Free Mum's the Word by Dorothy Cannell

sitting waist-deep in water, the man might realize what a prize—idiot—I was.
    Endeavouring to milk every ounce of fun, I pretended I was playing one of those driver safety games on a small screen. The kind where you can get killed more than once with no side effects. Vehicles, pedestrians, buildings whizzed by.
    â€œHow far to our destination?”
    â€œSweetheart, follow the signs to the motorway.” Ben sounded a bit choked up. Was he also catching pneumonia? Never mind that. Was I ever going to get a straight answer? “Somewhere outside Boston,” he had said when persuading me to answer the Mangé call with him. Truth finally reared its ugly head. I was about to spend the next several days one hundred miles from here in a suburb of a suburb.
    No time to extort a confession. Lots of honking from outside the car. Was that woman in the Volvo waving hello to a friend? Or shaking her fist at me? Feeling unwelcome in my lane, I switched and managed a nip-and-tuck retreat. Ben was pretending to be asleep. All was coming back to me now—the way he turned green at the airport when I mentioned being met by the Mangés, the way our sightseeing had been accomplished with the speed of a fast-forwarded video cassette.
    Poor baby’s finger, my foot! He had insisted I drive because he didn’t want my hands free when the truth sank in!Even his lovemaking of last night now attained sinister connotations.
    Wiping my face free of rain, the better to glare at him, my heart turned traitor. He looked so innocent with his hair damp and rumpled. Hadn’t I brought this on myself by being so difficult about this trip? Upon my admitting I wouldn’t mind seeing Boston, he must have been elated that the Mangé meeting place was in the general vicinity.
    Abstraction had turned me into a regular will-o’-the-wisp driving one handed; now a truck dive-bombed in front of me. Inadvertently I risked changing lanes again. Strange! The car immediately in front of me had a little white flag waving from its bonnet. So too, did the car in front of him. Time for a rear view mirror inspection. The car behind me had a flag. I was being pursued by a line of flags. My clammy hands slid off the wheel. I was remembering an American film I had watched recently. Opening scene—a funeral. These cars were headed for the cemetery, and I was among the mourners, without a wreath in my hand. Faces pressed against the back window of the car in front of us. The traffic in the other lane hooked together for a mile.
    â€œBen!” I whimpered.
    â€œWhat?” He bolted upright.
    â€œNothing.” Rain teemed down, bawling in sympathy. A huge green and white sign flashed before my eyes.
    Interstate.
    Ben wrenched a piece of paper from his pocket. “Ellie, this is where we get off … I mean on.”
    â€œThanks for the advance warning.” Drying my face on my sleeve, I gripped the wheel, sucked in my breath and plunged sideways.
    Heading onto the ramp. The wipers being unable to keep up with the down-put, I can’t tell whether I’m supposed to be going thirty-five or fifty-five miles per hour. Merge! screams the sign now hurtling toward me. Somebody’s idea of a joke? To my left flows a river of trucks, each one taller than the average house, each one rocking in the wind. My hands keep sliding off the wheel. My ramp is dwindling to keyhole size. My feet cramp and go dead.
    â€œMerge!” Ben shouts.
    I close my eyes and do as I am told.
    Peace descended on my soul. The road unwound before me like black oil cloth, and the rain stopped as though God had snapped his fingers. Boston gave way to hills and fields, all sliding by like a giant mural. Surely that was a rainbow overhead? I was beginning to like the Colonies. Turning on the radio to a melodious hum, I flexed my fingers and smiled at Ben.
    â€œWhere to, Mr. Haskell, sir?”
    His hair was washed Brutus-style over his