The Sky’s the Limit: My Journey with Maryellen

I’m not ready to say goodbye to Maryellen yet. I climb into the car with the rest of the family, and we wave to Joan and Jerry as we set off. The station wagon hauls the Airstream trailer, bikes strapped to the back. We look like quite a caravan.

The four of us squeeze into the middle seat, and Mikey sits between his parents up front. Maryellen holds a notepad and a box of colored pencils, and Beverly and Tom keep swiping pencils from it. Beverly uses the red as nail polish, and Tom hands Mikey a green one, which Mikey gnaws on like a stalk of celery while Tom drums out a beat with the purple and yellow.

Maryellen keeps trying to wrangle her siblings and reclaim her pencils, so I let Mikey play with my watch and get Beverly and Tom going on a game of rock-paper-scissors. Maryellen shoots me a grateful look. Once the game has them absorbed, we switch seats so I can sit next to her.

I ask Maryellen what she’s working on. She tried out to be a reporter for the school newspaper and got rejected. The editors called her stories boring, but she still wants a spot, so she’s taking notes on the trip, hoping to find an idea good enough to earn a second chance.

Maryellen’s notepad is full of good drawings, I tell her, though she waves that off as just doodles to jog her memory, like the cow she sketched for a story about where the school’s milk comes from. I tell her kids would love that sketch. Talk of milk gets Maryellen thinking about food, and she calls up front to ask her dad when they’re stopping for lunch.

Carolyn groans that she’s starving, too, and so are Beverly, Tom, and Mikey. Mr. Larkin promises the next diner. Outside, Florida’s flat green landscape rolls by, nothing like the hilly world of Cedar Top, North Carolina. Billboards line the highway, advertising cars, restaurants, beaches, and a shaving cream called Burma Shave with catchy rhymes.

Mr. Larkin soon pulls into a diner. It looks much like the diners I know: a long shining counter with stools, booths, napkin dispensers, ketchup and mustard bottles, even a familiar-looking jukebox. Mrs. Larkin asks Maryellen and me to take Beverly and the boys to wash up. Maryellen sighs, and I soon see why. Beverly pirouettes the whole way to the restroom to the jukebox tune, and once there, Tom and Mikey flatly refuse to wash their hands.

I have an idea. I wet my hands, work up a foam of soap, hum a little tune, and pat some bubbles onto my chin like a beard, then pretend to shave it off. Everyone cracks up, and Tom and Mikey can’t wait to lather their own hands and faces the same way. Before they realize it, they’re clean.

Maryellen tells me I’m good with kids. I hadn’t thought of myself that way. At home the only kid around is Daria, whose mom helps Gran, a retired archaeologist, catalog the bones and pots she’s collected over the years. Daria once wrecked Emma’s laptop, and Emma and I haven’t warmed up to her or Gran since. I don’t mention any of that to Maryellen, but herding the little kids back to the table, I find myself thinking maybe I could give Gran and Daria a real chance.