A Map of the World - Jane Hamilton [172]
He found a job at the Motor Vehicle Registration Office that’s right next to Shopko on the outskirts of Racine. He had to take the Civil Service Test and the fact that he scored off the charts temporarily bolstered his spirits. He gave people eye exams, did the paper work on title transfers and registrations, and processed driver’s licenses. His starting salary was twenty-one thousand dollars with benefits. It was the most he had ever commanded thus far in his life. He stood at a booth like a bank teller, all day long, and was courteous and helpful. They told him that if he stayed a year he’d most certainly rise to the rank of Team Captain. I had become maudlin, sentimental, as temporarily bright as a new penny. One of those oppressed and hideously cheerful Victorian children heroines, Sara Crewe or Pollyanna, kept a running list of reasons to be thankful. Emma and I had a notebook where we wrote down the good things that had happened to us. Howard’s success on the job market was the first entry in our book.
It came as no surprise to us that Emma was reluctant to leave home in the mornings and go to school. At 8:20 every day Claire and I walked her to her kindergarten room in the old schoolhouse that had high ceilings and tall windows and a musty charm. We left her in the hands of Miss Smucker, promising, crossing our hearts, hoping to die, that we’d be waiting by the door at 11:36 when the bell rang. I hated to promise on the off chance that I might get carted away. I had come to think, while I’d been in jail, that I deserved to be there, a normal reaction, Theresa later assured me. I couldn’t see a squad car go down the street without thinking that I’d better hurry and get my things.
After we dropped Emma at school, Claire and I used to walk to the playground. We’d swing, take the trip down the slide, and then head over to the A&W. We always split a sweet roll and had a glass of water each. She prattled on and on and I’d close my eyes and listen to the pure sound, the cadences of her three-year-old speech, trying, somehow, to etch the music into my brain.
Not long after my release Theresa called, saying that she was so anxious to get together. I remember thinking that it was both a curious and appropriate word choice: anxious. I had not yet felt ready to talk to her. I wasn’t ready to feel so vividly, as I would in a meeting, the void. Theresa may have begun somehow to adjust to Lizzy’s death, but my time in jail had not made me know more deeply that it was real. She suggested that we meet for breakfast on a day three weeks away. It seemed so agreeably distant, far enough in the future that it might never come to pass. But the morning arrived and Claire and I stood on the sidewalk outside the A&W, waiting, knowing from experience that she’d be late. When her blue van came along the block I wanted to run, and I had to breathe hard to get an adequate supply of oxygen, and I had to hold the metal outdoor menu post to keep myself from giving into that old habit of fleeing. As she turned into the driveway she stuck her head out the window and called, “It’s so great to see you!” She rolled up onto the curb and rocked back into the parking space. “God,” she cried, trying to untangle herself from her seat belt, “it’s so good to see you.”
She turned off the engine, and jumped to the pavement, talking as she hugged me and talking as