She took a breath I could hear.
“What is it?”
“Sweetie, your dad’s dying,” she said, and burst into tears.
I’d never heard her cry before. I didn’t know what to say. It was too much at once to even feel anything.
“Lung cancer. It’s bad. I don’t think he has much longer.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked. “Last Sunday? The week before that?”
“Girlie, your dad is the only one who knew. Not even Irene.” She let out a big sob. “He didn’t want treatment. Said he didn’t want to lose his hair. Likes smoking better than he likes living.”
“How long?” I touched my fingers to each of the phone buttons without pressing them in.
“Maybe a week, maybe a few days.”
“How did Irene not know? How did she let it get so bad?” I spelled out my name with the phone buttons—two-seven-seven-four-five.
“You know how he gets in his own way. Him and Irene haven’t been getting along for a while. He’s been living in the motorhome for the past few months. Hiding from her. She’s with him now. That woman is some kind of saint, I tell you. It’s not her fault she didn’t know.”
“I got to go,” I said, because I wasn’t in the mood to hear Margo talking about Irene like a goddess. “Ollie needs me to help prep for dinner shift, you know?”
“Look, girlie. I’m not saying you’ve got to be here. Lord knows you got to have buckets and buckets of feelings about this. I’m just saying that if you want to be here, or you think someday maybe it’ll be hard that you weren’t here, then you should come.”
“Love you,” I said, and hung up the phone before she could say anything back.
I walked out to the beach and thought about staying. Jumping in the ocean and floating on my back, watching my belly bob in the waves, forgetting I ever even had a father. But instead I got in my car.
— Chapter 61 —
I usually like the drive north from Florida. I call ahead, book gigs at places I’ve played before, take three or four weeks to wind my way up the coast. I like to drive the scenic roads and watch the palm trees disappear into hills and fall colors. I visit all the pockets of people I know and find some new pockets to replace the ones that disappear. If my friend Slim has work for me, I head to Nashville and record backup tracks for a few days. Otherwise I’ll drive straight to Savannah and spend a couple nights singing with the house band at a bar on Bay Street. Camp a few nights on Cape May, then make my way to Red Bank to play at The Downtown and stay with Cole while I book my next leg of gigs. It’s the way I pass time. A system that works for me. It’s not a bad life. I get to be nothing but wonderful to people I love and move on before it goes stale. But on this trip there’s no time for gigs or visits or seeing old friends or following the coast.
My plan was to stay south this year. All summer, when I wasn’t playing gigs, I waited tables for Ollie. Took every shift my swollen feet would allow. I found a house on Bimini Bay with a roof partly covered with tarps, like the money for construction ran out. Plumbing still worked just fine and no one ever came around. Crashing there and living on shift meals let me save up money to rent a real apartment for a few months after the baby comes. Maria, one of the other waitresses at Ollie’s, has a toddler and said maybe we could trade off babysitting and shifts. I tamped down my panic about settling down with the idea that when Max is a little older, we’ll get to hit the road again. I want his world to be big, not just an island. I want him to know the ocean, but I want him to see seasons and meet all the people in my pockets too.
Somehow, I am sure he’ll be a traveling baby, happy in his car seat, letting the sound of the road lull him to sleep. Once we reach the mainland, Max gets quiet in my belly while I drive, so maybe he’s already in love with the road. I’m happy to have him with me. To feel like I’m not completely alone. I don’t like the middle of Florida—cows and farmland and I feel like alligators and giant snakes must be lurking in every body of water. I drive straight through to the Georgia border. I don’t drink anything so I won’t have to stop to pee.
Once, when I was in Boston, my friend Slim called the bar where I was playing to say he was recording a single for some country singer and my exact voice was what he needed to fill out the sound. I drove all the way from Boston to Nashville after my gig. Right on through. I couldn’t see straight by the time I got there, but Slim pumped me full of coffee and tuned my guitar and I was fine. The song didn’t really take off, but every once in a while, if I leave a country station on long enough, I’ll hear it on the radio and I can pick out my voice singing oohs and awahoos through the static. That road trip was killer. This one is worse—I don’t even want to get where I’m going—but I make it over a thousand miles with only four stops and a quick nap, pregnancy bladder and back pain and everything.