Mary looks at me and shrugs. She tries to act light about it, but I can see that she’s hurt, and to be honest I don’t know what Bev’s problem is. Mary’s trying to help. But that’s how Bev always is with her, and I’ve stopped trying to figure out why. I shrug back and give Mary a hug while Bev rearranges the bags that Mary loaded for her, and then they hug, brief and tense, and Mary tells me to drive safe and I tell her that I will.
The front door shuts, and now that it’s just us on the sidewalk, Bev’s whole body relaxes. She smiles.
“Hey, don’t move,” she says.
She reaches toward me, touches my cheekbone.
“Got it,” she says. “Make a wish.”
“Hmm,” I say. “I wish—”
“Shh. Don’t tell me.”
She waits, guitar case in one hand, rows of pastel houses behind her, holding my eyelash between her thumb and her forefinger. So much swarms through my head that it’s hard to settle on anything. How can I wish for one thing when everything is beginning? So I just wish for this feeling to last.
I nod at her: finished. She separates her fingers. My eyelash is on her thumb.
“Wish granted,” she says, and blows it away.
Bev’s a sculptor; she’s always touching things. As I steer us across Market Street and onto Valencia, she runs her hands across the dashboard, the vents, the edges of the windows, the cloth-covered ceiling.
“Feel anything good?”
“Oh, yeah,” she says. “Texture city,” and we laugh and make our way through the Mission.
I turn onto 24th Street and pull over in front of the Benson-Flores household. Meg and Alexa sit outside the yellow Victorian with their two dads, Jeffrey and Kevin, boxes stacked all around them. Alexa has a notebook open and her phone to her ear. Meg’s talking to Kevin while Jeffrey tapes up a box.
Bev and I slide out of the bus and greet them. Then we stand, staring at the boxes, the bags, Meg’s bass, and Alexa’s drum kit. The bus has a lot of space, but by the time we’re done, it will also have four passengers.
“Oh, man,” Meg says. She’s leaning against Kevin’s shoulder, twisting a strand of her pink, wavy hair around her finger. “This is going to be a challenge.”
Jeffrey, stonier-faced and quieter than usual, surveys the back.
“Don’t worry,” Kevin says. “If you forget anything we’ll bring it with us when we visit next month. Or we can mail it if you need it sooner.”
The rest of us will be coming back to the city after the tour, but we’re dropping Meg off in Portland. She’s going to Lewis and Clark, and before the fall semester, attending a summer program for theater majors.
“You’re the one who’s worried,” Meg says, and in response, Kevin playfully pushes her away.
“Go help Jeffrey,” he says.
Alexa snaps her phone shut. “Just got us a gig at a piano bar in Arcata,” she says.
“Where’s Arcata?” Bev asks.
“Ten miles from Eureka.”
Meg sticks her head out of the van, grabs a box from Jeffrey, and says, “Where’s Eureka?”
“On the coast. A little under three hours from Redding.”
“So is it tomorrow?” I ask.
She looks up at me, shields her eyes from the sun. Blue marks are on her hands—her signature peace signs. She nods, yes. Some kind of headband thing is tied around her forehead.
“Melinda is beautiful,” Alexa says. “I just have to sit here and look at all of you for a second.”
After she’s taken us all in, she stands up and joins us. I can see the headband better now—it’s really just a thin strip of blue fabric tied around her long black hair, with little bells on it that chime when she moves.
Meg and Alexa peer into the bus together like dream girls from different decades: Meg in one of her many kitschy, short vintage dresses, this one brown with a stampede of white horses galloping across it, and Alexa in her flowy, white hippie shirt and tight blue corduroys. It wasn’t hard for Bev and me to figure out who should be in the band. These girls dress every day like they’re going to be onstage.
Jeffrey and Kevin are trying to fit Meg’s stuff onto the floor of the backseat, placing the boxes and bags at different angles with none of the laid-back excitement of Dad and Uncle Pete. When they are finished, Kevin rushes toward Meg and wails, “My little girl is leaving home!”
“I know, Dad,” she says, and for a moment she looks so sad that I have to look away as they hug again and Jeffrey joins them.
Bev and I climb back into the front, followed soon by Alexa. When Meg finally takes her place next to her sister, Jeffrey appears in my window.
“You, young man, had better drive safely.”
“Of course,” I say.
“I want you to drive like a grandpa. Slowly. In the right lane the whole way there and back.”
I laugh. “I don’t think Melinda could go fast even if I wanted her to.”
He nods his approval and steps back, and we all wave good-bye as I pull away.
“This is so pretty,” Alexa says, looking at the diamond pattern on the seat covers as I turn left onto Dolores Street. She pulls out a notebook in which she keeps a running list of jobs she might want to have someday. “I never thought of doing upholstery before, but this is gorgeous. The energy in here is amazing. What was your dad’s band called again?”
“The Rainclouds,” I say.