Part II: Journeys (Chapter 17)
I-29 North–Passing by the Sioux City Auditorium
Shel asks me why I’m suddenly quiet.
How can I tell him we are too
close to Aunt Sal’s, and I have nothing else to say?
I’m still no closer to deciding
about the grant.
Grant, grant, grant, grant,
grant.
The goddamn grant.
In the past few days, I almost
slipped up about the grant, but I know it’s best to keep quiet. What good would
it do? Shel, the big time shrink, would never close his practice for a year to
go gallivanting around France while I paint indulgent self-portraits.
His work is everything; it
defines him.
Without prestige and the
trappings that go with his title, Shel is just another scared little boy who
wants his female figure around.
If I go, I go alone. And if I
go alone, he’ll divorce me on general principle.
I think he has this fear that if
I go away, I won’t come back.
He might be right, and I’m not
yet ready to face that possibility.
I’m more confused than ever, so
what’s the point of saying anything else?
*
As we hit the periphery of
town, I notice that Sioux City seems scruffy and low rent, its age lines
cutting deeper into the texture of my youth. Even the auditorium looks run down
now, the parking lot warped and cracked, crabgrass and weeds pushing through
the concrete.
Was it this way last year?
The building looks like an
overgrown yellow-brick hull now, the old curved vent pipes on the roof rusting
out. But when I was in high school, the auditorium was the place to be,
especially when the Caravan of Stars hit town with head liners like Chad and
Jeremy, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Herman’s Hermits, Freddy and the Dreamers,
Gary Lewis and the Playboys, and Peter and Gordon.
I could sing then – pubescent
screams drowned out my voice, so no one could hear how awful I sounded. I’d
belt out lyrics like “So Ferry ‘cross the Mersey!” and no one would notice or
even care how awful I sounded, my voice alternating between a squeak and a
crack.
Before that, I remember our
sixth-grade choir – wearing red beanies, white blouses with red scarves, black
skirts – belting out “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” under the hot lights of KVTV
Channel 9. The auditorium would be filled with our families and friends, even
though it was a school day.
But now it looks as though
nothing much goes on in there anymore.
*
As we approach the Hamilton Boulevard exit,
I think about Nicole at the Circle of Love compound, waiting for her baby’s
birth.
My first grandchild.
I wonder if she’s excited or
scared. Maybe both.
I’ll never forget the day
Nicole was born, how strange it felt when she slid out of my body, slippery and
wet. Like she’d been suctioned out by a vacuum cleaner.
It happened so fast, no pain.
The pain would come later.
And then I held her, this child
with black hair and red skin. Blue eyes those first few weeks.
The one thing Doug could never
take away from me – the moment Nikki and I became mother and daughter.
But what has happened since
then? Am I really so awful as a mother?
I almost ask Shel to pull over
at the Amoco Station on Hamilton and West 8th so that I can call Nikki and tell
her to come to Sioux City, after all.
That I miss her and want her
here.
Nana. I know how Nana would
react, the things she would say to me when she’d see Nikki’s belly and no
wedding ring.
We pass by the station and turn
onto West 14th Street.
