Earthly Possessions - Anne Tyler [29]
“I could eat a horse,” said Jake. “Couldn’t you?”
But I was shaking too much to answer.
We had breakfast at a Sunoco station: a bag of bacon rinds and two Yoo-Hoos from a vending machine. I used the restroom, and stood a while staring into the mirror on the paper towel dispenser. I felt I had to gather myself together again. My own eyes stared back at me, surprisingly dark. (I had half expected to find them bleached as gray as Jake’s.) My face appeared pinched and confused. It was a relief to grab up my purse and go back to the car.
This was piney country we were passing through, dotted with farms and new, raw-looking cinderblock supermarkets. Periodically we would land behind some truck or tractor, with no possible way of passing, and then Jake would start muttering. “Pokey old fool! Hayseed. Dimwit. Good mind to ram him in the tail.”
“Well, I don’t understand,” I said. “Now surely Maryland is not the only state with divided highways. Is this all the road they have here?”
“All the road I’m taking,” said Jake. “You know durn well no cop is going to bother with it.”
I thought he had too much faith, but it’s true we weren’t seeing any patrol cars. Just crumpled Chevies, Fords, and those everlasting trucks. When Jake’s temper gave out, every fifteen minutes or so, he would pull up at one of the supermarkets and get us something to eat. Fritos. Oreos. I chewed in time to a whole chorus of TV commercials singing inside my head. Meanwhile Jake would gun his motor and push on, arriving finally behind the selfsame truck that had held him back in the first place. And always on a hill or curve, or with oncoming cars in the other lane. He cursed. I went on chewing. I am gifted with the ability of giving up, and all I had to do was pretend we were on some great, smooth, slow conveyor belt, coasting through the billboarded countryside two and a half feet behind a truckful of lawnmowers.
For lunch we stopped at a diner on the outskirts of a city. “But we’ve eaten all morning,” I said. “I’m not hungry.”
“That don’t make no difference. Point is, I rest.”
There were factories and auto graveyards everywhere we looked, and the diner sat on the tiniest concrete apron as if something had been nibbling away at it. Inside, it was full of brushed aluminum and gold-flecked, aging vinyl. The only other customer was a teenager eating a hot dog. The waitress was a stern-faced, churchy woman in tin-rimmed glasses. She curled her mouth downward while taking Jake’s order: everything grilled, greased, salted. (I was beginning to know his eating tastes, by now.) “Just coffee for me,” I said. The waitress sniffed and stalked off.
When she was gone, I reached over to the stool beside me and picked up a newspaper. Used, badly refolded, but all of it was there. “Want the funnies?” I asked Jake. He looked disgusted. I shrugged. I scanned the first page, then the second. Primaries, cost of living, labor contracts … not a word about Jake or me. We’d dropped out of people’s minds, might not even have existed. They’d moved on to more important concerns. I was stunned. Jake wasn’t, though. When I lowered the paper, he didn’t even glance up. He was too busy filling his pockets with Domino sugar packs.
“We’re