We stop at the visitor’s center. We take an indoor tour. We look out on the canyons. There is no drop-off; it feels as if we are suspended above the opening. Clouds are hanging below the mountaintops. The ridgeline looks as if it is made out of paper. The tour guide, a plain-looking blonde woman, discusses glaciers. She explains that contrary to popular belief, glaciers would not have formed the canyons. She says we can throw out the idea of glaciers. It is just a theory, she says. Back in the car, I say that the drive through Zion was the best so far. Well, actually, Arthur says, I missed a great deal of it.
“You were looking only a little bit left. If you were looking all the way to your left, you would have seen an amazing view.”
Jimmy says that there is a sign that reads forty-five miles per hour. “Who would want to go forty-five?”
“Chickens,” Arthur says. “Old people. Very cautious people. People who are so cautious, they’re actually a danger to other people.”
It is five o’clock on Arthur’s watch. The sky is blue. It is hard to see his face. His lips have the silhouette of a woman’s lips. Tender.
Arthur is worried about the air-conditioning. We lost it for nearly three minutes. He was timing, but he didn’t say anything until now.
“It could be,” he says, “shades of things to come.” It’s so like Arthur to use a word like shade. “In Salt Lake, we may want to have the car checked,” he says, admitting that he has no clue when it comes to things mechanical.
We listen to one of his concerts. He says it sounds fragile. I ask if we can listen to it again. “Do you like it?” he asks, turning to me.
“Beautiful,” I say. He looks back at me again to see my expression. He wants to see whether I am telling the truth.
Now we are driving through Salt Lake City. It is eighty-eight degrees. Artie likes it here. Very wide streets. Clean. He thinks the Mormon Tabernacle Choir is great. He complains that it is hard to be driving through the town and looking for the scenic spots and also looking for the Safeway. He says it is hard to remember the city as he saw it eleven years ago, the last time he was here. The memory has been replaced by this last half hour. “It’s bigger now,” he says.
“You know what I’d like to do?” I say. “I’d like to find a Yellow Pages.” What I want to do is find a synagogue. It is my father’s yahrtzeit; I want to say Kaddish. There are no synagogues to be found in Salt Lake City. Instead, we stand beside a building, the four of us. We bow our heads. There are miles of grassland in front of us. I put a handkerchief on my head and do the prayer for the dead. It is the closest I can come.
At 1,305 miles outside of Los Angeles, we are listening to the soundtrack from A Hard Day’s Night. Paul McCartney is singing “And I Love Her.” “His voice,” Arthur explains, “used to be tenor. It’s lower now. It’s hard to lock into that pitch.”
Somewhere in Idaho we get out at a cemetery in a field. Arthur stands off at the edge of the small square of land, near a sprinkler, his arms crossed. “Shepherd,” one tombstone reads. Another says, “Dr. Richard F. Sutton.” The boys walk around, inspecting quietly, reverently. This is Arthur’s favorite part of the trip. Back in the car, we listen to synthesized music. Arthur says that if the ear tries to contain the pulsing and the breathing of the music, one gets a tremendous combination. Michael McDonald comes on. Arthur pats his hands in time against the steering wheel. I air-drum. Jimmy laughs at me. Arthur listens to a song of his. He says he is embarrassed. “I can sing better than that.” He does. He turns down the music and sings live.
Thursday, August 26, 1982—1,497 miles outside of Los Angeles. We are in Teton country. Switchbacks. Rises to our left, rivers on the right, 204 miles driven today. The peaks of the Tetons are covered with snow. One of the youngest mountain ranges, according to Arthur. He climbed them once. The clouds in front of us look like downspouts, like funnels. Arthur says that Paul may have just shot a future album cover on our movie camera. “All you have to do is lift a frame,” he says. He opens the window. You can hear the trees whisk by. Later, the slope off the river beside the car is so steep that the tops of the trees rising up from the shore do not even reach the edge of the road.
Yellowstone National Park. We get out to see Old Faithful. It’s steaming. Then it goes up. As it calms down, I say, foolishly, that I want to walk closer. “I mean, no one’s there. There’s nothing blocking us.”
“Go for it, Dad,” Paul says. Arthur says he is exhausted. He wants to check into our room and take a nap. I take Jimmy and Paul, and we walk around the sulfur pools. They look like the inside of someone’s organ—a bile duct or kidney. The liquid in them is flat and clear, and the rock underneath is cream or green or aqua. I can feel heat from them as we walk along the concrete path. The vapor smells.
That evening we eat in a giant lodge. People all around us. We are talking when Jimmy begins to cough. And then nothing. I realize that he is having an asthma attack. It was the vapor from the sulfur pools. If we do not get him a shot of adrenaline, he will die. Sue isn’t around to give him a shot. The waiter comes over and wants to know if everything is all right, although it is
