d found it, right beside the neatly curled tube of strawberry toothpaste.
“No, after the ocean,” she said, exhaling medicinally into my face. “On the other side of the North Pole.”
“Oh, I see what you mean. Russia.”
“And after that?”
“I don’t know, Meadow.”
“Daddy?”
A line of traffic passed us, coherent, oceanic.
“Daddy?”
“Yes?”
“Your face is wet.”
I touched my fingers to my cheeks.
“Oh,” I said. “I guess it’s because I’m crying. Do you mind?”
“No.”
“Good.”
We watched the traffic.
“Do you get sad when I’m sad, Meadow?”
“Yes.”
“Well, there’s really nothing that can be done about that. You just have to stand it.”
“OK.”
“You just have to stand it. You’ll be free of it much later, when your mother and I are gone. It’s all right to be relieved when other people die. No one ever tells you that.”
She stared back at me.
“Believe me,” I said.
“OK.”
I wiped my face.
“Look at you—” I plucked at her shirt, sniffling. “Your clothes are still damp. Maybe that’s bringing on your asthma. How about you change into your pajamas in the backseat? While I take a look at the map. OK?”
“Don’t you know the way back home?”
“I know the way back home. Do as I say. OK?”
Pulling away from the roadside, I made a screeching U-turn. I could feel Meadow watching me. I didn’t know what to say about my tears. There is nothing to say about them, even now.
“You know what would cheer me up?” I said.
“What?”
“I’d like to see a very tall mountain. With you.”
“All right. Is there one close by?”
“Sure. There are mountains everywhere.”
“Good. Because I have school Monday.”
“Right, school.” Again, in the distance, I could see the orange glow of Plattsburgh. “When are they going to let you out of that place? Don’t Catholics believe in summertime? It’s hot already, for Pete’s sake. The blackberries are out. Outside is life.”
“I don’t know. June, I think.”
“It is June, hon. Put on your pajamas, would you?”
In the backseat, Meadow unclasped her belt buckle and placed her glasses to the side. After a series of contortions and arm torques, her head popped out of the head hole and she smoothed down the fabric and replaced her glasses on her face. In the headlights behind us, the crown of her head was a star of static. It’s ridiculous, I wanted to say, how many steps there are to everything, how endlessly procedural this life is. I wanted to apologize for it.
“Here’s an idea,” I said. “Now, you can say yes, or you can say no. Got it?”
“OK.”
“Consider this”—I swept my hand toward the windshield—“Mount Washington. Highest peak in the northeastern United States. Home of the highest surface winds ever recorded. And what’s great about Mount Washington is you can drive all the way up to the top. Right to the tippy-top, where you can buy fried chicken and a bumper sticker.”
Meadow held her position of frozen listening.
“But it might take us a couple days,” I said. “If you were willing, we could make a real road trip out of it. We could stop here and there. Cause some trouble, you know. It’s been a long time since we’ve — we haven’t had much time together. With all the razzle-dazzle between me and your mother.”
Meadow was pensive. Her nightgown bore the magnified image of a blond girl singing into a microphone. The girl’s pupils were filled in with glitter. Meadow drew her seat belt across her chest and studied me in the rearview mirror.
I smiled gamely. “I am happy to write a note to the nuns.”
“I don’t get taught by the nuns,” she said. “That’s just music and religion.”
“Then I’ll write a note to the Christless laypersons who teach you other subjects.”
Meadow gave me a bitter smile. I loved her bitter smiles, signs of a frustrated intelligence. I didn’t want her to be frustrated, but if she was intelligent, there wasn’t any getting around it. I even had the thought that she was going to refuse me. I suppose, in a way, I trusted her to rescue us.
“All right,” she said, shrugging.
“Really? Are you sure? You’d miss a little school.”
“It’s all right.”
“Really? Great. Great.”
“Of course,” she added, “I’ll have to ask Mommy.”
My heart sank. She had dutifully found the compromise solution that would keep all of us from getting what we wanted. We were once again prisoners of our own making.
“Absolutely,” I said, swallowing bile. “We’ll find a pay phone and call Mommy first thing in the morning. See what she says.”
“Well, maybe not first thing,” she said. “Just sometime along the way.”
“OK, sweetheart. It’s nice of you to think of Mommy.”
“How many days will it take?”
“How many days do you feel like giving it?”
She screwed her eyes. “Six?”
“Six whole days? That’s great. That’s almost a week.”
“It’s how old I am.”
“Your lucky number. We haven’t spent six days together in — in forever.”
“And I don’t learn that much in school. I already know the stuff they’re teaching me. Reading and stuff. I already learned when I was a baby.”
“I’m sorry, Meadow. That kills me.”
“So I would like to go to the top of Mount Washington. But I’m hungry. Actually, could I have a donut?”
“Sure. Sure. I’m sure we can find you a donut somewhere around here…” We both looked out at the landscape, a thick wall of first-growth forest on either side of the road. “Or maybe in Plattsburgh. I bet there are zillions of donuts in Plattsburgh. You can have them all.”
But she was asleep again by the time we reached Plattsburgh. I can only imagine the dreams with which her unconscious mind explained the sensations: the thrum of the trucks as they lined up beside the passenger cars, the huge clanging of the ferry’s deck as it lowered the ramp, and the way it must have felt to have the car’s wheels detach from earth and slide away upon some other substance…
It was 1:05 a.m.
The Plattsburgh — Grand Isle ferry was surprisingly trafficked. I pulled onto the deck when I was signaled and shut off the engine and sat with one arm hanging out the open window, the lake breeze sweeping the deck. Meadow slept on in the backseat. Her sleep had already developed a deep, denying quality.
I opened the door and stepped from the car, nodding at the trucker who idled behind us, high in his cab. Then I crossed the deck and climbed up the metal stairs to the passenger deck. I hid myself in the very corner, from which I could not see the Mini Cooper. I leaned over the railing, looking deep into the lake. It was odd. Suddenly I wanted to get away from her. That is, I wanted to get away from my love for her. I had forgotten about the vortex that gets created when you love a kid. Because I wanted to be with my daughter more than anything, and yet I also wanted to be free of that desire. I wanted to be free of that desire because I knew being with her had an end. You, me, death, her teenage years — what would end it? Whatever it was wouldn’t be up to me.