He Started It

Everyone was too stunned to respond. I know I was.

‘It’s true,’ Nikki said. ‘You slapped her, you shoved her, you even punched her a few times.’ She stared at him, her eyes hard. ‘She told me everything. She wanted someone to know before she died.’

‘No,’ Grandpa said.

‘Yes.’

Portia dove into my lap, wanting protection from whatever was going on. ‘What’s happening?’ she said. She tried to whisper and failed.

‘What’s happening is our grandfather is horrible man,’ Nikki said. ‘He was an asshole to Grandma and he’s been an asshole to us.’

Grandpa slumped back down on the seat, looking like he was in shock. He didn’t say a word. Eddie crossed his arms over his chest. Portia buried her head in my lap.

I didn’t hate Grandpa before then. Never had a reason to. Then all of a sudden I did.

Only later did I learn that Grandma didn’t think she was talking to Nikki. She was too delirious at the end. Grandma said all of those things because she thought she was talking to her sister, not her granddaughter.

But the stories were true. All of them.

Nikki, still with the phone in her hand, nodded at me. Once. A sharp, sure movement.

‘This is our road trip now,’ she said.

Who is the person from history that you would most like to meet and talk to?

Dr Lang already asked me this question. I guess it must be especially revealing or something. I knew he wanted me to say Jesus, Washington, or Lincoln, because those are the obvious choices. So I did. I said Washington because he was the first US president so he had a unique insight into our history. Unique insight – I said it just like that and Dr Lang laughed, but screw him. He gets paid by my parents, or our insurance or whatever, so he’s just an employee.

He hates it when I say that.

But if I had to answer honestly, I’d say I want to talk to the guy who invented Risk. I always thought Dad was being dramatic when he said Risk isn’t just a game, it’s a metaphor for life.

Each turn has three parts: Draft, Attack, Fortify.

So, first you have to draft your troops. Your allies. My closest ally has always been Beth.

Attack. That’s exactly what we did to Grandpa – it was just with pills instead of guns.

Then we fortified our position. We got Eddie to come around to our side, and Portia had basically nowhere else to go.

I don’t say this often about my parents, but Dad may have been right about this Risk thing.

Colorado

State Motto: Nothing without providence

We’re now in Round Two of the road trip, which began where Nikki took control. Felix and Krista don’t know this. They also don’t know that where we go and what we do is about to change.

This time, Round Two begins with a decent place to stay.

Not long after entering Colorado, we check into our first Holiday Inn. It’s the only place we’ve stayed that has interior hallways, a continental breakfast, and coffeemakers in the rooms. They also have a bar, which is where we end up.

It’s dark, everything is made of particleboard, and the bartender is a bored-looking young woman who would rather be texting. The other customers appear to be locals. They all know one another and seem to have a somewhat incestuous relationship with one another. If they weren’t so intoxicated and so loud, we wouldn’t know that.

‘We sort of ganged up on him,’ Eddie is saying. He’s half watching a football game on the TV and half talking to us.

Felix turns to me. ‘You ganged up on your grandfather?’

I shrug. We shouldn’t be talking about this, which is why I’m not drinking much.

‘Not in a bad way,’ Eddie says. ‘But we all told him we didn’t want to go to any more places where people were shot or ambushed or memorialized in wax.’

Krista sips her wine spritzer but says nothing – she’s still surly about what happened with the police earlier. Portia is on her third vodka tonic and starting to get on a roll.

‘I mean, how many of those “so-and-so was shot here” places are there in this country? Why do we memorialize this? How come we don’t have markers that say “so-and-so was conceived here”? The way we stigmatize sex in this country is an abomination.’ She slams her glass down on the table for emphasis.

‘Exactly,’ Eddie says, still staring at the football game. ‘No more death places, no more weird museums, and no more Bonnie and Clyde. We’re really, really done this time.’ He pauses and motions to the bartender for another round. I go to the bar and bring them all back in one trip, a skill I learned in college.

‘What’s next, then?’ Felix says.

Eddie smiles, showing off his dimples. ‘It’s a surprise.’

‘I hope it’s a good one this time,’ Krista says.

I hand her another spritzer, heavy on the wine.

‘Oh, come on,’ Felix says. ‘Tell us.’

Eddie won’t budge, and he doesn’t mention that we’ll be doing some backtracking. There are a lot of reasons why this trip took so long.

‘If you aren’t going to tell us, then stop talking about it,’ Krista says.

‘Done,’ Eddie says.

‘Good. Then can we get back to the truck?’

I say nothing. The truck is on my mind too, along with the woman in the back. I got bored watching Eddie tease Krista a while ago. Instead, I constantly glance around the bar, keeping an eye out for the Alabama Godfather.

‘To the truck,’ Portia says, holding up her drink. Only Felix toasts her. Eddie and Krista are too busy glaring at each other.

‘We’re doing the stakeout thing, aren’t we?’ Krista says.

Eddie nods.

Krista pulls out that napkin with the schedule, the one Felix wrote out and Krista now maintains. ‘Your shift actually started two hours ago,’ she says to Felix.

Felix shrugs. ‘I guess we all got a little excited about this luxurious hotel.’ He stands up and stretches. ‘I can see the truck from a window in our room. I’ll go sit in front of it.’ He kisses me on the forehead and walks out of the bar.

Krista watches us and then turns to Eddie, still glaring at him.

‘You’re beautiful,’ he says.

She melts a little. It’s a physical transformation that begins in her watery, drunken eyes. ‘That’s not going to work.’

Lie.

Eddie holds out his hand and she takes it. ‘Time for us to go,’ he says.

She huffs a little, pouts a little, and finally takes his hand. They weave out of the bar and toward the elevator.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Portia says, shaking her head.

‘Yeah,’ I say.

‘You want another drink?’

‘Probably shouldn’t. I’ve got second shift.’

‘Ah, of course.’

Tonight she’s wearing her signature boots with jeans and a faded Tulane shirt. She looks like she should be a student, not a dancer on her night off. No judgment.

‘Coming?’ I say, standing up.

She points to her drink. Not empty. ‘When I’m done.’

I pause, probably due to some provincial idea that women shouldn’t hang out alone in random hotel bars. I’m sure it came from a list of rules written by a man, so he could weed out the good girls from the bad ones.