The Honey Bus Read online

  It seemed like we were happy, but my parents’ marriage was already curdling.

  I imagine they tried at first to manage their squabbles, but eventually their disagreements multiplied and spread like a cancer until they had trapped themselves inside one big argument. Now Mom’s shouting routinely pierced the walls we shared with the neighbors, so their problems had undoubtedly become public.

  I opened my eyes and saw Mom standing there in position, ready to throw the pot of American chop suey. Their threats arrowed back and forth, back and forth, his restrained monotone mixing with her rising falsetto until their words blended into a high-pitched ringing in my ears. I tried to make it go away by softly humming “Yellow Submarine.” It’s the song Dad and I sang together with wooden spoons as our microphones. Back when music filled our house. Dad recorded every Beatles song off the radio or vinyl records onto spools of tape, which he kept in bone-colored plastic cases on the bookshelf, lined up like teeth. He listened to tapes on his reel-to-reel player, and lately he preferred “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” the one about the man who bludgeoned his enemies to death, blasting it from the living room until Mom inevitably told him to turn that racket down.

  I was somewhere in the second verse when I saw her lift her arm, and the pot handle released from her palm seemingly in slow motion. Dad ducked, and our leftover dinner flashed through the air and slapped into the wall, where it slid down, leaving a slick behind as it pooled with the peppercorns on the floor. Dad picked the pot up from near his foot and stood, his whole body quivering with silent rage. He dropped the pot onto the table with a loud thud, not even bothering to put it on a hot plate like he was supposed to. Matthew was wailing now, lifting his arms to be picked up, and Mom went to him, as if nothing had just happened. She bounced Matthew, shushing softly into his ear, her back to Dad and me. Dad turned on his heel and escaped to the attic, where he would spend the night tapping out Morse code on his ham radio in conversation with polite strangers.

  I didn’t bother asking permission to leave the dinner table. I made a run for the staircase, two-stepped it up to my room and slammed the door. I pulled my Flintstones bedspread off and dragged it under my bouncy horse. It was a plastic horse held aloft by four coiled springs—one on each leg attached to a metal frame. I put my feet under its felt belly, and pushed it up and down until I’d established a soothing rhythm. I curtained my eyes with my shoulder-length hair, blotting out reality so that I could almost believe that I was safe inside a yellow submarine, below the surface, alone, and so far down I couldn’t hear any voices at all.

  Although I didn’t understand why my parents fought so much, deep down I understood that something significant was shifting inside our house. Dad had stopped using his words, and Mom had started using too many. I tried to make sense of it by gleaning bits of information I overheard whenever my godmother, Betty, dropped by while Dad was at work. Mom and Betty would sit on the couch and talk about all sorts of things while Betty would play with my hair. Matthew would go down for his nap, and I’d sit on the carpet between their legs where Betty could reach down and absentmindedly wind long strands of my brown hair around her fingers. She’d twist my locks into knotted snakes and then let it unfurl, over and over, while she and Mom worked out their problems. She’d coil my hair tight, then release. Twist, tug, release. Twist, tug, release. It felt like getting a deep itch scratched, a tingling scalp massage that could go on as long as it took them to smoke a whole pack of cigarettes.

  They talked the afternoons away, and I stayed so quiet that they forgot about me and got to discussing things I probably shouldn’t have heard. Mostly I learned that men are disappointing. That they promise the moon, but then don’t bring home enough money for groceries. I overheard Mom say that Dad might lose his job because his boss was doing something called “downsizing.”

  “Layoffs?” Betty asked. Twist, tug, twist, tug.

  “Apparently,” Mom said. “They’re letting all the junior engineers go.”

  “Shit on a shingle.”

  “You said it.”

  “What will you do?” Twist, tug.

  “Hell if I know.”

  Betty tugged on my hair once more and let it uncoil from her index finger. I stayed statue quiet, ear hustling. They were silent for a few minutes, and Betty switched to scratching my scalp, sending pollywogs of ecstasy squiggling down my neck. Mom got up and fetched two more Tab sodas from the fridge and cracked them open, handing one to Betty. Mom plunked back down onto the sofa and put her feet up on the sagging ottoman. She sighed so hard it sounded like she was deflating.

  “Honestly, Betty, I don’t think marriage is all it’s cracked up to be. I’m thirty and feel like ninety.”

  Betty shifted her heavy legs, unsticking them from the Naugahyde and stretching them out lengthwise. She attempted a forward bend, but couldn’t reach her hands much past her knees. She grunted with effort and sat back up. She pushed aside the curtains and looked out the window.

  “You think being single is all rainbows and unicorns?”

  Mom blew a wedge of smoke out one side of her mouth and dropped her stub into an empty pink soda can where it hissed out. “At the rate this is going,” Mom said, “I’d be happy to change places.”

  Betty turned back and looked directly at Mom, to make sure she had her full attention. “Sometimes it’s lonely.”

  “It’s better to be lonely alone than lonely married.”

  Betty cocked an eyebrow at Mom as if to say she wanted proof. Mom launched into Exhibit A—the time she was returning from a walk with me in the buggy, and Dad hollered down to her from the upstairs window to come quick. Terrified something was wrong with Matthew, she left me in the buggy on the sidewalk and streaked into the house and up the stairs, only to find the crisis was a diaper that needed changing.

  Mom’s voice turned indignant. “Isn’t child rearing supposed to be fifty-fifty?”

  Betty let out a low commiserating whistle. I wanted to ask if Mom ever went back outside for me in the buggy, but knew it wasn’t the time to remind them I was listening.

  “Betty, listen to me. Don’t marry anyone without first asking one crucial question.”

  Betty’s fingers froze in my hair temporarily, waiting for the secret to marital bliss.

  “Ask if he’s willing to change diapers. Depending on his answer, he’ll treat you as his equal, or his employee.”

  I lifted my head like a cat to prod Betty’s fingertips and remind her of her job. Her fingers automatically hooked a strand of my hair and began winding it into a knot. I knew that I was not to repeat anything that was said on the couch. It made me feel a little squirmy to eavesdrop on them, but I liked the head scratching too much to pull myself away.

  I must have fallen asleep under the bouncy horse, because I didn’t remember how I got into bed when Mom pushed open my bedroom door with such force it slammed into the wall, jarring me awake. She yanked open dresser drawers, and tossed fistfuls of my clothing into a white suitcase with satiny orange lining. I sat up and tried to adjust my focus, but she was moving so fast she stayed blurry.

  “Five minutes,” she said, standing still for a second. “I’m going to get your brother. Be dressed by the time I get back.”

  Mom whizzed out of my room. It was dark outside. My body felt like concrete, and I didn’t want to go out into the cold. Mom had done this before. She’d shake us awake in the middle of the night, hurry us into snow pants and hats and mittens, and run down the stairs screaming that she was going to run away. Dad would let her scurry around the house packing until she tired herself out, then he’d eventually get her to sit next to him on the couch to talk. He had a low soothing voice, and she was like a too-loud TV. From the top of the stairs, I’d listen until there was no more yelling and I heard her sniffling, the signal that the argument had passed and it was time for everybody to go back to sleep.

  I
decided to wait Mom out this time. When she reappeared in my door frame with Matthew on her hip, I was still sitting like a question mark in bed.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Not now, Meredith. I’m in no mood.”

  Balancing my brother in one arm, she tugged off my pajamas and wrestled me into daytime clothes. Mom was scooting me toward the door when I turned back.

  “Can I bring Morris?”

  Morris was a stuffed pink cat with a skirt that my parents had bought at a drugstore on the way home from the navy hospital nursery after I was born. I had named him Morris after the cat in the TV commercial, and he was my most prized possession. I had grown so dependent on him, especially lately, that I couldn’t fall asleep if he wasn’t tucked under my arm. Mom nodded her permission, and I dug around my sheets, grabbing him just seconds before Mom led me out of the room by my wrist.

  As Mom was helping me into my coat in the hallway, Dad passed by, his shoulders slumped in defeat. He opened the front door and walked out into the chilly air. I ran to the living room window and watched as he started up the Volvo under the light of the porch. His breath came in silver puffs as he scraped frost from the windshield. I watched him lift the suitcase into the trunk and get into the driver’s seat while Mom strapped Matthew in the car seat and then came back inside for me. I clutched Morris closer to my chest, and rubbed my chin back and forth against the soft fleece of his pink ears.

  “Where are we going?” I asked again, softer this time. Mom zipped up my puffy jacket and put her hands on my shoulders.

  “California. To visit Granny and Grandpa.”

  Her voice warbled, but she forced a smile and I brightened just a bit. Last summer Granny and Grandpa came for a visit, and because they were guests there was no fighting in our house for a whole week. Grandpa and Dad took me to the beach and taught me how to bodysurf, letting the waves lift and slingshot me into the hissing foam until I glided to a stop on my belly in the sand. Grandpa put me on his shoulders and dug quahogs out of the mud with his toes, teaching me how to spot spurts of water where the clams were siphoning. We brought home a whole bucket and shucked them in the kitchen for dinner. Maybe there’d be quahogs in California.

  Inside the car, Mom turned away from Dad and drew wet lines on the frosty window with her finger. Matthew fell back asleep with his head bent toward me, his light brown hair falling into his eyes and his little red lips making a puff noise instead of an actual snore. Unlike me, who came into the world screaming, my brother arrived, blinked twice and smiled. Mom liked to say that I had apparently used up all the fussy and left none for him. It was true; Matthew’s soul was calm and trusting. He was a boy who assumed goodness in everyone. What three-year-old smiled while you took candy out of his hand, certain the game would end with something even better in return? I could feel Matthew’s trust in humankind when he curled his hand around my index finger and toddled in a tipsy lockstep with me, certain I wouldn’t let him fall. He followed me everywhere, plucking words out of my sentences and parroting them like my own personal backup singer. It was for those kinds of things that I loved him fiercely, even though he wasn’t much of a conversationalist. But he knew one word that bonded me to him for life. Whenever he awoke from a nap and saw me walk into his room, he’d stand and reach for me with chubby starfish hands.

  “Mare-miss!” he’d shout.

  I had a super fan, and his adoration gave me a profound sense of distinction.

  Dad shifted gears with punching force, and I hugged my knees to my chest and rocked in the back seat, silently willing someone to speak. Mom spoke just once on the ninety-minute drive to the airport in Boston; she asked Dad to detour to Fall River so she could stop at a friend’s house to say a quick goodbye. When we finally pulled into the airport parking lot, suddenly everything was moving too fast. Doors opened and slammed. The four of us speed-walked in silence. As the glass panels of the revolving door spun around us, I felt like I was falling down a well. I didn’t understand what was happening, other than it was big, and that I wasn’t supposed to ask about it. I grabbed Mom’s hand and held on.

  Dad bought our tickets and handed our suitcase to the woman behind the counter, and I watched it glide away on a conveyor belt and disappear through an opening in the wall. When we reached the gate, Dad brought me to the window and pointed out the plane we were going to take to visit Granny and Grandpa. It gleamed in the morning light, a sleek bird with upturned wings, and I felt a flutter inside, imagining myself soaring inside it. I peppered Dad with questions—how high would the plane go, how did it stay in the air, would he sit next to me? When it was time to board, Dad knelt down and squeezed me so hard that I felt him shaking.

  “You be good, kiddo,” he said, forcing a smile. “Love you.”

  My body suddenly turned cold. I felt something rip inside my stomach as Dad sank into an airport chair and Mom tugged me toward the door leading to the plane. This wasn’t right. Dad was supposed to come with us. Mom pulled me by the arm as I leaned in the opposite direction, unwilling to take another step without Dad.

  “Come ON,” she huffed.

  “What about Dad?” I demanded, digging in my heels. But she was stronger, and I was forced to hop in her direction as I struggled against her weight.

  “Don’t make a scene.”

  I let myself go slack. Conversation around me became muffled, like I was underwater. I fell silent, feeling myself get pulled into the breezeway, and when I looked back to find Dad, there were too many people behind me, blocking my view. My mind swirled as I let Mom steer me down the aisle and into a window seat, where I pressed my forehead to the chilly oval until I saw a tall figure with ink-black hair and plaid pants standing behind the plate glass of the terminal. Dad looked like he was in a television. I lifted my hand, but he didn’t see me. He didn’t move from his spot as the plane pushed back from the gate. I kept my eyes locked on him until he became smaller and smaller, until the plane turned away.

  During the flight, Mom blew smoke at the folding tray in front of her and picked at her copper-colored nail polish with trembling hands. She seemed to be crumbling. I snuck peeks at her while pretending to draw in the coloring book the stewardess had given me. Mom still looked pretty to me, but her skin seemed grayer under the overhead light. At home, she was careful about the way she looked, and never went outside without first covering her freckles with beige cream and putting shimmery blue shadow on her eyes. I liked to watch her ritual, and all the tools that came with it. A blow-dryer to make her short curly hair stand up higher, fat brushes to put pink powder on her cheeks, and that clamper thing she squeezed on her eyelashes to curl them up. Sometimes she’d let me choose her lipstick from dozens of tubes she kept in the bathroom. The final touch was a cloud of smelly spray all around her head, to make her hair stay in place.

  “It doesn’t matter if you’re a little chubby, as long as you have a pretty face,” she’d say, threading gold wire hoops through her ears. She never left the house without her movie-star sunglasses, two big brown circles as large as drink coasters.

  Mom had some rolls around her middle but her legs were thin, so she covered her shape with dresses that had busy designs and loud colors. The dresses stopped above her knee, which made her look like a bouquet of flowers on two stems. I thought she was beautiful. My favorite part of watching her get dressed was when she picked out her shoes. She kept a row of heels in a perfect line on her closet floor, toes facing in, in every color of the rainbow. I wasn’t allowed to touch her things, but I admired her footwear, imagining myself perched high like a lady, strutting down the sidewalk to my grown-up job. Once she’d put on her outfit, she’d turn left and right in the mirror and ask me if she looked fat. I never thought so, but she always looked disappointed when she looked at her reflection.

  At least once a month, she got dressed up to visit the Vanderbilt mansion. The towering limestone “summer cottage” h
ad seventy rooms and looked like six houses pushed together, perched on a bluff overlooking the Atlantic. It was a five-minute drive from our apartment, and we entered through the wrought-iron gates, Mom’s dress rustling softly and Charlie perfume wafting behind her, as she pushed Matthew in the stroller past topiaries clipped to scientifically precise triangles, the pea gravel pathway crunching underfoot. We never went inside for the tour, but we had our favorite bench where Mom had a view of the top floor windows. My brother picked pebbles out for me to throw into the garden fountains as she conducted surveillance on the windows, hoping for a glimpse of one of the heirs who reportedly lived in the attic apartment.

  Mom was absolutely engrossed during her mansion visits, as if familiarizing herself with opulence so that she’d be ready when prosperity came for her. She read books with Pygmalion plots about regular people being plucked from obscurity for greatness, gravitated toward movies about unearthing hidden treasure, and game shows of all kind. Mom was a dreamer without a plan, and as the years piled up without her Cinderella transformation, she felt more and more cheated out of the grandeur she was entitled to, and increasingly disappointed in my father for not providing it. She was forever waiting for life to happen to her and becoming more befuddled as to why it was not.

  The plane made a little hop as it encountered some weather, and I snuck another glance Mom’s way. She appeared drowsy, her eyes open but no expression behind them. Wadded Kleenex collected in her lap, and black makeup ran down her cheeks, smudged in places where she’d tried to wipe it away so it looked like bruises. Every once in a while she gave out a long, body-slumping sigh that sounded like all the air was coming out of her. I patted her arm, and she put her hand over mine absentmindedly. I wanted to ask why Dad wasn’t coming with us, but knew I wouldn’t get an answer. Even though her body was in the chair next to mine, her mind was somewhere else. I flipped the metal cover of the ashtray embedded in the armrest—open, closed, open, closed—hoping the noise would become so irritating that she’d have to talk, to tell me to knock it off.