My wife has this huge crazy extended family. And every last one of them share this singular obsession. So every time she starts talking family I flap my arms like I'm a giant crow. Boy do I caw-caw at her. "If I'd known what was in your genes," I squawk, "I'd never have tried to get in your jeans." I'm joking of course. Sort of. There's a hell of a jewel down in those pants, but the wrappings and trappings that aren't cotton kind of give me the shivers. It's a toss up. They both drive me crazy, but in entirely different ways of the phrase.

See, the thing is that there's a million of them. That's okay. All of them are really close. That can be okay. But hardly any of them live in the same city. That's not okay, but it isn't that bad. They all like to go visiting each other a whole lot. Does that sound like the worst of it? Trust me, it's not.

Okay, let me run this down again. There's a ton of these people, they're all close but they don't live close, and because they all own cars our country has to be an oil-importing nation. Got it? Here's another complication. Half the people in the family are divorced, but everyone remains on very friendly terms. Care for another? Birth control is commonly pronounced menopause. If the men take the responsibility it's called impotence.

The thing of it is this. My wife begs me to hop in the car with her and go visit one of the aunts. After 100 miles we get there, we're barely out of the car, and her aunt says to my wife, "What a gorgeous day you have for your drive. I know what, let's go visit your grandmother." A hundred miles later we spill out of the car again. Barely get seated with a cup of coffee when the phone rings. It's a brother or a niece or an ex-in-law. "What? All of you are over there? Well, a bunch of us are over here and we've got steaks going on the grill out back. So come on over, I'll throw a few more on." An hour and a half further down the road...

I have strangers stop me in stores and accuse me of being a drag queen, or a sloppy boxer. I don't wear make-up! My last black eye was in the third grade, for chrissakes! But I do sport these spectacular dark rings around my eyes. Kids I don't know point and laugh at the Raccoon Man.

It's not just that all the driving wears me out; I wake up every morning utterly exhausted. You want to know about nightmares? A map of the United States as a family dot-to-dot. Did you ever die in a dream? I do all the time. Last night the hypothermia got me. We wound up at Uncle Bob's igloo outside Fairbanks, and I was dressed in shorts and a muscle shirt. It's not that I have the sexy musculature to flaunt, just that when and where I'd first climbed in the car it was 95 degrees with matching humidity.

What can I do? Handcuff myself to a towel rack in the bathroom and swallow the key? That works, but it's not much fun. Get a note from my doctor saying no more roadtrips? That gets expensive: my insurance company disallows preventative medicine.

I know, I know. Be a man. Just do a Nancy Reagan. So I did sit down and weigh it all out. You refuse, what's the worst that can happen? She files for divorce. Well, hey, problem solved!

So now most the time I just stay in town. I've learned the preemptive strike. I know all the signs. I keep her overnight bag packed. I run and get it when I see Laura getting that glazed look, holding her hands curled and bent out in front of her. Flecks of foam form at the corners of her mouth and she starts babbling about family. I hand her the keys and give her a kiss, steer her out the door, "Bye honey, have a safe trip, say hi to everyone, see you in a couple... " Days? Weeks? Months? Time, like distance, means nothing to these people.

Of course I am a very well behaved bachelor boy. Scruples aside, it's the better bet. Sure I could be in bed with a bimbo having a hot afternoon nap, but it's safer to be lingering over lunch with the newspaper. Laura having left at dawn, they could have hit the eastern seaboard and already be back at the step-uncle's a hundred miles to the south. "Hey Laura, where's Carl?" "Oh, he decided to stay home." "Well, hey, let's go visit him!" Don't laugh, it's happened. I looked out the front window and saw all these figures lumbering up across the lawn. I nearly dropped from heart attack! I thought my life had suddenly turned into a George Romero flick. He-e-ell-o-o-o, we're here to eat your bra-a-a-in!

There are times, naturally, when I do choose to bite the bullet. When I sense the conditions are most favorable. Such was the moment when I agreed to go along to her mother's. Laura cajoled me, "Please please please please, I promise promise promise promise, mom really really really really wants to see you, and it'd mean so so so so much much much much to me me me me." My mother-in-law is great. She's the dot just 100 miles to the east. And I hadn't gone to see her in nearly half a year. It is germane to explain that Laura sprung the news on me as we lay tangled in the sheets. Ooh, this isn't playing fair, was about all my mind could muster, because of course she'd just deliberately fucked my brains out. Which isn't to say I had no life left in me. While the words crowded out her mouth, her fingers were doing some talking all their own, and the look in her eyes was telling me something else. Say yes and I'll shut up, and then I'll need something else to fill up my mouth. How could I so no to that? When she works at it, Laura can be very persuasive in her arguments. The wonder is that she doesn't do it all the time. Felled by the intoxication of her charms, she could just throw me in the backseat like so much dead meat. But then when we arrived, the car doors opened, the gathering crowd would swoon from the heady aroma. There, I suppose, is the glitch. If she made me shower off first I'd sober up. "Gee honey, thanks for showing me in advance how much you're going to miss me. Have a good time! Luv ya babe."

Ahh, the secrets we learn when we bother to sit around and think them through.

"Weeeellllllll," she began ominously a few days later. That hinted enough at the imminent evil that I replied, "Okay, I'm not going."

"Nononononono," she soothed. "See, my cousin and her new baby are going to be up at my aunt's so mom and I will be driving up Sunday in the morning for an hour and then coming right back... butbutbutbutbut you can just stay at mom's and sleep late and hang out by yourself the way I know you like to do and wait for us to come back early in the afternoon."

"One condition," I replied.

"Agreed," Laura answered, "anything you want. Rent movies, have a pizza delivered for lunch, hire a hooker to entertain you, whatever, you name it."

"You take your mom's car."

"Huh?"

"That way when you call from Earl's house in Texas you'll get your mom's answering machine. And I'll be able to be already safe and snug and well asleep back at home in my own bed. By the way, how exactly does Earl fit into the pantheon anyway?"

It took awhile for Laura to answer. She was raised according to the etiquette books, and of course it is terribly rude to talk with a full mouth. Eventually she came up for air and gasped, "You got it." Weaving as I was I found it hard not to trip on the knot of pants around my ankles. And then, "Earl's a long story. Starts with my great-grandfather Anson's sort of step-sister and a ranch hand from Mexico... " The story got a bit muffled after that point, and I wasn't really listening anyway. Earl had maybe once briefly been a foster child of a relative who was actually adopted... but the lineage linking him to Anson's sort of step-sister got lost in translation. All these sort of details drive me crazy. None of it mattered. I was in that car.

Come Sunday morning I couldn't sleep with all the racket Laura and her mom were making. There I sat, grouchy, a newspaper to distract me and a cup of coffee my only weapon to beat back the grogginess that seemed to have replaced my body's calcium content, petrifying my bones into a bunch of surly sticks. Go away and let me get back to sleep was the only thought my brain could hold. Laura was on the phone, then suddenly off in the car. My mother-in-law, bless her, knew better than to try me with chit-chat at that hour. Then Laura was back with her sister Rachel. What is going on? I could barely wonder.

Rachel is the family anomaly. She was born, bred and is certain to die in this city. She is lost to the family heritage. Put her in a four- wheeled metal box going at highway speeds and she gets profoundly carsick. Not that she doesn't have the family urge. She once came into a fair sum of money, but promptly blew it all on airfare. She is famous for once having parachuted into a family gathering, with no prior experience. Back roads and a bicycle and pedaling hundreds of miles. After a few turns of renting scooters out of desperation she is, I understand, thinking of buying a motorcycle. Apparently in the open air and on two wheels she'll be able to do just fine breaking land-speed records. But no way would she be clambering in the car with these two for the upcoming adventure.

"Why is she here?" I whispered.

"Oh, thought I'd get you a little company," Laura replied with a twinkle. "No one like a sister to be safer than a hooker."

"What are you talking about?" This wasn't really a question. It was more an expression of my general morning confusion. Ever feel like you were a television? Your brain the guts and your eyes the screen? Someone's turned the volume and brightness knobs all the way up? And you're parked on a channel of static? No? Oh, you were born with cable. Never mind. No, wait. Disconnect the line! There you go. No? You can see what I'm talking but you don't know what I mean? Grrr, where's my coffee?

"Oh c'mon. Be a sport. You can do it. She wants you to do it. Give her a nudge and she'll be jumping all over you. It's your reward for being such a good boy."

"What? I'm supposed to say, hypothetically, 'C'mon Rachel, spread 'em wide 'cause Laura said so.'"

"You could possibly phrase it more delicately than that. Oh forget it you big goof. I'll have a word with Rachel myself. Leave the door open for you."

Did I believe her? No. No way. What was she talking about anyway? I whacked myself on the side of the head. That's what you do to improve reception if you don't have cable. Nothing made any greater sense, but the newspaper print was a tiny bit clearer.

There was a great fluttering as they got ready to go. It was like a herd of birds let loose in the house. Or a stampeding flock of buffalo.

Whichever, whatever, it was driving me crazy so I grabbed my stuff and dived out the door to the front porch.

"See you sweetie. Don't do anything I wouldn't do. And you know what I'd do if I were you, haw haw."

The slamming of little metal doors. The engine roaring to life. And then the sound. The sound I haven't mentioned before because no one would believe it. I don't believe. I hear it every time and still I don't believe it. It is, I suppose, a direct expression of their eagerness to go. Their git-go. Go anywhere. They squeal their tires. That's the sound. But I don't know how. There are no clutches to pop. There's not a manual transmission in all the family--I don't know why, some sort of religious prohibition. I'm sitting on the front porch in the middle of the morning and it sounds like the middle of the night. Some young toughs and their jacked up rods endangering all of America by having illegal drag races down city streets in the very early a.m. hours. That's what it sounds like. But it's just Laura and her mom reversing down the driveway at about 2 1/2 miles per hour. These things drive me crazy.

I looked over and noticed Rachel had joined me on the porch. She was waving with a wistful look on her face, then sighed to no one, "I wish I could go."

Nothing against her, but that made it unanimous. Like, doesn't your mom have a bucket around here?--maybe something with a lid? Once the car was gone from view I felt a great unclenching of my stomach. Great, but not complete. The morning and afternoon were mine, but I'd still have to take the time to run Rachel home. Count your blessings and quit your bitchings.

I was looking forward to lazing about with a book I was particularly enjoying. Drinking coffee until my head exploded. I'd save movies and hookers for another time, but a pizza for lunch sounded perfect. But a medium one, all of it the way I wanted it. Not a large one split down the middle with all the nasty stuff I don't like spilling over and ruining half my share.

"Ready to go?" I asked in a not particularly questioning tone.

"You bet," Rachel grinned in a way that didn't seem appropriate to the obvious slagging off I was presenting her with.

We had a quiet drive over, though Rachel grew a little more animated as we got closer to her apartment. I remained the sullen old bastard behind the wheel. Can't talk, gotta concentrate on the road-- accidents everywhere just waiting to jump out at you. It had nothing much to do with her, I just wasn't in the family mood. Rachel really was no different from the rest of them. They were all cast from the same mold, cloned from the same mold if I was feeling vicious. Attractive, witty, intelligent and born to roam. She'd have that Harley soon enough. And then, watch out! She'd be the one to finally track down the rumor of a relative in a dogskin tent down in Tierra del Fuego.

Luck was against me when we got to her building. I'd been praying for a street lined bumper-to-bumper but instead there was plenty of curb space for me to pull alongside. I put it in Park but kept the motor running. Rachel was halfway out her side before she realized what I was attempting. "Turn it off," she commanded. "You are so coming in." Ah, that authoritarian streak I knew so well. Totalitarian is the better choice of word. "Hey, come on. At least for a minute. You've never seen my place before," she coaxed. "Besides, I have a present for you I forgot to bring over." No innuendo there. It was a toss-up which one of us was getting the more flustered. "I know I'm a scary girl and all, but I promise: I don't bite." This whole one-sided exchange was driving me crazy. My brain was screaming at me, will you please be civil and just get the fuck out of the car and visit for a few minutes? I was balking, you know damn well what always happens then. Br-ring, br-ing. Or br-ring br-ing. Or chirp chirp chirp. Of course I was reacting from blind instinct. Once the argument entered the realm of terror of travel, the fabric of my logic was moth-eaten. I sensed something wrong with the shifting of ground but I felt so drained I surrendered. The whole of me got out of the car. There was that relief. The scene had started feeling as though I'd be spending the next ten years of my life sitting in the car refusing to get out of the car.

I apologized as we went up her walk. Some garbled bit about thinking a few hours to myself being chiseled in stone. If Rachel had replied that I really was nuts, I could have used my stock phrase about having heard that one before. Instead she said, "Laura's right: you really are nuts." With the wind sucked from my sails I listed along soundlessly.

Rachel's alleged present was real, propped against the wall right inside her door, exactly where she'd left it to remember it, exactly where she'd left it forgotten this morning. A small cheaply framed unattributed woodblock print she'd found at a yard sale for a dollar or two. It depicted--in purple ink and the crudity of an amateur's handling of a crude medium--a naked woman standing in a cornfield. I stood there stunned. It was the most lovely work of art I'd seen in years. There was no way for Rachel to have guessed except through a flash of pure intuition.