versions of this moment, she didn’t appear to be having a stroke or a heart attack. She just looked sad.
My mother gave a sharp intake of breath and then turned her head away in a dramatic show that she was disappointed, too. I suspected that she wished she had become a lawyer, but when she was my age it hadn’t been an option.
“Well,” Gram said. “If you don’t want to be a lawyer, you should at least choose a career that lets you use your brains. You’re a smart girl, Lila. You have so much promise. Perhaps you should become a doctor. Your grandfather considered studying medicine as a young man, before he settled on the law.”
“Medicine is a wonderful field,” my mother said. “Very prestigious.”
And that was that. I registered my college major as premed and I was on my way. I was so glad that Gram had accepted my aversion to a career in law that it never even occurred to me to turn down her second choice. All I wanted was to make something that was my own, and with medicine I could do that. I wasn’t disinclined to the subject, either. I had spent my childhood reading about terrible injuries, and now I would learn how to treat the accident victims whose wounds and contusions and broken limbs I had read about in great detail. And medicine was fascinating, a great match, at least at first. It was a natural fit for my brain. But now the book-learning portion was over, and suddenly medicine felt like a horse I’d borrowed that didn’t like me and was doing its damnedest to buck me off.
I thought about Gracie, and how her decision to keep the baby had thrown her life off course. She no longer went to the Green Trolley at night. My father no longer looked at her with a shine in his eyes. Gram looked at her with something akin to ownership. Gracie didn’t make getting thrown off course look too good. But maybe she hadn’t been thrown, maybe this change in course was meant to be.
I wasn’t making sense. I could recognize that. I gave myself a minute to straighten out. I felt the vodka, clear and lethal, move through my system. I wondered if this was the smoldering remains my grandfather tasted most mornings, his brain clouded, hung over on scotch. I leaned against the column Belinda had just occupied. I knew, suddenly, that I was not going inside. I knew that I couldn’t, even if I had wanted to. I was not going to school, to work, to be tested, to be tried and hanged. Not today.
I CLIMBED into my car and drove away. I didn’t tell myself where to go and I didn’t pay attention to where I was headed. The next time I took notice of my surroundings, I was on Main Street in Ramsey, stuck in traffic. I looked at the long row of cars in front of me. Driver after driver sat behind the steering wheel, placid, waiting, unquestioning. “What the hell is going on here!” I honked my horn. I didn’t want to sit still. I wanted to drive. I wanted motion.
I looked around for some reason and noticed the curl of smoke. It hung in the air beyond the Green Trolley, above a strip shopping mall that sat perpendicular to Main Street. The curl seemed to hover above the Carvel ice cream store. Without thinking, I pulled the car over to the side of the road and parked. I left my bookbag on the passenger seat, locked the doors, and walked toward the shimmering line of smoke. This whole day seemed to be about doing the opposite of what I was supposed to do. I was supposed to be at the hospital. I was supposed to stay in the car, in the line, and wait to be allowed to move forward toward home. Instead I was out on the pavement, walking toward a fire.
I could see, from the sidewalk, that traffic had been stopped by a policeman who stood in front of the docile line of cars, his hand forcefully raised as if he were engaged in an act of great courage. His gesture was actually redundant, since a massive red fire truck was parked behind him. There was no place for the cars to go.
It was early afternoon on a Monday. These drivers and passengers didn’t mind the holdup. They had no place better to be.