Turn of Mind - Alice LaPlante [77]
THREE
The sun is blinding. How long since you were so bombarded with un-filtered light? Overpowering heat, the air thick and foul-smelling from the fumes of softened asphalt under your feet. It gives as you step, makes a dark, sucking sound with each move. Like walking on a tarry moon.
You tread carefully over the sticky black surface. Sweat trickles down your neck, your bra is already soaked. You pause to take off your sweater but then are confronted with the problem of what to do with it. You hang it carefully on the antenna of a small blue car parked nearby and keep walking. There is some urgency to move, some sense that there are conspiracies afoot, that lightning will strike multiple times if you stand in one spot.
You are in a lot filled with cars of all makes, models, and colors. Which one is yours. Have you been here before. Where is James, he has the keys. And your purse? You must have left it at the hospital. Your phone. It should be embedded in your flesh so critical is it to your ability to function.
Fiona once threw your pager down the toilet and flushed. Mark, not nearly as competent, merely buried it in the back garden, and you heard it chirp at dinner. You didn’t punish either of them, understood that they were merely playing out their Darwinian destinies. Who will inherent the earth? Not any scion of your flesh.
You are nearly at the street. Placards everywhere, violators will be towed. A gate, a gatekeeper adjusting a waist-high sign, lot full. He nods to you.
The sidewalks are crowded with people, mostly the young, dressed in as little as possible. Girls in short summer dresses with spaghetti straps holding insubstantial fabrics against small breasts. Young men in oversize shorts that reach below the knee, falling from their slight hips. Sidewalk cafés, umbrellaed tables encroaching upon the sidewalks, forcing people out into the street. Cars honking. Planters that trail flowers too bright and perfect to be real. Yet you see a woman pick off a blossom and put it in her hair. Waiters hefting trays over their heads. Colorful red and pink and blue cocktails in large v-shaped glasses. People sipping from small white cups. Enormous salads.
Everything as it should be. Everything in its place. Where is your place. Where do you belong.
You realize that you are impeding the flow of traffic. People are politely navigating around you, but you are inconveniencing them. One man bumps your elbow as he passes and stops briefly to apologize. You nod and say, not at all, and begin moving again.
Summer in the city. How exciting when your mother and father allowed you to begin coming here by yourself, away from the row houses of Germantown, the concrete schoolyards and industrial storefronts, the glazier shops and printing presses. Away from the grime-colored house with the trains running through the backyard. Your mother and her gypsy charm. Black Irish, full of magic.
In your teens you turned yourself to stone to withstand her. You vowed to never rely on trickery to bind others to you. Not a difficult vow to keep, as you had no such tricks at your disposal. Your charm nonexistent. Your beauty minimal.
Whatever power you had to attract was of a colder variety. Touching nerve-terminals / to thermal icicles. Who told you that? No matter. As it turned out there were some who appreciated it. Enough of them, yes.
You have been walking for miles. Hours and hours. South, judging from the sun, which is setting to your right. This endless street of endless festivities. You cannot see beyond it, an eternal pleasure fair. And nowhere to sit.
You realize you are hungry. It is long past dinnertime, your mother will be worried. You are suddenly tired of the gaiety, and you would settle for the quiet kitchen, the dried-out pot roast and soft brown potatoes, the boiled carrots. You realize you are beyond hunger, indeed famished. But why are you hesitating? You are surrounded by bounty!
With some trepidation you approach the nearest restaurant. Italian,