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few feet, and I scream John’s name as loudly as I can. People on the street stop and look at me. I want to run, but I can’t run. My knees won’t do it. I wave my cane at the van.
    “Someone please stop that truck!” I screech.
    A young man wearing mechanic’s overalls comes up to me. The patch over his right pocket reads MAL . His hands are filthy, but he’s got a kind smile and he speaks gently to me. “Do you need help, ma’am?”
    “Yes. Could you run up to that van and tell the man to wait for me?”
    Without even looking both ways, the young man runs off into the street toward the van, which is moving slowly down the street. But before he gets around to the driver’s side, the van stops. He disappears around the side, so I can’t see what’s going on, but I hightail it across the street, as much as I can hightail it.
    Once I get to the passenger door, the young man is talkingto John through the window. “It’s fine, ma’am,” he says. “He wasn’t going anywhere. May I give you a hand?” He opens the door for me.
    “Thank you so much, Mal. You’re a doll.”
    Mal smiles at me, offers me a filthy hand, and I gladly accept it. I notice the patch over his left pocket as he helps me up. It’s a Phillips 66 insignia. I guess The Road provides. I step up into the van, close the door, and wave. I wait until we’re a good ways down the street before I speak.
    “What are you, nuts ?” I scream at John. “You going to take off without me? Where are you going to go? What are you gonna do? You’d be lost without me, you goddamned idiot.” I feel my blood pressure rising. “Where were you going to go? Huh? Tell me. What? You stupid asshole.”
    John looks at me, a mixture of anger and befuddlement. “I wasn’t going anywhere. I just thought I heard a noise, so I drove forward for a couple of feet. For Christ’s sake, I wouldn’t take off without you.”
    “Well, you goddamn well better not. Crazy old man.”
    “Up yours,” says John.
    I grab a Kleenex from our dispenser and wipe my hand. “Up your own.”
    No one says anything for the next dozen or so miles. After that, John turns to me and smiles. “Hi, honey,” he says, putting his hand on my knee.
    This little greeting is something we’ve always done, shorthand for “I’m glad you’re here,” “You’re dear to me,” or something to that effect. Whatever it means, I am not in the mood for it right now. I move my knee out of reach.
    “Go to hell.”
    “Why?”
    “I’m still mad at you.” I cross my arms. “You almost took off without me.”
    “What?”
    God, how I hate it when he does this. We get into an argument and start screaming at each other, then five minutes later, he’s forgotten all about it. He’s all lovey-dovey. What do you do when someone forgets to stay mad? How do you fight with that? You don’t. You just shut up because it’ll make you crazy.
    “You were gonna take off without me, dumbass.” I guess knowing what you need to do is different from actually doing it.
    “You’re crazy. Go screw yourself.”
    That makes me feel better. We’re both angry now, the way it should be. There’s another silence for about a minute, then John turns to me.
    “Hi, honey,” he says.
    I sigh. “Hi, John.”
     
    It was my granddaughter who first noticed the changes in John’s behavior. During a Christmas celebration at our house about four years back, she found John downstairs in ourrumpus room, where we keep all the memorabilia of our vacations, including a mounted map of the United States where John has marked the routes in color-coded tape. According to Lydia, he was walking around, bewildered, looking at everything and muttering to himself, “It’s going to be hard leaving all this.”
    Lydia walked up to him and said, “Grandpa, are you all right?” She said that he looked at her as if he wasn’t sure who exactly she was. When she repeated the question, he just nodded.
    Then she asked him, “Where are you