World’s Longest Vacation

World’s Longest Vacation

The last road trip I ever took with my father was the drive south to go get Mom back. The afternoon we left, May had already settled delicately into the Maryland suburbs like a grande dame adjusting her skirts on a sofa. In precisely mowed yards, dogwood blossoms leaned prettily over fences, azaleas burst magenta and white from window boxes. A confetti of cherry blossoms still lined the gutters along Connecticut Avenue. My mother would have wanted to cut the daffodils right away, arranging them in thin vases. For two long years she’d sent a multitude of postcards to me, “Having a wonderful time here in Miami. The swimming is great!” or “You’d love the dress shop on Collins Avenue—wish you were here!” which wasn’t true, of course.

She’d gone suddenly, flying off like a wild bird before winter came. My brother and I had felt her dismay, her restlessness, but never imagined she’d actually leave. Dad explained calmly that she couldn’t tolerate another fierce season of snowdrifts blocking the driveway, winds whipping down the streets of Georgetown and Bethesda, nor the grim gray mush of February once the ice melted. Of course she should stay on in the condo her friend Flo had offered, paint and write in the embrace of a comfier climate.

The swarm of postcards continued: Her art work was going well, the beach was heaven, perhaps she’d stay a little longer, if we were all really, truly all right. A photo of my mother in her aqua bathing suit remained stuck on the refrigerator door with a magnet, edges curling, as if to somehow answer the unspoken question of her absence. At 12 years of age, I had no idea what constituted being all right, and had to take my father’s word that he, my older brother, and I were “muddling along nicely” as he claimed in his weekly letters back to her.

Finally, a last letter arrived from Florida, clearly the one Dad had awaited all those months. His brow unfurled as he read it. Before noon we parked the cats at the neighbors’ and my older brother, who refused to skip Scouts or school to go with us, at his best friend’s house. Then we gassed up the white station wagon and set off, muddling apparently over and done, a man and a girl on a mission. Route I-95 was smooth sailing once rush hour traffic was behind us; we hoped to be midway through North Carolina by night’s end.

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My diary from that trip disappeared long ago. I no longer remember the name of the diner with the best blueberry pancakes or the motel with the alligator or the nickname of the waitress who looked just like movie star Jayne Mansfield, the one we swore we’d never forget. But I had hours and hours in the passenger seat to memorize my father’s face, creased by headlights as he drove on through the darkness. I remember his long lashes, the solemn depths of his dark brown eyes when he looked over at me, the slope of his shoulders as he studied the map. The way he started out elated, singing along with the radio, then got quieter and more worried-looking just past South Carolina. I studied his hair, still luminous and black, wondering if he’d cut it more often if Mom was coming home. From my motel bed, I watched him snore at night, his chest heaving up and down like a man sobbing. I asked him silly questions over breakfast about the roadside attractions I’d begged to see (“Why do they call it the World’s Most Amazing Dollhouse? It wasn’t.”), making faces at him when he didn’t answer, submerged in his own thoughts.

There are no souvenirs from that thousand-mile trip, only one photograph to prove it ever really happened. We had no camera along, just a round white patent overnight tote which held my diary and nightgown, and a tan duffel bulging with my father’s Old Spice, pajamas, and shoe polish. These small bags are at our sides in the one yellowed snapshot which survives, a Polaroid taken by a stranger in Savannah the morning we stopped there. My father and I stand casually beneath tree branches dripping with moss, in front of a grand old house we do not live in, grinning widely, and exuding a nonchalance we do not really feel. Do we love my mother too much, or enough? Will she be glad to see us after all?

We lost our nerve in Savannah. Dad and I stalled in its humid comfort for almost a day, walking up and down the streets, anchorless. We splurged on the one fancy dinner of the trip there, lingering over peach pie and coffee at a linen-covered table before heading back out to the car. Torrents of rain sluiced against the windshield as we drove away. “Rainy Night in Georgia” played on the radio, and we sang along into pretend microphones, laughing at the understatement of the song, while water poured down in monsoon-like proportions.

Once over the Florida line, we sped through all of the tiny towns, noting only an antique store Mom might want to see on the way back or a motel with a bar she’d like. I was losing him with every mile, I could feel it. He seemed not to even realize I was in the car beside him. I tried to focus only on what I’d tell her, the friends she didn’t even know yet, the poems I’d show her, the chores I’d do better once she was back. I slept. I squirmed. I leaned forward and changed the dial on the radio so often that just outside Miami Beach, my father stopped the car, reached over and shut the music off.

“Stop it,” he said. He took my hand in his. “I’m not going anywhere. Not now, not ever. This is only a vacation. We’re all going home.”

We drove around South Beach for a little while, hunting for a barbershop where my father could get a quick trim, thought better of it, and headed on in to get her. By the time we spotted my mother on the upstairs deck of her condo, tanned and glamorous in pointy white sunglasses and watermelon-colored dress, waving us into the driveway, I’d almost forgotten the disappointments of the World’s Largest Albino Bat and the Tiniest Indian Reservation. I’d send my brother a postcard, just to show him he’d missed the time of his life.

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Stacy Appel is an award-winning writer in Lafayette whose work has been featured in the Chicago Tribune and other publications. She has also written for National Public Radio. She is a contributor to the book You Know You’re a Writer When . . . by Adair Lara. Contact Stacy at WordWork101@aol.com.

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