Good Luck, Fatty

shoulder of the road and settles on a bare, sandy patch of land she indicates by poking at the window glass. I grip the door handle as the Royale eases over, every ounce of my energy concentrated on suppressing my gag reflex. Before Orv has a chance to reach across the steering column and shift the Royale into park, I pull the door handle and eject. The Royale comes to a full stop as my palms and bare knees press into the sand, a splash of vomit painting the brown grass before me.
    My eyes are pinched shut, so I don’t see Denise when, from somewhere behind me, she spouts, “Holy Toledo!” (She has an aversion to cursing.) “Are you all right?!”
    I steal a sideways glance and spot Orv’s good tennis shoes, the navy-blue ones with bright white laces, heading in my direction. The shoes stop. “Here you go,” says Orv. He shakes a handful of crumpled napkins at me, which I weakly accept and use to wipe my mouth. Denise helps me dust myself off, and then we get right back into the Royale and press on.
     Past a delinquent gas station and a field of mangy pumpkins is one of those old-time dining cars with a giant neon sign beckoning customers to “Eat at Pablo’s.” Orv slows the Royale, makes the turn into the lot without signaling. I take a few deep breaths in hopes of settling my stomach. “We drove all the way out here for this?” I mutter.
    Denise frowns. “Just give it a chance,” she says. “I bet you’ll be happy you came.”
    Orv leads the charge as we shuffle up the cement steps, which lend a sense of stability to what otherwise resembles a fly-by-night affair. Inside the diner, I am so distracted by the glinting of stainless steel (which covers nearly every surface) that, at first, I don’t notice Duncan and Marie. When I finally spot them curled up at a circular tufted-vinyl booth in the corner, my brain does a double-take. The rest of me freezes.
    “Roberta Josephine!” my mother squeals, her warm brown eyes pinned on my stunned expression. “Get over here!” She throws her arms up haphazardly. “Let me have a look at you, sweet darlin’.”
    I stay put, move my gaze to my father’s face, searching for an explanation. But all I find is an apologetic grimace that might as well be a shrug. “Hello, Bobbi,” he says. “Lovely to see you.”
    Stiffly I force my lips to utter, “Hello, Duncan.” I throw a nod my mother’s way. “Marie.”
    Orv and Denise plunk down and start making chitchat, but I am struck with a rabid case of fight-or-flight. After a couple of minutes of shifting around awkwardly on my kitten heels, though, I’m left with no choice but to join them. From the edge of the booth, where I reluctantly perch, I watch Marie dazzle Orv and Denise with tales of untamed bushmen, cobra close-encounters, and wild-elephant stampedes, all the while tossing French fries into her carefree, smiling mouth and gesticulating with crazed abandon. The oversized shawl she wears—colorful and obviously handmade—sways violently as she speaks, its fringed trim picking up French fry grease and depositing it across the table in streaks and dots.
    My father is the opposite of my mother, this much I remember from my younger years, a time when my wellbeing somehow trumped my parents’ medical ambitions (they’re both trauma surgeons) and even their spiritual calling to the ministry.
    “What are you doing here?” I ask Duncan, who adjusts his eyeglasses and regards me as if I’m a bacterium upon which he has unexpectedly stumbled. Or maybe a new species of subhuman worthy of a field study.
    He locks eyes with Marie, his face tense and twitchy, the half-smile he offers me forced. “Pookie,” he says in an uptight-yet-sugary tone, “didn’t you tell Bobbi we were coming?”
    My mother pops her shoulders into a shrug, rolls her eyes as if my father is being dramatic. “I told Denise.” She wags her hand through the air. “I can’t help it if she didn’t…”
    “But…what are you doing here?” I repeat. Under the table, I slip my hand into my skirt pocket and withdraw a Milky Way, which I tear open and begin chomping.
    Instead of answering me, my mother nudges Orv out of the booth and slinks out behind him, the shawl trailing in her wake. My eyes widen as she straightens her hunched frame, her stomach protruding. She runs her hands lovingly over her belly and, sporting a wide grin, yelps, “Surprise!”
    I blink.
    Stare.
    Blink.
    Stare.
    Unless I’ve consumed tainted candy