My mother had been gone for two weeks when my father announced out of the blue that we would be flying to the Midwest to join her at her work site, so that we could celebrate my birthday together. I was shocked, for several reasons. First, my father and I were a tight little nugget of family, forged as a result of my mother’s dizzy swoops in and out of our lives. Second, my mother did not like to be bothered when she was working. Third, my dad didn’t believe in pulling me out of school for doctors’ appointments or routine dental visits, much less last-minute vacations.
I should point out that I did not like surprises. Above my bed was a color-coded calendar that reminded me I had piano lessons on Tuesdays and dance on Fridays and that every Thursday night I had to have my spelling test signed so I could return it to my teacher the next day. I was that rare child who never had to be told to pick up her room. I liked things in their places, which was maybe why it bothered me so much that my mother never seemed to be in hers.
Almost as soon as we left the airport in Oklahoma City in our rental car, we saw evidence of the drought: fields scorched black from brush fires, soil as parched and cracked as the throat of a man in a desert. The deeper we drove into the country, the worse it got: farms with foreclosure signs, heifers with ribs that pushed against their hide.
According to the sign at the town limits of Ochelata, there were 424 residents, and not much else. There was a Walmart distribution center within driving distance, which provided employment, and a slightly bigger town—Bartlesville—which had a motel or two.
My father turned right at a sign that said NEXT OF INN, 2 MILES. “Well, Diana Banana,” he said, his pet name for me, “looks like we made it.” We chugged down a dirt road, dust flying up around the car. A small gazebo rose from a dusty lawn. At the end of the drive was a small farmhouse with a screen door and a few ceramic pots of geraniums lining the porch railing. As my father got out of the car, the door opened and a woman stepped out of the 1950s. Her hair was curled in twin rolls on either side of her head, her feet grounded in sensible shoes, her apron covering a worn blue dress. She had one of those faces that might have been thirty or three hundred. “You lost?” she asked, wiping her hands on her apron.
“Actually, no,” my father said, giving his most charming smile, the one with both dimples that I had inherited.
“Well, I don’t have any vacancy. There’s a motel if you head—”
“We’ll be joining one of your guests,” he said, holding out his hand. “I believe my wife has already checked in.”
As if he’d conjured her, a rusty blue Jeep zoomed into the yard, parking behind our rental car. The driver was a man in his late fifties, with an explosion of white hair and camouflage pants and a T-shirt that said MISTER TWISTER. My mother got out of the passenger seat, a camera looped around her neck.
“Mom!” I cried, and I raced across the desiccated lawn to throw my arms around her waist. She caught me the way you catch the flu—squarely, and with a flutter of resignation.
Over my head, a whole novel was being written without words. My father smiled at her. “Surprise,” he said.
The owner of the Next of Inn was Mrs. Evans. While my mother took my father up to our room to drop off our suitcases and to make up the cot that had grudgingly been pulled in for me, Mrs. Evans got me a glass of milk and a chocolate chip cookie that was still warm from the oven. “Shouldn’t you be in school?” she asked. As she handed me a napkin, she peered at me like I was a bug she found in her coffee.
I nodded. “It’s my birthday this week.”
“Don’t expect a discount,” she said. She was scrubbing viciously at a frying pan with a sponge that looked like it was made of chain mail. “What do you think of Oklahoma?”
I’d only been here a couple of hours. “It is shaped like a pan,” I said.
“You’re from New York,” she said, and I gasped, thinking she was psychic until I remembered my mother would have told her this at check-in. “New York looks like a sea lion.”
Well, she wasn’t wrong.
“My mom came here for the rain.”
“Hmph. That could take a while.”
Upstairs, we heard voices being raised. Mrs. Evans looked at me, and for the first time, her eyes softened. She took an apple from the counter and handed it to me. “Why don’t you take this outside to nitpick?” she said.
I wiped my mouth with the cloth napkin and wandered into the front yard. I didn’t know if this was a Midwest thing—if nitpicking was some local way of peeling an apple, maybe. Then I realized that I was not alone. On the porch was the man who’d been in the driver’s seat of the car that carried my mother. He squinted at me. “You looking for something?”