They hadn’t been here for very long. This time, they hadn’t rented an apartment. They hadn’t looked for schools, either. They knew the drill now. You didn’t arrive at a place and get attached. You didn’t give yourself time to picture a life there, to see a future. You didn’t develop routines. You didn’t get to know anyone too well.
You didn’t come to a full stop.
In the end, San Francisco had lasted a couple of weeks less than Tahoe. Just after New Year’s, Dad had found a temp job at an office supply company in Oakland, where he mostly transferred calls and input numbers into endless spreadsheets. But when that ended a month later, there was nothing else, and before long, it was time to move on again. So they were en route to rainy Seattle, where Dad had a tenuous lead on an actual building job. But they’d decided to spend three days in Portland on the way, just in case something turned up there. Because the thought of making it all the way up to Seattle only to have the job fall through was almost too much to bear.
Dad had insisted they wait for Owen’s spring break. That way, they’d have a whole week to figure things out without him missing too much school. Owen didn’t have the heart to tell him that every district had a different week off, which meant the dates might not line up as well for the next school wherever they landed. But it didn’t matter, anyway. They both knew he would graduate easily enough. That wasn’t the point. It was more an issue of finding an actual graduation to attend.
“I don’t care about that,” Owen said. “The whole cap-and-gown thing, the diploma. It’s not like it means anything.”
“It’s symbolic,” Dad insisted. “It’s a moment.”
What he didn’t say, but what they both knew, was that his mother would have loved it: the cap and gown, the walk across the stage, the rolled baton of a diploma, all of it. Owen knew she would have been in the first row. She would have been clapping the loudest.
And he had no interest in attending a ceremony that didn’t include her.
That much, he knew. The rest was a bit harder to figure out right now. How could he know what the next year might hold when he didn’t even know about the next week? At some point they’d find a town, and in that town, they’d find a place to live, and near that place, they’d find a school. There would be one more round of making new friends that wouldn’t last, and going to classes where he already knew the answers, and it would all end with a graduation ceremony that he had no interest in attending.
But after that? It was hard to tell. Weeks from now, he’d have six answers to the six questions he’d sent out into the world in the form of college applications. An e-mail would arrive with a link to discover the news, and at the same time, six different envelopes would start to arrive at the house in Pennsylvania, which still sat snow-covered and empty, the FOR SALE sign in the front yard probably beginning to rust. One of their neighbors had been forwarding the mail whenever they landed somewhere long enough to receive it, and hopefully by then, they’d have an address that was a bit more permanent. But at the moment, Owen wasn’t so sure it mattered, anyway. His future wouldn’t be determined by the click of a mouse or the thickness of an envelope. It would depend on when his father got a job, and where they finally settled down; it would be decided not by things like class size and dorm rooms and cafeteria food, but by how many days passed without his dad pulling the last cigarette from the box, measured by the moment when he could listen to a particular song on the radio without his eyes going misty and his fingers going tight on the wheel.
Next year, Owen might be in Portland or Seattle, San Francisco or San Diego. He might be with his dad in some broken-down apartment or still on the road or in a college classroom somewhere. Right here in this parking lot, the rain coming down in sheets all around him, it was impossible to know for sure.
What he did know was this: Tomorrow, they would get back into the red Honda. They’d take turns choosing a radio station and stop for burgers when they got hungry, leaving the greasy bags strewn across the floor, though they both knew it would have driven her nuts; they reveled in her invisible annoyance, as if it were a sign that she was still with them. They’d arrive in Seattle in need of a shower and some sleep, and then they’d start the same weary search for jobs and schools and houses, all the various pieces that somehow added up to a life.
But for now, Owen left the rain-soaked mountains and the cold pavement behind, moving back through the silent hallway to their room. As he tiptoed past his sleeping father—the thatch of light hair the only thing visible beneath a pile of covers—he wasn’t thinking about tomorrow. He wasn’t thinking about college acceptance letters or graduation or even Seattle. For once, as he kicked off his soggy sneakers and pulled the rough sheets back over him, he was just relieved to be here and now, in this bleak, colorless motel room, with only his dad and his turtle for company, a strange and slow-moving trio, a passing version of home.
21
In Rome, Lucy read.
It was unseasonably warm for late March, and the sun was hot on her shoulders. Her parents had gone shopping, leaving her on the Spanish Steps with her book (Julius Caesar, because when in Rome…), and promised to be back in an hour. But Lucy was in no rush; she could have sat there all day.
When a shadow fell over her, she lifted her eyes to find a man with oily black hair smiling down at her, a basket of flowers in the crook of his arm.
“A rose for the bella signorina?” he asked with a heavy accent, trying to hand her one, but Lucy shook her head and returned to her book. He’d already tried to sell her the same rose earlier. In fact, in the six days they’d been in Italy—first Florence and Cinque Terre, then Siena and finally Rome, her whole spring break filled with beautiful art and astonishing architecture, staggering cliffs and seaside houses, pizza and pasta and even a little wine—she’d been offered flowers by at least two dozen people. They would leave them on your table at restaurants, try to slip them into your bag as you were walking, corner you in the piazzas, then demand a few euros. Her father had bought a couple for Lucy and her mother the very first day, and they’d tucked them in their hair, charmed by the novelty of it. But it wasn’t long before they discovered that the vendors were everywhere, completely impossible to avoid, hawking not just flowers but also sunglasses and wallets, flags and pins, even small bottles of olive oil. The streets of Italy were just one giant marketplace.