Free The Leisure Seeker: A Novel by Michael Zadoorian Page B

sitting on a lawn chair, just staring into space. On a little table next to him is our slide projector.
    “John?”
    “I set up the projector.”
    “Good for you, but it’s too light to show slides.”
    “I can see that, Ella.” He can still remember to be sarcastic when need be.
    “Well, good. We’ll set up the sheet in a little while. Comeon, let’s go rustle up some sandwiches. I’ve got ham and bologna. What sounds good?”
    “Bologna.”
    Why do I even ask? He had a bologna sandwich every day for thirty-five years when he was working. Bologna with one slice of American cheese and a smear of mustard, cut top to bottom, not diagonally. I could make them in my sleep.
    We walk around back to the van. I hope the projector will be all right because I don’t feel like moving it. I make us sandwiches and potato chips and root beer. My discomfort has subsided and I decide to whip myself up an old-fashioned. I dig out the booze, find a couple of desiccated sugar cubes in the cupboard, and I’m in business. I top the whole kit and kaboodle with a skewered orange slice and a cherry. It’s not an old-fashioned without. John just gets another glass of pop. The sun’s going down and he’s a little less sharp now.
    “Is this home?” he says, as we settle on lawn chairs outside our door.
    “No, honey. We’re not going home. We’re on vacation.”
    “Oh.”
    I know this trip is hard on him. The only things that tether him to the world are our house and me, and I’ve taken away our house. But no one, not our doctors, not our kids, not even our congressman, can convince me that this vacation is not a good idea. Hell, it’s the only idea we have left.
     

    At first, all you see is a dense forest: sky and earth both mottled with brilliant gold and crimson and orange, a bonfire of color. It’s as if fall itself has seeped into the film. Then when you look closer, deep into the blazing trees, you can see something else—the outline of the Leisure Seeker. And next to it, another camper that looks just like it, owned by our friends Jim and Dawn Jillette. The two vans are parallel to each other, their extended canopies almost touching. We used to do that to create a common area, somewhere we could move a picnic table, a place to play cards. Sometimes if it was raining, Jim and John would throw a tarp over the gap between the two canopies so we could walk freely between them.
    In the next slide, the two of them are at a picnic table playing pinochle. Jim, smoking a pipe, his wire-rims wedged above his eyebrows, is frowning at the cards in his hand. Dawn, auburn hair held back with a mauve kerchief, is laughing at him. At the bottom of the frame is John’s freckled hand, fanned on the gingham oilcloth.
    “There’s Jim!” says John, with more enthusiasm than I’ve seen him display this entire trip.
    “And Dawn,” I say.
    “Old J.J.”
    For an instant, John sounds like his old self. J.J. was his nickname for Jim. They worked together for many years at GM, which is how we all got to be friends.
    “Boy, how is Jim? I haven’t seen him in ages.”
    I sigh and turn to John. “Dear. Jim died eight years ago.”
    “He did? Jim’s dead?”

    “Yes, honey. Don’t you remember? We went to the funeral.” We’ve been through this before. John has forgotten all that he doesn’t want to remember.
    “Aw, damn. Is Dawn still around?”
    “I’m afraid she died a year before him.”
    “Aw, Christ,” he says, clutching his hand over his mouth.
    The fragile look on John’s face makes me regret choosing this tray of slides. I should have known better than to tell him the truth, but I get so tired of lying to him. I just keep hoping some of this information is going to stay put. But it never does.
    I click forward. In this one, Dawn and I are walking down a road, both carrying gorgeous bunches of brightly colored leaves. I remember so well that we displayed them in an old milk carton on our communal picnic table.
    The next