The repast after my mother’s funeral celebration was a noisy affair, with more food than I’d seen in a long time lined up on the kitchen counter—greens, fried chicken, hot wings, sliced ham, corn bread, beans and rice, taquitos, a fruit tray, red punch, coffee . . . and three kinds of cookie bars. A regular multicultural fest. Estelle must have shanghaied her prayer group, too, because I’d seen her housemate, Stu, and several other Yada Yada sisters bringing in food as well.
The servers were all Manna House residents and volunteers, wearing clean white aprons and brightly patterned African head wraps instead of the usual ugly hairnets. Even Carolyn had her long, brownish-gray ponytail tucked up under a blue-and-gold head wrap, and her cheeks were flushed, animating her normally pale skin with a glow of color.
Dandy took advantage of the hubbub, moving from table to table, getting handouts. By popular request, Sarge retold the story of her rescue from the midnight intruder by Hero Dog and his subsequent rise to mascot and official watchdog status—omitting her ominous threats to banish him just days earlier.
P. J. and Paul remembered some of the residents from their earlier visit, and they ended up in the rec room, playing PingPong with Sabrina and Hannah and some of shelter kids. But poor Mike Fairbanks seemed a little overwhelmed by it all.
It was almost one thirty by the time Jodi Baxter leaned over my shoulder and whispered, “We better get on the road before two if we want to miss traffic.”
The pallbearers—Josh Baxter; his father, Denny; Harry Bentley; Peter Douglass; and the two pastors on the board—had already taken out the last three rows of seats from Moby Van and loaded my mother’s casket into the back under the supervision of the funeral directors at the end of the service. Now Jodi and I added our suitcases, Dandy’s bed, dishes, and a bag of dog food, and everything my mom had brought with her from North Dakota a month ago into the back alongside the casket.
“I wish I could go with you, Mom.” Eleven-year-old Paul stood on the sidewalk, shoulders hunched, hands in his pants pockets, his short school haircut grown out into a mass of unruly coppery curls, not unlike my own. “Why can’t I take care of Dandy till you get back?” His lip quivered. “You are going to bring him back, aren’t you?”
“Yes. I promise.” I gathered my youngest into my arms. “I wish you could go with me, too, kiddo. But . . .” My eyes blurred. “You need to stay with Granddad a little while longer. We’ll be together soon. You’ll see.” I reached out toward P. J., who let me pull him into our good-bye hug too.
“Don’t you worry about that dog none, sonny,” Lucy inter rupted, bouncing her overloaded wire cart down the front steps of the shelter. “I been takin’ good care of him for your gramma, an’ ain’t gonna quit now, even though she gone.”
I stared at the cart. “Lucy! You can’t take that cart on this trip! I mean . . .” Frankly, I’d been hoping someone would pull Lucy aside and talk her out of going along. When was I going to learn that wishful thinking never got me anywhere?
Lucy peered into the open side door of the van, where Dandy was already sitting up on the second seat, panting in the heat. “Whatchu mean? They’s plenty of room in this ol’ bucket. I gotta take some clothes along. We goin’ up north, ya know.”
Mabel stepped in to the rescue. “Lucy, come on. We’ll find you a suitcase. You can leave your cart in my office, and it’ll be safe and sound till you get back. Deal?” She led Lucy back into the shelter, cart bumping behind them.
Denny Baxter hovered around the van like a regular grease monkey, checking the windshield wiper fluid, making sure oil and water were full, checking the tire pressure. “You got enough gas to get you to Des Moines? Jodi, you sure you and Gabby want to stay at your folks’ place tonight? It’s gotta add a couple hundred miles.”
“We know.” Jodi flipped her bangs back. “But it’s cheap lodging. And dogs are allowed. Free breakfast too.” She kissed Denny right on his dimples and climbed into the passenger seat. “Besides, if I see my folks on this trip, you’re off the hook the rest of the summer.”
I shrugged and grinned at her husband. “What can I do? I need a copilot.”
Mabel and Lucy came back out, this time with an actual suitcase—the old-fashioned kind with no wheels. Still, Lucy looked embarrassed to be carrying it. “Don’t feel natural,” she grumbled, shoving it into the van and climbing in after it.
“Where’s your hat, Lucy?” All summer she’d been wearing the purple knit hat Estelle had made for her. But now she was bareheaded, her gray hair clean but badly in need of a cut.
“Too hot. Whaddya think?”
I laughed and climbed into the van behind the wheel. “Glad you finally figured that out.”
At the last minute, Estelle came rushing out with a shopping bag full of leftovers from the repast to eat on the way. Amid a chorus of good-byes from our friends and family on the sidewalk, I pulled the van away from the curb, and in five minutes we were heading south on Lake Shore Drive. I looked sideways at Jodi. “Can’t believe we’re doing this.”
Jodi glanced over her shoulder into the second seat and then back at me, tipping her head slightly toward the rear. “Me either.” In the rearview mirror I could see Dandy sitting sideways, his chin resting on the back of the seat, eyes on the blue metal casket.
Better keep your eyes straight ahead, Gabby . . .
Jodi Baxter was a good navigator. She got me off Lake Shore Drive, through the city and going west on the Eisenhower Expressway, until we picked up the I-88 toll road all the way to Iowa—a boring stretch of road if I ever saw one. Construction, cornfields, and more construction. We didn’t talk much, and I was just as glad. It was the first time I’d had fifteen uninterrupted minutes since the previous Monday, when Mom had the stroke.
Only four days ago . . .
But the images tumbling behind my eyes were less than four hours old. Philip coming into the shelter halfway through my mother’s funeral. After I’d told him not to! Was he trying to upset me? Or—if I took what he said at face value—did he honestly feel sorry that I’d lost my mom? Was he having a crisis of conscience about what he’d done? And Lee! I hardly knew what to think about his reaction. His protective arm around me. His challenge to Philip. “We’ll see you in court!” It felt so good to have a man stand up for me. And yet . . . why did I get this feeling Lee meant something more than lawyer-and-client by that shouted “we”? And why did I like it? Was it because I felt attracted to Lee? . . . or because I wanted to make Philip jealous?
Construction on the toll road slowed us down. I rolled down my window to save on air-conditioning as we crept along, thinking about P. J. and Paul. My time with them had been too short. Already, the memory-touch of their boyish hugs was starting to fade. P. J., in spite of his almost-fourteen stoicism, had looked so sad, as if on this trip he’d begun to understand, maybe for the first time, that his parents might actually get a divorce . . . and Paul, obviously homesick, needing his mom and dad . . . and I couldn’t promise them a home to come home to.
A tear rolled down my cheek. Jodi touched my arm. “Want me to drive?”
I nodded and sniffed. “Soon as we get off this toll road.”
We crossed into the Quad Cities on the Iowa-Illinois border around five o’clock, pulled into a gas station, topped off the gas tank with my debit card, and took a potty break. “Don’t have to go,” Lucy muttered, sliding out of the van and reaching for Dandy’s leash. “I’ll just walk the dog.”
I snatched Dandy’s leash. “Rule Number One on car trips, Lucy. You go every time we stop, whether you think you have to or not. Next stop might not be for another couple of hours.”
Grumbling, Lucy followed Jodi into the station. But I hadn’t counted on mutiny from Dandy. He wouldn’t leave the van. I pulled on his leash, and he pulled back. I finally had to pick him up and carry him to a grassy area alongside the station. Even then he didn’t go . . . until we got back to the van, and then he lifted his leg against a tire.
Jodi drove the rest of the way to Des Moines. The supper Estelle had packed for us—cold fried chicken, a bag of chips, fruit, and a ton of cookie bars—perked us up, and Jodi and I started singing some old camp songs to pass the time. “She’ll be coming ’round the mountain when she comes, whoo! whoo!”—all the more ridiculous since the fields on either side of the road were flat as a hairbrush. I suggested “Row, row, row your boat”—no rivers or lakes in sight, either—but Jodi warbled the college prof version: “Propel, propel, propel your craft, placidly over the liquid solution . . .” By this time we were giggling like junior-high schoolgirls.
“You guys are nuts, know that?” Lucy hollered from the second seat.
It took us another three hours to drive halfway across Iowa, but it was still light when Jodi pulled Moby Van into her parents’ driveway. A bald-headed man and a petite gray-haired woman who reminded me a lot of my mother came out of the house, beaming a welcome as we piled stiffly out of the vehicle. I stood back as Jodi gave her parents big hugs. “Mom, Dad . . . this is Gabby Fairbanks, the program director at Manna House. And this is Lucy, um, a friend of Gabby’s mom. And this is Dandy, the Hero Dog I told you about—oh, Lucy! Don’t let Dandy do that!”
Dandy was peeing on a rosebush.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, flustered. “Lucy, where’s his leash? . . .Oh dear, it’s been awhile since we let him out.”
Jodi’s father chuckled. “I’m sure Dandy’s not the first dog who’s mistaken that bush for a fire hydrant.” He held out his hand. “I’m Sidney Jennings, this is my wife, Clara, and—”
“—and I’ve got supper waiting for you on the table,” Clara Jennings finished. “Come on, come on in.”
“Oh good,” Lucy muttered, stalking up the sidewalk. “Been least two hours since I last et.” We trooped along after her, though I noticed that Sidney Jennings hung back and peeked in the windows of the van, as though he couldn’t quite believe we were trucking my mother’s casket all the way to North Dakota.
Even though I wasn’t really hungry after Estelle’s sack supper, the homemade chicken noodle soup was so good that I asked for seconds. Lucy had thirds. The Jenningses graciously retired at ten, knowing we needed to get to bed so we could get an early start the next morning. Lucy and a reluctant Dandy bedded down in Jodi’s old bedroom, and Jodi and I got the bunk beds in her brothers’ old room. “Good thing I’ve got lots of experience sleeping in a bunk bed,” I yawned, crawling into the top bunk. “You don’t snore, do you, Jodi?”
We settled down, an oscillating fan moving the night air a little in the stuffy bedroom. It had been a long day, and I was tired beyond belief . . . but I suddenly rolled over and hung my head over the side of the bunk. “Jodi?”
“Mmph . . . what?”
“I feel kinda funny.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean . . . it doesn’t really feel right that we’re in here together, all comfy and cozy, tucked into bed . . . and my mom is still out there in a box in the van.”
Jodi stifled a screech. “No! You didn’t say that . . . Oh, that’s awful.” She grabbed her pillow and whopped my upside-down head with it, trying not to laugh, but her horrified giggles seemed to pull a plug out of the dike of pent-up emotions from the past few days, and the next thing I knew I had tumbled off the top bunk, and the two of us collapsed together on the lower bunk, pushing our faces into the covers, trying to stifle our hysterical laughter.