Wish You Were Here by Stewart O’Nan Read Free Book Online Page B

dark, shadows filling in the trees, bats flitting like swallows. From the screenporch came a blast of laughter—Lise—and then his mother saying something, and Arlene, and more laughter, the children in it this time. What they were laughing at he could not imagine, this strange family of his. He stood under the chestnut with the spatula in hand, waiting, like his father.

3
    â€œI can’t believe this,” her mother said, digging through the napkins in the bag. “I swear, they are such idiots.”
    Her mother jerked the van left and pulled a U-ey across the oncoming lanes and half onto the gravel and back toward the lights of the Taco Bell. Justin’s milk rolled out of the cup holder and fell to the floor, but it wasn’t open.
    â€œIt’s okay,” Sarah said, since it was her Mexican pizza they’d forgotten.
    â€œNo, it is not okay,” her mother said, as if she was the one who messed up. “You need to eat something. We paid for it and we’re going to get it, that’s the way this thing works, not whatever they’re trying to pull.”
    She didn’t apologize while they waited in the drive-thru line again, and when they got up to the window, she said, “My daughter ordered a Mexican pizza?” to the guy in the visor, like it was a crime, and all Sarah could do was look away, hide in the dark of the car. Beside her, Justin was almost done with his Gorditas. Shreds of lettuce stuck to his shirt, a glob of sour cream on Tigger’s arm. She wiped it up with a finger and reached between the seats for a napkin.
    â€œI hope you don’t do this very often,” her mother said. “It’s not a very good way to stay in business.”
    Mom, she wanted to say, it’s Taco Bell; no one cares. It was like Mark, getting majorly pissed off about something tiny.
    â€œSorry about that, ma’am,” the guy said, but her mother had the overhead light on to inspect the new bag, to make sure what was in the box was actually Mexican pizza. She clicked the light off and handed it back to Sarah before pulling forward. Sarah sat the warm box on her lap, unopened. She didn’t feel like eating it now, she just wanted to be out of there.
    It wasn’t PMS, her mother was just like this sometimes, and it frightened her, not knowing when this crazy person might show up. Once she was out, there was nothing anyone could do, not even her father, certainly not her. And then five minutes later she would hug you and kiss you on the forehead and say she was sorry, that things had been hard for all of them lately, as if all of them had been screaming and swearing because someone left a towel on the floor.
    On the highway, the dark fallen around them again, her mother asked her how her pizza was.
    â€œIt’s okay,” Sarah said.
    â€œWhat?” her mother said. “I can’t hear you. Speak up.”
    â€œI said it’s okay.”
    â€œAfter all that it better be fantastic, hunh?”
    She was always doing this, trying to make things funny after they happened.
    Sarah took a few bites and then closed the lid and set the box on the floor with the rest of the mess. The van was like this most of the timenow. Before a trip, her father used to take two grocery bags out to the driveway and fill one with trash and one with pop cans. Her mother didn’t even think of it, so they rode in a nest of crumpled maps and rolled Doritos bags and used tissues, in the pockets of the doors an army of sticky Rugrats and Darth Mauls.
    â€œDid everyone get enough to eat?” her mother asked an exit later, and Sarah made sure to answer clearly. Justin mumbled, and her mother was on him immediately. Sarah gave him a look: don’t be stupid. She pointed to the food on his shirt and he brushed it off without her mother seeing.
    He tapped the back of his wrist and she held up two fingers for two more hours. They were still in Ohio, not even to Cleveland.