THE FLOORBOARD UNDER MY FEET RATTLED AS IF THE truck was going to disintegrate.
“Mom, slow down.” My fingernails were deep in the faux leather seat of the U-Haul.
A sign welcomed us to Sacramento. I told myself that after a week on the road, I could handle two more hours.
Mom swerved around a car and then pulled back into the lane. I waved my fingers in front of the rearview mirror, hoping the driver could see my apology in the dim light. According to Road & Travel Magazine, 37 percent of aggressive driving incidents involve firearms.
“This truck has a blind spot bigger than Montana,” I told her. “You should look over your shoulder.”
“Sorry, got lost in my thoughts.”
She’d said the same thing yesterday, after heading twenty miles in the wrong direction on Route 257.
Last week she’d been bouncing around the house, chatting about the joys of city life, the thrill of change, new adventure. Now she seemed untethered. I knew she had a big job interview in a few days, but unlike me, Mom wasn’t the anxious type.
I know you’re upset about the move, Liv, Mom’s AA sponsor had told me as we’d heaved the last box into the van. Try to be supportive of your mom, at least until she finds her people.
Tom was worried about Mom drinking again, I knew it. She’d been sober for five years. I guess it was his job to point out the rocks in her path so she didn’t stumble.
I tapped my jeans pocket, checking that the list of Bay Area AA meetings was still there. “If this interview thing doesn’t pan out, do you think we can go back to Vermont?”
Several seconds passed before Mom said, “San Francisco’s a culinary hot spot, Liv. I could throw a dart and land a job.”
I sighed. She didn’t care that I’d left behind friends I’d had since preschool. Wherever I’d gone, a hand had waved me over. My social life really took off when I started dating the only boy who’d ever liked me back. In May, Sean was voted Hottest Guy in the sophomore class. By association, I ranked top ten. Higher than I deserved—and meaningless, really—but it still made me happy.
“I miss Candace and Audrey. I really miss Sean,” I said now.
“Long-distance relationships don’t usually work out, hon.”
Her cavalier comment was like a whirlpool, sucking me under. It took the screech of brakes to shoot me back to the surface. Our truck had stopped less than a foot behind a minivan with stick-family decals on the back windshield. Cat and dog, too. Mom took her hands off the wheel to stretch her arms behind her head. “Oops,” she said.
“I can take over if you need a break,” I said. The moon blanched in the brightening sky. It was almost dawn. Good thing, because I hadn’t practiced night driving yet.
She shook her head, unbrushed hair settling like tumbleweed on her shoulders. “You just got your learner’s permit, Liv.” Letting go of the wheel again, she transferred a ponytail holder from her wrist to her hair. Our van veered to the left. She adjusted back with her thigh.
I turned to the window. Hill after hill flashed past, carpeted in sun-fried grass. We passed a sign: Capitol Inn, Affordable Comfort at $54.99. According to the bank app, we had three thousand dollars left after giving our new landlord first and last month’s rent with deposit. I knew we couldn’t afford a motel—especially not this close to our destination.
“Maybe we should get some sleep,” I said anyway.
Mom drove past the exit without comment. The eyes of an opossum caught our headlights. “Watch out!” I called.
Too late. She’d flattened it.
“Already dead,” she said with a shrug. “You know, you’re going to like San Francisco, Liv. There’s a farmer’s market on every corner. Everyone’s vegan there.”
Out of 837,000 people, none of them ate meat? It made me crazy when Mom made up stuff, but with an hour and twenty-nine minutes left, I let it go.
“I need coffee,” she announced.
This was her seventh espresso in twenty-four hours, not that I’d been counting. Frustration broke through. “Too much caffeine causes neuron activity, which triggers the adrenal glands into releasing stress hormones,” I blurted out.
Raindrops splashed on the windshield. Mom hit the turn signal, then flashed the headlights before finding the wipers. Drowned bugs smeared across the glass.
“You know, Liv, you should put that photographic memory to better use than acting like a know-it-all. If you don’t look at the heart of the matter, you’ll miss the complexity of the … of the …” She floundered, searching for something that made sense. “Take the psychological impact of coffee, for example. It makes a lot of people insanely happy. I bet you won’t find that in your Scientific American.”
I nodded, tired of the tension that had plagued us through twelve states. I searched the GPS for a place that might be open. It wasn’t working again, so I checked my phone. “I think there’s a Starbucks off exit sixty-seven.”
Mom swerved to the right as if it weren’t four exits away. I nudged my thoughts in a better direction. With the three-hour time difference, school back home had officially started. I’d already missed forty-five minutes of my junior year. I pictured Sean moping through the hallways without me. I glanced at my phone for the hundredth time since we’d left and maxed the volume so that even the car three lanes over couldn’t miss my incoming texts.
Mom found the exit. The lonesome Starbucks glowed like a spaceship on a desolate field. She parked the U-Haul between two compact spaces. “I’ll take a double macchiato, please,” she said, fishing coins from the ashtray.
I wanted to dump the money back into her lap, but Tom’s warning echoed in my head. I climbed down from the truck and headed inside. As I waited for her order, I glanced at my reflection in the polished espresso machine. Without my flat iron, my blond hair had separated into tufts of frizz.
My heart lunged at the muffled chirp. Thoughts of my mother flew from my head as my hand shot to my pocket. Miss you so much!!! I hoped the text would say. Sean wasn’t an exclamation point kind of guy, but it was my fantasy, and I was sticking to it.
Oh, it was Audrey. Hey Liv, was getting a muffin at Gourmet City. Saw there was a help-wanted sign for a manager. Weird. Thought your mom was laid off.
My stomach tightened a notch. I guess things are better now, I texted back. Mom had been Employee of the Month three times at Gourmet City. Why would they lay her off only to hire someone else right away? I searched through my emojis, picking the toothy-grin face with heart eyes. Wish I were with you guys, I wrote. Miss you a ton.
The radio silence didn’t stop me from checking six more times. I hoped she hadn’t gotten caught texting in class.
Back in the truck, Mom blared Queen’s “Fat Bottomed Girls” from the tinny speakers. As she reached for the espresso, the purple wrap bracelet that I’d given her for Mother’s Day slid down her forearm. “One day at a time,” it said. She never took it off, not even in the shower. A fact popped into my head: 90 percent of alcoholics who quit drinking have a relapse before achieving long-term sobriety.
Mom “fell off the wagon” when I was eleven. Only once, and only for an hour.
“I’ll never touch another drop,” she’d promised the next day.
I’d believed her in Vermont. I could believe her in California, too.
A bag of peanut butter–filled pretzels landed in my lap. Breakfast, Mom-style.
My eyes stung, assaulted by sunlight. Before my vision cleared, my ears knew where we were. Honking cars, a truck beeping in reverse, sirens spilling through the streets. Our truck was sandwiched between two buildings that scraped the turquoise sky. San Francisco was loud, bold, and in my face. I put my sunglasses on.
A bicyclist, going twice as fast as us, shot around our U-Haul. Mom grumbled “messengers” before turning left. The next thing I knew, we were climbing the steepest hill I’d ever seen. All of our stuff slid down the truck bed and slammed into the rear door.
“This is California Street!” Mom announced. “Isn’t it gorgeous? We’re going a little out of our way, but I wanted you to see an authentic San Francisco street—one of the longest in the city.” She slowed at the flashing red lights on a brief plateau before we went higher. We were on a roller coaster, cranking to the inevitable drop.
And then the ground rumbled. I grabbed the dashboard. An earthquake? No. The noise was coming from behind. In the passenger side mirror, I watched a real cable car motor up the silver tracks embedded in the road. It was gaining on us.
Finally Mom turned off the street. But now we were pointing down. The junk in the van changed directions, hitting the partition behind our heads. I squeezed my eyes shut.
When we finally leveled off, Mom said, “Thought you could use a wake-me-up.” She pressed her lips together, holding back a laugh.
I tried to frown but couldn’t pull it off. This felt better, like how it used to be. I relaxed into the vinyl seat.
As we cut through the city, she pointed to a row of Victorian houses. They looked glued together, one after another. “Where are the yards?” I asked, thinking about the hundred-year-old maple tree outside the window of my old room. It would change colors any day now. I loved spinning on the tire swing, my head cranked back to gaze at a canopy of red and orange.
“Probably in the back,” she said.
A minute later, we reached the top of a busy street, flanked by people heading to work. Our van crawled down the hill, brakes whining. My head jerked from left to right. There were hip clothing stores and a café on every block and restaurants with outdoor tables. Even a place to get your eyebrows waxed.
Mom looked at me, full of expectation. “This is Fillmore Street. Our neighborhood. What do you think?”
I didn’t know what I thought. A fun place for a vacation? It wasn’t home. Couldn’t be, not as long as Vermont was on the map.
That’s when I noticed that the GPS was still on the blink. “Hey, how do you know your way around?” I asked her. Mom had told me she’d never been west of the Denver ski slopes.
Her head swept the street, searching for an elusive parking space. She cursed at a motorcycle tucked between two cars, as if we could fit our clunky vehicle into the space. “Tom made sure I knew the directions before we left.”
“He used to live here?”
“Yes, in college, I think.”
Abruptly the street ran out of money. The stores looked shabbier; the sidewalks dirtier. At a red light, I stared at a homeless man crouched in front of a Mexican take-out restaurant with an Out of Work sign propped against his foot. I thought about my own jobless mother. What if her restaurant interview fell through? What if she dug in her heels and refused to leave San Francisco? The money we had left wasn’t much of a safety net.
She pointed to a decrepit row of windows on the second floor above a food market. “There it is! That’s our apartment!”
Mom pulled the U-Haul onto our concrete front yard. A dog had left us a housewarming gift.
Home sweet home.