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“That car is following awfully close,” she said, slowing
down even more.
We crawled along the Pennsylvania border, up the
length of New Jersey, stopping only once in Secaucus so
Mom could steel herself for the tunnel ride into Manhattan.
“Mom!” I said, exasperated. “We’re almost there!”
“I can’t help thinking about that Sylvester Stallone
movie,” she said. “There’s an explosion, and everyone gets
trapped in the tunnel. Water rushes in and cars crash and
people panic. I don’t mean to scare you.”
“You’re not scaring me. That’s just a movie.”
“Just because something is fiction doesn’t mean it can
never be fact.”
I sighed extra loud, stared out my closed window. “I
think there’s a bridge.”
“A bridge? Didn’t you see that Schwarzenegger film?”
Even at eleven years old, I knew my mother was nuts.
Like the time Celeste’s parents went on the coolest cruise
ever and all my mom could say was, “Hello! Does the word
Titanic mean nothing to those people?”
That’s why I was shocked when she accepted Aunt
Marty’s invitation for a long weekend in New York. If we
could only get there.
“Okay,” Mom finally said in Secaucus, gripping the
steering wheel. “Hold on, Ruthie. We’re going in.”
I clapped my hands, and my mother got back on the
road. We inched along in traffic, behind a huge bus, around
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