Page 9 of Anywhere with You

We took three-hour shifts behind the wheel, sometimes swapping when we stopped for gas, sometimes pulling over next to fields where cows grazed, once near a field of green plants that I thought were cotton.

I’d stopped once on a weekend trip to Austin to pick up a boll and feel its strange softness, the lumps of seeds inside.

“It’s the fruit, you know,” Cara said when I told her.

“What is?”

“The cottony part of the cotton plant. That’s the plant’s fruit.”

“Huh,” I said. “Weird.”

And we drove on.

Cara never failed to spot a baby cow or goat in the field and say, “Awww! Look, BABIES!”

We talked about the flowers—it was an excellent time for a road trip. Bluebonnets, Indian paintbrushes, and evening primroses filled the grassy medians and ditches. I did internet searches for the ones that I didn’t already know, which were…all of them but the bluebonnets.

Cara and I fell silent when we passed fields of sunflowers at sunset.

“Wow,” she said finally.

“I’ve definitely seen uglier places,” I said.

She just nodded.

Cara napped, too, during my first driving shift, which surprised me for some reason. I guess I’d imagined her as someone who would sit straight, seat belt perfectly buckled, watching the road in case I missed anything, not leaned back with her sock feet on the dash.

Was I too hard on her? Possibly. But she also wouldn’t apply lip balm while driving because it was too distracting, so I can’t be blamed.

I twisted my purple streak into a curl, finished off the last of Mom’s monster cookies that Cara enjoyed as much as I did, and listened to my playlist as Cara slept, singing along in a whisper, and when I grew bored, I quietly recited the Mary Oliver poems I’d memorized: “Wild Geese” and “Black Oaks” and a prose poem, “May,” about encountering a copperhead snake for the first time, in which she doesn’t run away screaming like I would but has a profound emotional experience instead. Because…that’s Mary Oliver.

Cara would probably run away from a copperhead, too, but she’d also know exactly what species it was and whether it was juvenile or adult and how many eggs it laid, whereas I would just be running because it was snake-shaped.

Cara and I spent the night at a midrange hotel a few miles on the other side, finally, of the Texas-New Mexico border.

I was worried that it would be a little awkward—I hadn’t shared a room with anyone but Bridget since college.

But there wasn’t any time for awkwardness.

We played rock, paper, scissors for who had the shower first. I won, and as soon as I was out and mostly dry, I put on my pajamas, brushed my teeth, braided my mass of hair so it wouldn’t strangle me in the night, and curled up under the thick duvet.

Cara hadn’t even gotten out of the shower before I was asleep.

* * *

I was a little embarrassed about how eager I was to see the International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell the next day.

It wasn’t as though I had an I Want to Believe poster on my wall.

Anymore. But I had read more about this stop than any other that Cara and I had talked about, trying to convince myself that it wasn’t worth our time and failing completely.

“How much time do we have scheduled for Roswell?” I asked as I found a parking spot.

“No, we’re not doing that,” Cara said.

“Doing what?”

“We’re not scheduling out our days by the hour. My job runs on a literal bell. I can make my peace with alarm clocks and check-in times, but I’m not going to set a timer for our actual adventures.” Her cheeks went faintly pink. “I mean, excursions…destinations…whatever.”

“No, I like adventures ,” I said, bumping her shoulder with mine. I’d always had the impression that she was shorter than me, but our shoulders were very nearly even. Huh. “You went with the average amount of time spent here feature on your maps app, didn’t you?” I asked as we paid for our tickets.

Cara smiled and tried to hide it. “It’s just an estimate, Honey.”

“Alright,” I teased. “Get ready for fourteen hours of alien evidence.”

The elderly man behind the ticket counter said, “We, uh, close at five p.m.”

“Did you account for the time dilation associated with light speed travel?” I asked.

Cara grabbed my arm and dragged me inside.

And oh.

This place found the line between believable evidence and outrageous conspiracy theory and played it like a jump rope.

There were staged alien dissections attended by CIA agents in suits and bowler hats, newspaper clippings and photographs of close encounters framed on each wall, and depictions of science fiction aliens through the ages.

I spent entirely too long at a wall with information—quote, unquote information —about the first documented alien abduction case in the US and was soon joined by an elderly woman who was eager to tell me about the night that she, too, had been abducted and kept for three years before they returned her.

They had, of course, left an undetectable tracking device in her belly button.

Cara just stood beside me and sighed loudly and pointedly until the woman left.

Cara wasn’t having a terrible time, though. I could tell that she found the tiny papier-maché aliens charming, and that she was as delighted as I was when the UFO at the center of the room started spinning, lighting up, and emitting fog.

At the end of all the delightful madness was the weirdest gift shop I’d ever seen. I bought Badger an alien costume that he’d hate and bought myself a bobblehead and a bright green alien hunter hard hat with attached light. After half a moment’s hesitation, I bought a hard hat for Cara, too.

“Not exactly what I had in mind for our first Mesmio reel, Honey,” she said, “but…it’s perfect. It’s not at all the kind of thing Lorenzo would expect me to do.”

We recorded ourselves in front of a life-sized UFO, laughing and switching our headlamps on.

It wasn’t a long video. It certainly wasn’t anything that would bring us followers.

But, as Cara pointed out, that wasn’t the point. The point was that while the exes were on their stupid cruise, we were out having fun too, and if we shared that fact with our loved ones and despised ones, well that was just a bonus.

Down the street, we found Alien Zone and paid our three dollars each to pose with aliens wearing boxer shorts in a 1980s-style dorm room, then sitting in an outhouse.

Cara and I took turns on the examination table while a plastic alien medic loomed over us.

And we played foosball with another. Halfway through, we were laughing so hard that neither of us could operate our legs properly, let alone post to Mesmio.

We had to give it up until we recovered.

We sat at the bar with the alien bartender, telling him our troubles and appreciating his terrific listening skills.

“If only all men were like you,” Cara crooned, leaning over to adjust his bow tie.

“Silent, attentive, and can make a cocktail?” I asked.

Cara thought about it. “Yes. And such a snazzy dresser.”

I dragged Cara away from the bar and into a UFO, where we posted more reels and shared the valuable lessons we’d learned about not tempting fate by standing under tractor beams next to cows at night.

I checked Bridget’s Mesmio page while I had the app open. “No new posts from Bridget and Lorenzo today.”

“I’m sorry,” Cara said. “I don’t know anyone by those names.”

She said it with sass and a hair flip. I rolled my eyes.

“So,” I said as we headed back to the car. “What did you think of the museum? Are you convinced that there’s life out there?”

Cara shook her head. “I’m convinced that the people of Roswell have found a lucrative hobby.”

“Skeptic,” I said, making my new alien bobblehead mimic her head shake.

* * *

Later, while Cara filled up the gas tank, I browsed convenience store snacks and stretched my sore back. Sitting in a car shouldn’t hurt, but I supposed I wasn’t twenty anymore.

My phone vibrated in my pocket. I glanced at the screen and answered.

“Happy Maha Shivaratri, Honey.”

“I’m not Hindu, Dad. And neither are you.”

“Don’t tell me what I’m not. I could be Hindu.”

“Are you?” I grabbed a mini roll of Oreos, then put them back and grabbed the family size.

“No. But I believe we should all coexist. Each to their om.”

“Dad…”

“Do you know why we pray to Lord Ganesha?”

“Please stop.”

“We have to address the elephant in the room!”

“Let me talk to Mom.”

There was a muffled shuffling sound and my mother’s voice, “I’m never letting your father talk to your Uncle Farid again. They were on the phone for over an hour last night, and I thought your father was going to laugh until he suffocated.”

From the background, Dad said, “A Hindu swami, a Jewish rabbi, and a Catholic priest walk into a bar. The bartender says, What is this, a joke? ” Then he laughed until I could hear him start to wheeze, unable to catch his breath.

“God help us. Seriously,” Mom said.

“Do you need to go check on him?”

“Maybe. But if he passes out, at least I’ll get a break from the world’s worst religious comedian.”

“That’s kind of a mouthful. I think I’ll just keep calling him Dad .”

Mom yelled, “Go get your inhaler, nitwit.”

“That works, too. How’s Badger?”

“An angel. Aren’t you, fluffy puff?” Her voice devolved into baby talk.

I heard his happy panting in the background and was surprised by how acutely I missed him.

I wasn’t one of those people who referred to their pets as their fur babies or maxed out their credit cards buying him outfits.

Badger was, indeed, a sweet little fluffy puff, but he didn’t notice or care who was taking care of him.

He even seemed to prefer my parents, so they could all just have each other. Jerks.

“How’s the trip going so far?” Mom asked carefully.

“It’s great,” I answered a little fiercely. “It’s fun to be with someone who doesn’t keep trying to feed me and convince me to move into my childhood bedroom.”

“I’m sorry for loving you so much.”

I laughed. “You sound like Grandma Singh.”

“Are you accusing me of stealing phrases from my mother-in-law, the world expert on guilt trips? Yes. Yes, I did. But you’re really having a good time? You know I worry.”

“I know you do,” I said, moving to the register. “But it’s been really nice, actually. I’m already tired of being in the car, but the drive has been beautiful.”

“And your friend?”

I sighed. “I’m not tired of Cara. Yet.”

She had come into the convenience store and was standing beside me, grinning, holding up her family-size pack of Oreos to show that we’d picked out the same thing. When she heard me, she dropped her smile and pretended to be offended.

“She drives like there’s a cop around every fucking corner,” I complained. “Not one mile over the speed limit, the whole way. This trip is going to take forever.”

“What a monster,” Mom said blandly.

“Yeah, well,” Cara said, leaning toward the phone, “Honey drives like—”

“Oops, sorry Mom. Going through a tunnel. Call you later.” I hung up.