Smooth-Talking Ranch

HILLARY DANAHER

       “This whole trip is B.S.” My mother said, wildly spitting contempt my way from the passenger seat of her own car. 
        Well, technically it was my dad’s car since the doctors had taken away her driver’s license. Once her dementia had started tearing out pieces of her brain, hallucinations and double vision had become the dominant factors in that decision. Though I would assert that she might still be safer on the road than some of the newly-licensed teenagers I teach.
	“I didn’t even want to go to Arizona in the first place, and now look at me. I’m trapped. TRAPPED! Stuck here in the beating sun. Stuck in this car for days on end.” 
	Her rant was met with silence from the backseat, which was partially due to the fact that despite my dad’s hearing aids, he seemed to be pretty deaf. But could he truly not hear or was that just the typecast role he’d purposefully boxed himself into? Hard to say, but certainly it was the golden question we’d all been contemplating for years. 
	A strange, slow tearing sound filled the dried up desert air in the car; presumably the vintage New Mexico road map my father had been wrestling with had finally given in to overuse. A brand new car, yet the ludicrous rules of “NO GPS” would apply for the next two thousand miles as I attempted to chauffeur my aging parents by paper map across the country.
	“People rely too much on technology these days! When I was younger…” 
        But even though I’d taken a week off work, flown to Arizona, packed up all of their things, had my own adult children and two master’s degrees, I am quite certain that if I had switched on Apple Car Play in his new Ford Edge, my father would have grounded me to my room with no dinner.
	Lack of reaction from the backseat map reader did not go over well with my mother, to say the very least. I braced myself for the next venomous litany, but mercifully a distraction came in the form of a single soaring eagle over the trees and her anger quickly morphed into wondrous delight at the grace and elegance drifting along beside us. 
	“Beautiful!” my mother exclaimed and gripped my arm as it rested on the console between us. “Look at that pair of eagles! Hi fellas!”
	The quiet chaos carrying on in the back of the car had turned into an annoying muttering of incoherent swear words under my father’s breath which was quickly followed by a toddler-like temper tantrum and then a realization that he’d missed an historic wayside he’d been looking forward to, which then somehow managed to make me feel sorry for him.
	Spending five days in the car with my father was like holding a blind poker hand of emotions. One comment from him and I might have a terrible ten-deuce hand that would draw out a side within me so uncharacteristically insensitive I didn’t even realize it existed. Or a royal flush might turn up and my heart would instead radiate kindness and warmth towards the man who’d adopted me at birth and raised me as his own. 
	Hard to tell which card I’d draw at any given moment, but the “No GPS” rule made me want to toss the whole deck out the window, jokers and all. I shifted my phone to my left side and swiped up to take a peek at the map on my screen before glancing over at my mother for a current temperature reading. She was fiddling with the radio in the dash, unable to figure out how to get it to work.
	“At 10:00, we’ll play some music, but not right now, Sue,” my father announced from his throne in the back.
	My mother’s face pursed with contempt and her eyes flashed.
	“I prefer to be called SUSAN,” she snarled through clenched teeth. Hell hath no fury, they say. It was only a matter of time before spite and bitterness would be verbally unharnessed. And much as it rattled my cage to listen to unabated bickering, I couldn’t help myself from silently cheering her on. 
	“I want to be called Susan and I don’t want to do this,” my mother’s words fell on ears that either didn’t hear her or just weren’t listening, and turned to face forward again in her seat. Somehow she wasn’t bothered by the “no radio-listening” rule and instead returned to a fixation on what she would eventually refer to as her “kidnapping” as we attempted to get her back home to northern Michigan. 
	She turned to face the mangled New Mexico map and turned up her own volume. “You hear that, Richard? I DON’T WANT TO DO THIS!”
	“Okay,” was my dad’s complacent, if not inattentive reply. 
	For whatever reason, that seemed to satisfy her and the next seven miles were comparatively peaceful. With another clandestine swipe on my phone screen, directions from Mesilla to Las Cruces popped up. Mesilla had been the first scheduled stop on this journey I would end up naming The Five Day Fiasco, and when I use the term “scheduled,” do not misunderstand me to mean anything but the strictest definition of the word. 
	Gas stops were marked on one page of notes. Historical markers on another. The trip’s mandatory oil change would take place in Joplin, Missouri, as the estimated car mileage would at that point match up with the sticker on the windshield and there would be no quarter for any deviations. Our hotels along the route were all purposefully located next to or very near to an Applebee’s in order to keep any extraneous miles to a minimum. 
	I found myself wondering if we’d make it through this trip without any casualties. I supposed they’d made it this long without killing themselves or each other, or really anything else come to think of it. Unless you counted the New Mexico road map shredded up on the floor of the backseat. Or the missing socks, the lost rain jacket, the misplaced credit card, or those elusive keys to the home they’d been renting in Arizona. Likely the rental agency would need them for the newly arriving tenants, but alas, they were actually still in my dad’s pocket. Though that wouldn’t be discovered for two more evenings, somewhere between St. Louis and the last shred of my patience. 
	The sun-bleached highway twisted its way through Lincoln County, New Mexico. Billy the Kid country. I scanned the horizon, breathing in the Old West. I pictured myself among the rocks and hills, on horseback and outriding any cowboy (or sheriff) who dared to challenge me. One of those sleek Morgan horses with a coiled rope hanging off the stitched leather saddle and miles of dust still settling back to earth behind me. We’d have to find some water soon with that relentless sun rising higher in the sky.
	“How many people are in the car with us?” My mother’s loud whisper interrupted my daydream as she tried to keep The Man from hearing her question. This is what she called her husband of sixty years when she couldn’t remember his name or the fact that she’d married that smooth-talking dreamboat of hers in between junior and senior year at Brown University on a hot August day in Virginia with dreams of a magical life together and a love that never wanes. 
	I responded in a normal tone, one that made her feel as though her question made all the sense in the world. “Just the three of us. You, me, and Dad.”
	Mom’s eyes narrowed and she took stock of the space surrounding her, mentally dismissing her hallucinations one at a time. “Okay,” she whispered, then pointed to the backseat. “Don’t tell The Man I asked you that. He’ll put me in a home.” 
	The hallucinations began for Mom a couple years before she let anyone know what was going on. She’d even fooled the doctors, who hadn’t fully recognized how badly her brilliant mind was declining. She is a stoic woman, and at one point had been quite a cultured and sophisticated force to contend with. Even so, that force has also spent her life plagued with insecurities, not the least of which stems from the rules of the patriarchy. 
	As I was growing up in the 1970’s and 80’s with my mother, it was a proverbial rollercoaster ride. She would shout out the words to “Free to Be, You and Me” and quote Gloria Steinem in the kitchen as we baked cookies together, stressing the importance of making my own money and casting my vote in elections, challenging the traditional role of women to the best of her abilities. 
	The stifled side of my mother questioned those abilities and adhered to my dad’s rule that she was not to have a job outside of our home. No discussion was ever entertained. It simply wasn’t allowed. She was to be available as a wife and a mother above all things. 
	But my father never understood the level of intellect my mother possessed, or what happens when that intellect spends a lifetime in perceived idleness. An anger simmers below the surface, slowly growing in strength, over time erupting to become the unfiltered turmoil seated next to me. My heart aches for her lost sense of self and the wild fury it has created. I try to give her as many moments of unadulterated laughter and joy as possible in these last years of her life in an effort to ease the excruciating sorrow in her soul. 
	I glanced in the rearview mirror at my father, who was fixated on calculating the tiny numbers that add up the mileage between our current location and Las Cruces. It has always impressed me that regardless of what is happening around him, my dad soldiers on and perseveres. The importance of this quality in a person is not lost on me, and yet another card is pulled and played from within my emotional deck. 
	“Applebee’s!” My mother was instantly delighted with her own recognition of the restaurant logo on the passing billboard, eliciting the fateful decision to continue reading them as a means of passing the time. 
	“Yep, we’re going to Applebee’s for dinner tonight,” came the response from The Man in the backseat. I spent the next two miles contemplating the fact that while he had heard Mom’s comment about Applebee’s, he appeared to hear nothing else we were talking about. 
	Mom reached again for the radio. She loved listening to old Broadway show tunes from “Hello, Dolly!” or Neil Diamond on road trips. 
        My father’s draconian insistence that there would be “no music until 10am” reminded her, however, that this was no road trip. This was a kidnapping against her will and she did not want to be here. 
	“Okay, Sue, we’ll be there soon.” 
	“SUSAN! I want to be called SUSAN!”
	I practiced the deep breathing I use with my students when their emotional behavioral disabilities begin boiling over. 
	Here was where the wheels didn’t just come off, they exploded into shreds along the highway in a metaphorical axle breaker.
	“Hm. That’s not such a bad idea.” 
	My mother was reading the billboards again, and this one said, “Contemplating Suicide?” in white lettering on a grim, black background with a crisis phone number below. 
	She raised her eyebrows at me from across the console, a mixture of anger and sadness filling her eyes. “Maybe I should,” stated with feigned conviction.
	Now was the time my dad selected to be a supportive husband. Without looking up from that tattered old map or having any idea what was transpiring in the front seats, my dad adopted the voice of a loving spouse. 
        “I think you should, Susan.” 
	There was only a short, anticipatory moment of deafening silence before veritable shrieks radiated from within the very core of my mother’s being. 
	“Do you hear that?? HE WANTS ME DEAD!” 
        Utter confusion from behind the map…he’d said Susan this time, what was she on about now? Me, shouting at everyone to quiet down. Mom trying to soothe the little hallucination of a puppy on her lap…the puppy she’d always wanted but had to acquiesce and get the dogs my dad wanted.
	“Stop! Just everyone stop!” My voice was somehow louder than the other two and I took the opportunity to declare the 10am music rule null and void from that moment forward. After agonizing moments of verbally sorting things out, Mom was humming along to “Song Sung Blue” and Dad returned to looking through maps to find an historic marker he’d heard about from a friend at coffee hour back in Arizona. 
	Miraculously, we reached Las Cruces at exactly the anticipated time and checked into the hotel without any issue. Internally, I found myself attempting to reshuffle the deck of emotional cards and return them carefully to their box.
	That evening, Dad, Mom with all her hallucination companions, and I were seated in the section of some poor, unsuspecting, barely 21 year old server at Applebee’s. Katie was her name, and she had a very sweet smile. 
        Well, at first she did. 
​        “Hey guys, do you have enough room?” Mom had turned to talk with her “companions” who were all now seated next to her in the booth. A confused look crossed over Katie’s face, but passed quickly as cocktails were ordered. 
        Dad wanted a Manhattan. At that point in The Five Day Fiasco I thought about asking for the whole fifth of vodka, but decided a tall double shot with some tonic and lime would have to do the trick. Mom perused the wine list and selected a house red. 
        Katie’s smile was about to fade for the rest of the evening.
        ​In New Mexico, you see, it is state law that anyone ordering an alcoholic beverage needs to produce an ID, even if you are able to describe to the server exactly where you were and what you were doing when Pearl Harbor was attacked.
        Seemed simple enough. Except for that one issue: those doctors back in Michigan who had deemed my mother to be a hazard on the road and taken away her driver’s license.
        As we discovered, being told she’s not allowed a glass of wine with dinner also makes her a hazard to anyone within her vicinity. 
        I think there’s a chance that Katie may have turned in her apron that night. By the time my mother finished with the poor thing she had tears in her eyes, the manager had come over, and the rest of the patrons were craning their necks as though a Wimbledon match were underway. 
​         The confusion and fury gave way to a reluctant acceptance on my mother’s part, and somehow I even managed to bring out a small smile. We ate our food quickly and I let my father know in no uncertain terms that 3 extra miles would be clocked on the odometer, because I was going to a liquor store for a bottle of wine with a screw off top. We would share the wine in the hotel room, and the engine of that brand new car would somehow just have to endure. 
         With a few more choice phrases for Katie, my mother ushered her hallucinations out of the booth and into the back seat. ​
         ​“I am NEVER coming back to this Godforsaken place,” my mother had boldly announced her distaste for the Southwest, the desert, the heat, and the state laws to her entourage of hallucinations in front of the gawking diners, later proclaiming it even more defiantly to the confused looking hotel attendant as we hurried through the lobby with our bottle of red and some plastic cups.
         ​Four months have now passed since The Five Day Fiasco and my mother continues to spend her days teetering between confusion and anger. However, in rare moments of what she would have once called weakness, she admits that she is very sad. “The Man just doesn’t understand,” she tells me, a fact I am very well aware of. 
         ​This weekend my father is away visiting relatives, and I am here to help her while he takes a moment to himself. I pull my empathy card and remember that even though I don’t love the way he does things, this is all incredibly hard on him as well. 
        By 9pm she couldn't remember the dinner we’d finished just two hours before. Sometimes she thinks this home with all of her beloved belongings surrounding her actually belongs to me and she is simply visiting. She comments on my good taste in decor and I swallow the forming tears to shield her from any more confusion and sorrow than she is already dealing with.
        As her weariness begins to take over for the evening, she gets her jacket and says she has to head out now and is delighted to find out that her bedroom is actually only just a few steps away. Handy since she already has her pajamas on.  
        The weekend progresses quietly, and in rare moments that seem to appear from thin air for no particular reason I also bear witness to glimmers of my mother’s innermost self as she rips through her own restrictions and emerges to illustrate a woman having magnificent fun. 
        She whistles in the kitchen. She even cracks a few jokes every once in a while. She tours me around the house, telling me about all the objects she has conversations with when I am not there, when The Man isn’t paying attention. She has a little group of stuffed animals, a chicken, a bear, and a dog. Different paintings around the house are each assigned various intellectual topics to discuss from time to time. 
        ​Dinnertime, however, is reserved for the best of the best. Mom lines up her three types of salad dressing, each of which features a different picture of her favorite heartthrob, Paul Newman. 
        Sometimes she shushes him, “You’re talking too loud!” she scowls. 
        Sometimes she checks on him. “Hey? Did you get enough to eat?” 
        After excusing myself from the dinner table for a moment, I return to find that Mr. Newman was even making her laugh right out loud. With a rather coy look on her face, I must say. 
​	As I sit back down, I see that the Newman’s Ranch Dressing had been given a more prominent spot on the empty placement next to her. Evidently Mr. Newman can be quite persuasive with a cowboy hat on. Mom is smiling, humming an old cowboy song, sipping her red wine.
        ​“What’s up?” I ask her. I thought to ask what it was they’d been talking about, but something about actually asking that question makes me slightly skeptical of my own sanity. 
​	“Well,” she muses, then shakes her head and pushes Ranch Paul Newman back into the row with the others. 
​	I place my napkin back in my lap and wait. 
        ​“Well,” she says again, grabbing the bottle and smothering her salad with the smooth, creamy ranch dressing. “I was thinking...” Another pause and then, with a sly wink at the salad dressing, “Maybe I’d like to go back to Arizona.”

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Author Index: Hillary Danaher

Twisted River Review ~ Issue 0: Editor’s Release