ON THE ROAD
by
Michael D. Winkle
"It's half my car, though."
Marion's hand would not hold the porcelain cup steady. Concentric rings of black coffee reflected the harsh lights of the diner. That was how liquid behaved in a small round container: it blurred up into a target shape of circles within circles.
These rings threatened to rise into waves, however, and she did not wish the hot liquid to splash on her pearl-gray jacket. She steadied her right hand with her left.
I look like I've done something. Have to remain cool.
"I mean, Carrie drives it all the time," continued the woman next to her. "I never take it out of the garage. And they're going to be in the mountains all summer; they can't use it, there."
Marion nodded absently. She had been brooding over her greasy bacon and greasier eggs when the large woman with the tortoiseshell glasses and navy blue skirt and jacket dropped onto the stool beside her. She was heading east, and Marion was heading west, and they met at this point in the middle. They exchanged pleasantries, and, as if that small act had ruptured a dam, the large woman unloaded her life story on Marion.
"Every year she acts more and more like Mother," said the woman with the glasses -- Eleanor? Marion had not really been paying attention. "And I should know. Did Carrie care for her, day in and day out, those years she was bedridden? Of course not! I did. Carrie hardly ever came 'round. So it's always puzzled me how she could act so much like Mother -- certainly didn't rub off from constant exposure."
Marion stared at herself in the mirror behind the counter of the greasy spoon. Her lips vanished into a taut line. For the first time today she did not worry about pursuit.
"My mother was bedridden for three years," the thin woman watched herself say. "My father was hit by a car, and I had to help support my sister and Mom. And then Mom had a stroke, and I worked by day and sat up with her half the night."
"I'm sorry," said Eleanor. She bit into the aging donut she had ordered. "It's so hard, isn't it? You feel trapped, but there's nothing you can do, really. Just wait for it to be over."
Marion nodded.
"Yes. Wait. But if you wait too long, you'll wake up one day and see your mother in the mirror, with wrinkles and gray hair. Sometimes something gives, and you climb out of the trap, even if you have to leave everything behind."
The large woman chuckled. Her eyes disappeared momentarily into crow's feet.
"That's true! Even if you have to do things that aren't quite, eh, ethical."
Marion swallowed coffee wrong, but she refused to choke. She winced out tears as she cleared her throat.
"What -- *hoark* -- what do you mean by not ethical?"
Eleanor smiled, a secretive, conspiratorial smile.
"I took the car," she said at last. "Carrie and her husband expressly forbade me to take it, but I sneaked downtown and just took it!"
"Oh," said Marion. She put a yellow-white triangle of egg into her mouth; it tried to ooze down her windpipe as if the coffee had blazed a trail. "I thought you might be -- on the run, or something."
"I felt like it," said Eleanor. She washed down her donut with no trouble. "I was sure they were spying on me as I arrived at the garage. I was sure they sent the police down the highway after me."
"I know the feeling," said Marion.
"But I've gotten this far, and no one's paid me any attention," continued the large woman. She adjusted her glasses. "Quite a lot to see out here, just driving. I saw this huge mansion out in the wilderness, with white columns in front and two stone lions guarding the steps. I wondered what it would be like to live there, and dust my lions off every day, and pat them good night every evening. Later I saw oleanders, pink and white, stretching on for fifteen hundred feet, and then I saw a vast front gate, and a wide drive leading up a hill, between two huge stone pillars, and do you know what lay beyond the pillars?"
"No idea," admitted Marion.
Eleanor's cheeks swelled up just like apples. Cliche or not, this woman's cheeks were red and shiny and big as Rome Beauties.
"Nothing. Just a huge empty square, lined with oleander trees, an empty lot."
Marion stirred her coffee idly. The waitress, an Olive Oyl of a girl whose face reflected sourness beyond her years, poured in more of the harsh black beverage.
"Do you have a plan, though?" Marion asked. "You say you took you sister's car --"
"It's half my car."
"Well, you took both halves of the car and drove. Are you going anywhere?"
Eleanor popped the last spongy chunk of her donut into her mouth.
"I'm going on a bit of an adventure -- or an expedition. I'm not sure what you'd call it. I'm to spend the summer with several other people in --"
She glanced around; the waitress stood in the far corner gossiping with a man years her elder.
"We're going to study Hill House," Eleanor finished in a whisper.
"Come again?"
The large woman smiled a quavering, perhaps embarrassed, smile.
"We're going to spend the summer studying a haunted house," she explained. "Hill House. It's supposed to be worse than Borley Rectory or Ballechin House -- whatever that is -- or that one with all the stairs that lead nowhere."
"You're a -- psychic researcher?"
"Oh, heavens, no," said Eleanor, clapping a hand on her knee. "Dr. Montague at the university thought I might be useful because of what happened when I was twelve. Rocks started falling out of nowhere onto our house. They materialized right inside closed rooms and flew around like sparrows. A poltergeist outbreak, they called it. I think Carrie was pulling a prank, but Dr. Montague thinks I have some sort of psychic power."
Marion nodded, quietly skeptical.
"Anyway, it's going to be an adventure," said Eleanor. "What's the alternative, anyway? Just go on, day in and day out, until I'm wrinkled and gray?"
"No. That wouldn't do," said Marion.
"How about you?" asked Eleanor, brushing a crumb off her dark blue skirt. "Where are you headed? Do you have a plan?"
Marion stared at herself in the diner's mirror, greasy finger-swirls clouding the glass like a child's painting.
"I thought I did," she answered.
#
The rain pattered steadily on the windshield. Marion finally thought to switch on the wipers.
What a strange woman, she thought. But what she said --
An adventure. Or just go on until we're all old and gray. Perhaps Eleanor Vance had done the right thing.
The highway was sure dark all of a sudden. Was it just the rain? She could no longer locate lights in the distance, of cars or streetlamps or houses.
-- But how could it work for her? She had scooped up the money, thrown a few items in her suitcase, and fled, loose papers billowing cartoonishly in her wake. She expected Sam to greet her with open arms, and they would ride off into the sunset together.
But they'd catch her. Maybe Sam would turn her in himself, when he found out!
Do you have a plan? she had asked Eleanor, when in fact she had been asking herself. Hell, spending three months in a haunted mansion was more of a plan than anything she had.
Huge trees crowded up on either side of the road, adding to the blackness of the night. There were not supposed to be any forests on the highway to Fairvale.
I could go back. I could come clean, and maybe Mr. Lowery won't press charges.
She'd be out of a job for sure, but she didn't like working there, anyway. Looking for a new job was a challenge she could handle -- living on the run like Bonnie and Clyde was not.
Besides, Sam was working toward a legitimate future. Two years, he had promised, to work off back debts, and they could marry. Two years would not turn her into a wrinkled mummy.
I'll go back. Yes. I'll go and face the consequences.
She squinted into the rain. She admitted to herself that she was lost. She could not go back until she knew where she was coming back from.
A sign loomed ahead. She stepped on the brakes and skidded. A feather of fear slipped along her spine.
But it's too late, too dark, and too dangerous tonight. I'll go back first thing in the morning.
She read the sign that had appeared providentially before her, and she pulled off onto the unpaved drive. BATES MOTEL, read the neon letters. VACANCY.