Drive on, my Lo cried shrilly.
Oh, a squashed squirrel, she said. What a shame.
Yes, isnt it? (eager, hopeful Hum).
Let us stop at the next gas station, Lo continued. I want to go to the washroom.
We shall stop wherever you want, I said. And then as a lovely, lonely, supercilious grove (oaks, I thought; American trees at that stage were beyond me) started to echo greenly the rush of our car, a red and ferny road on our right turned its head before slanting into the woodland, and I suggested we might perhaps
Drive on, my Lo cried shrilly.
Righto. Take it easy. (Down, poor beast, down.)
I glanced at her. Thank God, the child was smiling.
You chump, she said, sweetly smiling at me. You revolting creature. I was a daisy-fresh girl, and look what youve done to me. I ought to call the police and tell them you raped me. Oh you, dirty, dirty old man.
Was she just joking? An ominous hysterical note rang through her silly words. Presently, making a sizzling sound with her lips she started complaining of pains, said she could not sit, said I had torn something inside her. The sweat rolled down my neck, and we almost ran over some little animal or other that was crossing the road with tail erect, and again my vile-tempered companion called me an ugly name. When we stopped at the filling station, she scrambled out without a word and was a long time away. Slowly, lovingly, an elderly friend with a broken nose, wiped my windshield they do it differently at every place, from chamois cloth to soapy brush, this fellow used a pink sponge.
She appeared at last. Look, she said in that neutral voice that hurt me so, give me some dimes and nickels. I want to call mother in that hospital. Whats the number?
Get in, I said. You cant call that number.
Why?
Get in and slam the door.
She got in and slammed the door. The old garage man beamed at her. I swung on to the highway.
Why cant I call my mother if I want to?
Because, I answered, your mother is dead.
33
In the gay town of Lepingville I bought her four books of comics, a box of candy, a box of sanitary pads, two cokes, a manicure set, a travel clock with a luminous dial, a ring with a real topaz, a tennis racket, roller skates with white high shoes, field glasses, a portable radio set, chewing gum, a transparent raincoat, sunglasses, some more garments swooners, shorts, all kinds of summer frocks. At the hotel we had separate rooms, but in the middle of the night she came sobbing into mine, and we made it up very gently. You see, she had absolutely nowhere else to go.
Part Two
1
It was then that began our extensive travels all over the States. To any other type of tourist accommodation I soon grew to prefer the Functional Motel clean, neat, safe nooks, ideal places for sleep, argument, reconciliation, insatiable illicit love. At first, in my dread of arousing suspicion, I would eagerly pay for both sections of one double unit, each containing a double bed. I wondered what type of foursome this arrangement was ever intended for, since only a pharisaic parody of privacy could be attained by means of the incomplete partition dividing the cabin or room into two communicating love nests. By and by, the very possibilities that such honest promiscuity suggested (two young couples merrily swapping mates or a child shamming sleep to ear-witness primal sonorities) made me bolder, and every now and then I would take a bed-and-cot or twin-bed cabin, a prison cell of paradise, with yellow window shades pulled down to create a morning illusion of Venice and sunshine when actually it was Pennsylvania and rain.
We came to know nous connûmes[141], to use a Flaubertian intonation the stone cottages under enormous Chateaubriandesque trees, the brick unit, the adobe unit, the stucco court, on what the Tour Book of the Automobile Association describes as shaded or spacious or landscaped grounds. The log kind, finished in knotty pine, reminded Lo, by its golden-brown glaze, of fried-chicken bones. We held in contempt the plain whitewashed clapboard Kabins, with their faint sewerish smell or some other gloomy self-conscious stench and nothing to boast of (except good beds), and an unsmiling landlady always prepared to have her gift (well, I could give you) turned down.
Nous connûmes (this is royal fun) the would-be enticements of their repetitious names all those Sunset Motels, U-Beam Cottages, Hillcrest Courts, Pine View Courts, Mountain View Courts, Skyline Courts, Park Plaza Courts, Green Acres, Macs Courts. There was sometimes a special line in the write-up, such as Children welcome, pets allowed (You are welcome, you are allowed). The baths were mostly tiled showers, with an endless variety of spouting mechanisms, but with one definitely non-Laodicean characteristic in common, a propensity, while in use, to turn instantly beastly hot or blindingly cold upon you, depending on whether your neighbour turned on his cold or his hot to deprive you of a necessary complement in the shower you had so carefully blended. Some motels had instructions pasted above the toilet (on whose tank the towels were unhygienically heaped) asking guests not to throw into its bowl garbage, beer cans, cartons, stillborn babies; others had special notices under glass, such as Things to Do (Riding: You will often see riders coming down Main Street on their way back from a romantic moonlight ride. Often at 3 a.m., sneered unromantic Lo).