Taxi come and pick us up. And if we do have to walk, I don’t want to have to listen to you crabbing at me, Tad Trenton.”
“No, I won’t—”
“Let me finish. I don’t want you crabbing at me or asking me to carry you, because I won’t do it. Do we have an understanding?”
“Yeah! Yeah, sure!” Tad hopped off the sofa, all grief forgotten. “Are we going now?”
“Yes, I guess so. Or . . . I know what. Why don’t I make us a snack first? A snack and well put some milk in the Thermos bottles, too.”
“In case we have to camp out all night?” Tad looked suddenly doubtful again.
“No, honey.” She smiled and gave him a little hug. “But I still haven’t been able to get Mr. Camber on the telephone. Your daddy says it’s probably just because he doesn’t have a phone in his garage so he doesn’t know I’m calling. And his wife and little boy might be someplace, so—”
“He should have a phone in his garage,” Tad said. “That’s dumb.”
“Just don’t you tell him that,” Donna said quickly, and Tad shook his head that he wouldn’t. “Anyway, if nobody’s there, I thought you and I could have a little snack in the car or maybe on his steps and wait for him.”
Ted clapped his hands. “Great! Great! Can I take my Snoopy lunchbox?”
“Sure,” Donna said, giving in completely.
She found a box of Keebler figbars and a couple of Slim Jims (Donna thought they were hideous things, but they were Tad’s all-time favorite snack). She wrapped some green olives and cucumber slices in foil. She filled Tad’s Thermos with milk and half-filled Vic’s big Thermos, the one he took on camping trips.
For some reason, looking at the food made her uneasy. She looked at the phone and thought about trying Joe Camber’s number again. Then she decided there was no sense in it, since they would be going out there either way. Then she thought of asking Tad again if he wouldn’t rather she called Debbie Gehringer, and then wondered what was wrong with her—Tad had made himself perfectly clear on that point.
It was just that suddenly she didn’t feel good. Not good at all. It was nothing she could put her finger on. She looked around the kitchen as if expecting the source of her unease to announce itself. It didn’t.
“We going, Mom?”
“Yes,” she said absently. There was a noteminder on the wall by the fridge, and on this she scrawled: Tad & I have gone out to J. Camber’s garage w/Pinto. Back soon.
“Ready, Tad?”
“Sure.” He grinned. “Who’s the note for, Mom?”
“Oh, Joanie might drop by with those raspberries,” she said vaguely. “Or maybe Alison MacKenzie. She was going to show me some Amway and Avon stuff.”
“Oh.”
Donna ruffled his hair and they went out together. The heat hit them like a hammer wrapped in pillows. Buggardly car probably won’t even start, she thought.
But it did.
It was 3:45 P.M.
They drove southeast along Route 117 toward the Maple Sugar Road, which was about five miles out of town. The Pinto behaved in exemplary fashion, and if it hadn’t been for the bout of snaps and jerks coming from the shopping trip, Donna would have wondered what she had bothered making such a fuss about. But there had been that bout of the shakes, and so she drove sitting bolt upright again, going no faster than forty, pulling as far to the right as she could when a car came up behind her. And there was a lot of traffic on the road. The summer influx of tourists and vacationers had begun. The Pinto had no air conditioning, so they rode with both windows open.
A Continental with New York plates towing a gigantic trailer with two mopeds on the back swung around them on a blind curve, the driver bleating his horn. The driver’s wife, a fat woman wearing mirror sunglasses, looked at Donna and Tad with imperious contempt.
“Get stuffed!” Donna yelled, and popped her middle finger up at the fat lady. The fat lady turned away quickly. Tad was looking at his mother just a little nervously, and Donna smiled at him. “No hassle, big guy. We’re going good. Just out-of-state fools.”
“Oh,” Tad said cautiously.
Listen to me, she thought. The big Yankee. Vie would be proud.
She had to grin at herself, because everyone in Maine understood that if you moved here from another place, you would be an out-of-stater until you were sent down in your grave.