Free Going Nowhere Faster by Sean Beaudoin Page A

from working in the garden. In fact, she was one giant muscle from head to toe from not having eaten a
morsel
of anything that wasn’t Certified Healthy for the last twenty-five years. She was in better shape than Jack LaLanne. She was in better shape than Arnold. My mother could grab Chad Chilton by the neck with one hand and make him weep like a baby.
    “Okay. Sure,” Ellen said, frightened.
    “Great!” my mother said, as if the outcome were never in doubt. Chopper knew which side his fake-beef tofu was buttered, and scrabbled his fat butt into the backseat. I looked at Ellen, apologizing as much as the side to side movement of my pupils would allow. She shrugged, pushing Chopper as far as he would go, and then got in next to him.
    As we pulled out of the parking lot, my mother turned off her book on tape (at least the twentieth biography of Che Guevara she’d read that I was aware of), and eyed us in the rearview. I was mentally preparing to deflect the
We took to the streets, We changed this country, We stopped Vietnam
reverie that seemed to be coming, but she shifted gears on me.
    “So, what do they call it now, anyway?”
    “What?”
    “Like ‘going out,’ or whatever?”
    The worst. An absolute disaster.
    ”God, Mom!” I said, longing for Vietnam after all.
    She laughed and wound long graying hair around two fingers. “You know, Ellen, Stan never said anything about a girlfriend to me.” She shook her head comically, gesturing toward Olivia. “Of course, he never says much of anything, at least not anymore. It was a different story when he was a boy.” She paused, for a second, a one-woman Charge of the Light Brigade. “I’ll have to show you some pictures sometime, Ellen! He was such a little cutie!”
    I envisioned myself encased in a block of Lucite, like a paperweight. It was peaceful. And airless.
    “Umm . . . sure . . . ,” Ellen said.
    “I know! You can come over for tacos!” my mother offered, as the Fry-O-Lator swerved in the road. “I make great tacos. How about Friday? What are you doing then?”
    “Ummm . . . I’ll have to . . .” Ellen said, stalling hard, but it didn’t matter, because my mother was already onto another thought. I could see it in her eyes, unfocused in the rearview. What was coming? A story about me wetting the bed?
No, too obvious.
Me not shaving yet?
That had potential.
Seeing Dr. Felder?
Conceivably.
    “Oh! I know what I wanted to ask!” My mother reached back and patted Ellen’s knee confidentially. “Do we need to talk about protection?”
    The Atom Bomb.
    The Apocalypse.
    Ellen’s eyes were wide open, a thousand-yard stare. She looked like someone had hit her in the stomach with a four iron.
    “No? Ha-ha, okay. You know, when I was your age, we used to go parking, too. . . . It’s funny that now you feed the ducks. Ha-ha, things change, huh? Of course,
my generation
had to grow up fast, not like you guys, everything free and easy.”
    Ellen turned away, looking out — or at least attempting to look out — the hot-wing spattered window. Even Olivia, half-asleep in the car seat, tried to deflect the nightmare. “Mom, can I have frogurt for dessert tonight?”
    “Sure, honey.” My mother pinched her cheek. “Oh! I know what I wanted to ask! Eleanor, were you involved in this
party
the other night? Your mother and I had a little talk about it, and I have to say, I really do not approve
at all.
”
    Chopper punctuated her disapproval. Twice.
    I held my breath. Ellen held her breath. We were at least ten streets from her house. The Fry Mobile seemed to creep even slower than usual.
    “Umm . . . ,” Ellen said. “Ummm . . .”
    “Breathe through your mouth,” I whispered.
    My mother rambled on. “Well, I assume your behavior was better than
Stanley’s.”
    Ellen looked at me quizzically. It was the final blow. The nadir.
Stanley?
    “I mean, he came home and started singing! Right there in the middle of the lawn!” My mother hummed a few