Problems with People by David Guterson Page A

to retort, “You don’t understand; I’m an agnostic who has no more to do with Hanukkah than you do,” he never answered anything of the sort. But still, Christmas forced his hand to the extent that December was his default vacation window. He and his wife, yearly, went somewhere balmy to wait out the season. Each November, they called their grown children—who had children of their own, Christmas trees, and colored lights—to repeat that December was a low-fare month for flights to sunny climes, and that it conduced to the judge’s court schedule to mark off vacation time with annual consistency. Then, a few weeks later, away they went until just after New Year’s, by which time Seattle had returned to normal in the sense that a nominal Jew like the judge could go for weeks without thinking about his birth religion.
    But this year was different. Instead of winging off to a tropical locale, they were driving to Harrison Hot Springs in British Columbia, where Christmas was sure to be as omnipresent as it was at home, and—even more unusual—they had in tow the judge’s parents, who were too elderly to handle airplanes anymore but who were great at long-distance travel on interstates because, he thought, of the steady, unchanging rhythm. His father, who was spindly and had a dire need for legroom, rode beside the judge in the front seat, oblivious, as always, to fields, towns, and mountains—to everything in the landscape—while his mother, wedged into the back beside the judge’s wife, nattered on about herself: “I’m going with my quilt group on a quilting retreat during the third week of January, but I have to have a cyst removed from my neck the week before … walked downtown from his office and had lunch with … we went into the Old Navy store because of Dina’s niece’s daughter’s birthday … tell you what Roberta said about me last … reminded me of me because she’s so …” His father, the judge saw for the thousandth time in his life, hung on his wife’s every word and seethed. Behind the wheel of his Civic Hybrid, driving toward Canada through midmorning rain, the judge seethed about her, too, mostly while displaying a cheery face, though sometimes the best he could do was to feign impassivity or act as if immersion in driving prevented him from nodding in the rearview mirror to acknowledge his mother when she demanded it. She’d say, leaning forward, “Don’t you agree with me?” and he’d pretend, absorbed in interstate perils, that her question wasn’t aimed at him.
    “Your sisters have abandoned me,” his mother insisted,near Conway. “Don’t you agree? Don’t you think so, too?” And he checked a side mirror, purse-lipped but provoked, then changed lanes as if doing so was essential.
    “Don’t you agree? Your sisters? Hello?”
    At which point he looked in his rearview mirror and said, “I don’t know.”
    “One is in South Africa and the other in Los Angeles,” said his mother. “Isn’t that right?”
    “Yes.”
    “So you agree with me.”
    He didn’t answer. His mother said, “Well, that’s why your father and I had six kids. Oh boy, oh boy! We were sure busy, weren’t we, dear?”
    “Yep,” said his father.
    They approached the border. By the time the judge had answered the agent’s questions, zipped up his window, and rolled a little north, his mother had a fresh but familiar enthusiasm: “Handsome,” she said. “That fella in the booth? My God, he was so handsome!”
    With a glance, the judge checked on his father, who said, “From this point, the border, it’s I think about an hour if—”
    “You’re changing the subject,” his mother told him. “I want you to comment on that handsome border fella. Didn’t you think he was handsome?”
    “Yes.”
    “He could have been a model.”
    “Yes,” his father repeated.
    “A handsome, handsome man. Don’t you think?”
    Once again the judge feigned interest in the road, as if rainand