The two hour drive East up Route 20 through our gray expanse of Nebraska turned out to be about 2 ½ hours when I considered the potholes. I always thought you were supposed to slow down a bit when the holes in the street looked like the asphalt had been ripped apart by astroids. My dad got upset because I was braking while driving and he thought someone behind me might not stop in time. I thought if they were going over the same potholes I was, they might just be stopping anyway. When we reached Iowa we thought we'd take the scenic drive described in our Triple A book. We turned down a small side road, but within a few minutes the rolling hills and farms had given way to broken concrete under an expressway. We were laughing when we reached a dead end at an abandoned warehouse framed by barbed wire, and we were laughing even more when we turned around and saw other cars headed toward the same scenic nothingness. I like the way my dad laughs. His freshly shaven cheeks get peach colored and become thick and round and his eyes show their little wrinkles on the side, hiding clear blue underneath his closed lids. He always shakes his head softly as thought the world will never stop being funny. I hoped it wouldn't.

I wish I could have been home when my mother found the letter. I think it would have helped me see her toss her stiff brown hair back in a ponytail, as if all the hairspray in the world couldn't hold it down and sit down at the kitchen table with her head in her hands reading. I think it would have helped me to see her wrench her gold wedding band off her finger and lustily throw it over the railing of our deck into the lawn, hoping a goose, or at least a lawn mower would choke on it. I think it would have helped me to see her put on deep jazz music and cry her way through packing everything she owned into two small gray suitcases with my father's luggage tags still on them. I think it would have helped me to see her emotions, because by the time we got back from our road trip, Iowa refrigerator magnets in hand, she was coldly brushing out the door. She closed it without a word, leaving the tissues in the waste basket and the letter conspicuously and accusingly on the table, its every languid cursive letter glaring up at me, but mostly at my father.

We followed her to the train station but all we could really do was to watch. We could watch her tight heels sweep up the platform to the roaring black engine that went only one way to an old home she probably never thought she'd have to embrace. We watched as the only seeming barrier between us was a baby circus elephant on a chain held by a man in a loud blue hat. It was balancing concrete blocks on its stubby trunk. Most people thought it was the elephant that was strong.

We rode back home in my car without laughing or flipping headlights. We pulled into the empty garage and closed the doors silently, making a sound that echoed in our heads, clashing with intrusive thoughts. Once inside I thought we should eat and pulled minestrone soup out of the bare cabinet. It was the only thing we could eat together quietly. We kept eating soup, it seemed, for weeks as I tried to be mom and daughter at the same time. But every day I recorded on the weekly to-do lists my mom used to make with the yellow legal pads seemed to end with her not home, and my dad's thin cheeks sloshing soup, stubble of a beard lazily staining their color. I eat wondering what I will do when the legal pads run out.