For days Laine's anger bubbled under her skin, making her hot and irritable. She functioned beneath a veneer of calm daily routine, saying good-morning and good-bye with the same flat monotone her voice had carried for years, but under the surface, her outrage sizzled.
She performed her job with efficiency. Every work day she ate the same sandwich and soup lunch with her coworkers at the round table in the employee lunch room, not tasting anything. Her mouth moved with precise chewing motions as she slowly consumed bland food while listening to the common dissertations of life from her coworkers.
For years she had listened to their diatribes as if from a conference hall, a studious observer alert for clues to the next test. Their trips to Disney World, their new babies and grandchildren, their new SUVs and their Italian tiled kitchens, were to her the lessons of common life. She had envied them their happiness in such habitual production, envied that they could love their lives even though those lives were gray shadows of nothingness, casting flattened images upon the walls of contemporary houses, where life was all about a weekly shopping excursion to Wal-Mart and waiting to die.
She barely listened to the office conversations any longer. She barely heard anything. For a week after Aaron had gone to camp, her silence was so fierce, she felt the deafness a physical impairment. A swirl of wind swept about her head in a constant vacuum motion, as if protecting, or feeding, her mind's desolate affliction.
Joie's constant narratives from the other side of the partition were like words floating in blackness, guiding a blind person towards safety. Go to the right, take three steps, turn around, follow my voice. "So I said he could go, but he had to keep his dick in his pants...hey, y'know the chick I was telling you about last week, that tall drink of water..."
Laine felt her face get hot. Joie did not present as a gay woman, not by Laine's preconceived expectations of what gay was. Joie was very feminine. She was one of few women Laine had ever known who had style. She had class. Laine remembered the time Joie had asked her out one Friday night. She and some of her friends were going to the new club downtown that Laine's church had been protesting. "You're going there?" she had asked. "It's a gay club!"
Joie had laughed. "I'm gay, Laine. I go to gay clubs."
She had never suspected that Joie was a lesbian. Her shock could not be contained and made Joie laugh even harder.
"But Joie," Laine said. "The paper said..."
"...it was an exhibitionist club with leanings towards leather and bondage?"
"Yes!"
"Damn skippy. C'mon Laine, haven't you ever wanted to go to Oz?"
At the time, she had not wanted to go to any such place. At the time she had to hurry home to get her son to flag-football on time.
Her life felt so often like it was being lived for the purpose of helping others live their lives, that her own life was singularly about giving and planning and driving others where they needed to go. When she looked back over the years and imagined herself throughout the different stages of her life, all she could see was herself, sitting in her car at a 4-point intersection, waiting for the light to turn green.
All she could see now was red.
"Laine!"
"What?" she said, looking up.
"Boss wants you," Joie said with a toss of her head towards the hallway. "Didn't you hear him?"
"No," Laine said and stood. "What does he want?"
Joie shrugged. "Probably wants you to take his car in for servicing again."
Laine rose and started towards his office when he appeared suddenly in the doorway. "Mr. Reginald, I was just coming to your off..."
"Listen Elaine, I need you to fax this proposal to Northeast Bank like right away. They'll have my ass in a sling if..."
Suddenly the swirling wind around her head stopped. "What's my name?"
He stared, frozen. "Wha...?"
"Say my name."
"I don't understand," he stammered.
She spoke louder, making her words bitingly clear. "What is my name?"
Joie's gum stopped popping. The clickety-clicks of several keyboards outside the office ceased clicking.
She moved closer. "I want you to say my name, Mr. Thomas Joshua Reginald. I've worked for you for seven years and you've never called me by my name."
"I think I have," he said weakly, glancing nervously over his shoulder.
"It's not Elaine. It's not Lane. It's not Laura, Lisa, Lois, or Loo-Loo. My name is not any of those things, Mr. Reg-i-nald."
He swallowed. "It's Laine. I know that. Of course, it's Laine."
"That's right," she said and smiled. "And if you can't remember that, you can call me Ms. Sanders. Is that clear?"
"Excuse me?"
He might've been trying to intimidate her into backing down, but there was something there, a flicker of heat in her that wasn't going to let it go. She would kill him where he stood if he wouldn't agree. "I said you will call me Laine or you will refer to me as Ms. Sanders."
"Okay," he said.
She waited for his apology, but when it didn't come, she let it go. She took the file he was holding and left him standing there. As she walked the length of the office towards the fax machine, she started crying and ran to the bathroom, locking herself inside a stall. "Something's happening to me," she whispered. Was she going crazy? Would she too end up as a piece of ward furniture in a mental ward? Would she end up living a life more pathetic than the one she was living now?
She held her head in her hands and whispered her son's name repeatedly, letting the word become like the sound an eagle's wings might make as it flew steadily through the air on a quest for food.
When she returned to her office, Joie wisely did not inquire about the incident.
Laine found her place and began to work. "Joie?" she said a few minutes later.
"Yeah Laine?"
"I'd like to go out...with you and your friends some night. Is that okay?"
Joie stood up and looked over the partition. "Of course it is. We're going out Friday."
"To that club?" Laine asked, not knowing if she'd be disappointed if they weren't.
"Yeah, to Babylon."
"Babylon."
"It can get wild sometimes."
"Okay," she said. "Wild's okay."
"They'll be a show this Friday."
"A show?"
"Yeah," Joie laughed. "A drag show. Have you ever seen one?"
"I've seen a drag race."
"You'll love it, Laine."
"Okay, but..." She didn't know how to ask about the crowd. She wasn't afraid of them. She was more afraid of sticking out. She wanted to melt into their atmosphere. "Are there, um, older people there?"
"Older?"
"Like my age. Like forty."
"Oh my god, Laine. You think you're old?"
"I am old. I'm geriatric."
"Laine!" Joie laughed. "Forty is not old."
Laine felt as if she had already lived a thousand years. She had trudged down the pathways of her life carrying a fear so heavy, the burden could have sunk a hole to the center of the earth. She could not recall how long it had been since she had danced, or laughed so hard her stomach ached, or felt her heart racing in her throat, or been so excited she couldn't sleep. She could not recall what it felt like to be amazed or to be scared. She could not recollect the taste of a fresh strawberry, or remember what it felt like to run so fast you could topple over, or to walk among flowers and see the color and beauty of God's canvas with an infinite adoration for all of it, even for the insects and weeds that consumed and strangled the landscape. "I'm not forty," Laine said quietly. "I'm closer to eighty."
Joie was quiet.
"I don't want to look like some overweight, middle-aged, right-winged Christian fundamentalist."
"Laine, you are a right-winged Christian fundamentalist."
Laine laughed a little. "Only by association. That doesn't mean I have to look like one."
"We're just talking about going out, right?" Joie asked. "Or are you thinking about changing your entire appearance?"
"What should I wear?"
"Casual. Jeans, leather jacket."
She nodded. She didn't want to tell Joie that she didn't own a pair of jeans. She didn't have anything made of leather. And Laine Sanders putting the two together might disrupt the cosmic order of the universe, cause birds to fly backwards or fish to take up smoking.
"Come to my house Friday after work. Bring a few outfits with you and I'll help you choose. Bring make-up and stuff for your hair."
"Okay," she said, nearly crying.
"Only thing I want to tell you is that you might get hit on, you know, by women. It's not a rough club, but the crowd can be aggressive," she said, noting Laine's discomfort. "I mean, someone might ask you to dance, and I don't want you to get freaked out. You can just say, 'No, thanks' and you'll be fine. We'll have fun, okay?"
Laine tried on clothes all week long. She could no longer fit into any of the clothes that had hung in her closet for years. The pantsuits and dresses seemed to be waiting for special occasions that never came. In the back of her closet was a dark blue dress that she had been saving for something special. She tried it on and was surprised to find it still fit, though it was tight. She didn't even know how much she weighed. She hadn't cared enough to step on a scale.
Thinking it was inappropriate for a night club, she returned it to the closet, but hung it up close, where she could be reminded that it was waiting.
Something about the dress called out to her. It was the prettiest blue, a dark cobalt fabric that shimmered a bit in light. She admired it again, on the hanger, and ran her fingers up and down the silky material. It was a "dressy" dress, something one would wear to a wedding or some other formal event. She looked at it again. Her hands shook and she swallowed. The subtle realization that it was much like the dress she wore to her father's funeral made her suck in her breath and hold it. "This is a funeral dress," she said and froze. The subtlety of her discovery began to take shape, forming a sinister scene in her mind. She looked hard into the middle space, not wanting to see what was lying there, but unable to look away, and unable to escape the realization that blasted through her mind as if shot from a canon. "This is my funeral dress."
She sat carefully on the edge of her bed. "This is the dress they'll bury me in."
Time drifted through the bedroom, shifting the shadows and light across the room as if swept over by God's own hand, while she suffered the most agonizing sense of mortality and regret she had ever felt. She sat in the bay window and looked out. The window was draped outside by a lush green conglomeration of leaves and ivy. She hated Summer. There was too much green. There was no beginning or end, no surprise or alteration. She closed her eyes and thought of Autumn. The colors moved her with a singular purpose, as if the admiration of nature's glory was an important enough reason to go on living. It beckoned to her at every turn, that absolute riot of color, and assaulted any notion she had of closing her eyes against it. Just driving down her street beneath a canopy of trees blazing like cool fires, just walking along a sidewalk love-lettered by burnt mahogany leaves, was reason to rejoice. Nothing else in nature blossomed with such a vibrant explosion of life, heralded such an absolute agony, right before dying.
She might have screamed, or choked, but in the next feverish moment, she quickly put the dress back on, slipped into a pair of heels and grabbed her purse. She walked purposely through the living room, got her keys off the hook by the kitchen door and was walking out when Michael stopped her.
"Whoa!" he said, looking at her dress. "Where ya going?"
"I'm going somewhere over the rainbow."
"Dressed like that?"
"I'm going to Wal-Mart, Michael."
He looked perplexed. "You're going to Wal-Mart? Wearing your special occasion dress?"
"Yes," she said. "You can come with me if you want."
"Alright," he said and followed her to the car, holding out his hand and motioning for the keys.
"No," she said and slid in behind the wheel. "I'm driving now."
"Honey, you know I don't like riding shot-gun. You're driving makes me kinda nervous."
She started the car. "You don't have to go."
He stared at her again. "Uh Lain, wanna tell me what's going on?"
"I'm going to a gay club with Joie and her friends Friday night and I need a new outfit."
"What?" he asked and got in. "You're going to a gay club?"
"Yeah, the Babylon. That new club downtown that our church was picketing a few months ago."
"Where all the male prostitutes hang out?"
She laughed uproariously.
She was driving a little faster than she normally would have, hoping she could outrun the conversation she knew was coming. "I talked to Aaron today. Camp got a new ropes course that he was really excited about..."
"I don't want you going to that club, Laine."
She tightened her grip on the steering wheel.
"It's a sin, the way they live. Their lifestyles are without morals."
"Whose morals?"
"Going there is condoning that lifestyle, Laine."
"Why don't we just let God be the judge of everyone's lifestyles?"
"They spread disease."
"Goddamn it, Mike, they're not mosquitoes!"
His mouth dropped open. "Did you just say what I think you said?"
She rolled her eyes. "Yes I did, Michael. I used the Lord's name in vain."
He rode silently beside her for the duration of the trip. She noticed his hand on the door handle, and every so often he pressed his right foot hard into the floorboard. She smiled and drove a little faster.
As usual, Wal-Mart was the busiest place in town. "Listen Mike," she said, distracted by searching for a parking space. "I'm going through something. I'm feeling a little crazy..."
"...you always get this way when Aaron leaves in the Summer."
"No, that's not it. And I don't need you to explain what I'm feeling. I want you to listen..."
"I'm not gonna listen if you're gonna tell me you're going to some fag club."
She parked the car and walked purposely towards the store without waiting for him. She was already in the women's department when he caught up with her. She could hear his voice, hear a steady, ongoing monotone, but his words were muffled and unclear, sounding to her like the teachers on Charlie Brown. After browsing a few racks, she looked around quickly and said, "I need to weigh myself. I'm going to find a scale."
"Laine!" he said tersely under his breath. "I was talking to you! I don't know what's gotten into you lately, but you need to pull it together!"
She found a scale in housewares, removed her shoes and stepped on. At first she couldn't believe the numbers. She stepped off, let the needle return to zero and stepped on again. 1-7-5. She stared, disbelieving.
"Well," she said to no one. "I've finally realized where I've been hiding all these years."
"Where?" Mike asked.
"Underneath fifty pounds of rotting flesh," she answered, put the scale in the basket and made her way back to the women's department. She removed a wad of bills from her purse and began to count.
"Laine, where the hell did you get all that money?"
"I've been stealing it from the church," she said, distracted.
"Alright," he said and put up his hands. "I can't talk to you. I'm going to the fishing department..."
In the dressing room she sobbed as she tried on jeans that didn't fit, that didn't look right, and that made her feel like she was too old and fat and ugly to even consider wearing them. She sucked in her gut, turned sideways, looked at herself in the mirror over her shoulder and sobbed. "How did this happen?" she whispered.
On Friday she found herself at home, having decided against finding herself, and went through the robotic, mundane motions of making dinner, drinking wine and sitting in front of the television with her husband, watching other people live extraordinary lives with an abundance of friends and money. By 9:00 p.m. Mike had fallen asleep on the couch in his underwear.
She looked at him with disgust vile enough to set him aflame. "I hate us," she said out loud and waited for the combustion. He didn't move. "I hate what we've done to each other. I hate what we've become."
She dressed quietly in the dark, pulling on the jeans she bought that were the most flattering of the thirty pair she had tried on. She tucked in a white dress shirt and wore a black jacket over it. It wasn't leather, but it was black. She slipped on a pair of black ankle boots and then removed them, deciding to carry them out to the car instead. She wanted to sneak. She wanted to feel as if she were breaking a law.
And she was. She was breaking Michael's Law. She was going outside by herself without permission or supervision.
It had taken five attempts before she finally got through the door of Babylon, having been intimidated by the massive stone pillars that flanked the door. Discovering they were actually plastic and papier mache helped ease the passage.
The cover charge was ten dollars, but she felt it worth it once inside the flamboyant parody of Mesopotamia. The walls were covered with fabrics and scrolls outlining hymns and myths. She stopped before a massive wall and read a poem written in goldleaf: In lips she is sweet; life is in her mouth. At her appearance rejoicing becomes full. She is glorious; veils are thrown over her head. "Yep," she joked to herself. "That would be me alright."
The club was richly decorated, the details precise. If not for the heavy techno thud of the music, she could've believed herself upon a journey, mingling with kings and deities, lazing about on thick tasseled pillows with goddesses and passing an evening doing nothing more than eating peeled grapes and admiring the spirited beauty of the muses.
After walking around and admiring the sculptures and artwork, she felt immediately at ease. She was invisible there as well. She could have entered the bar wearing a tiara and twirling fiery batons and she doubted anyone would have noticed.
The crowd pitched and swelled at times, engulfing her one minute and the next, expanding outward to such a wide expanse, she found herself not just alone, but lonely. She made it obvious that she was searching the crowd for a particular face, so as not to look like someone too stupid to realize she had crossed a border into foreign land, unable to comprehend the social customs.
The beat of the music seeped inside her careful composure. She slowed her pace, felt her feet making steps in rhythm. She didn't recognize the singer's voice, but the deep, resonate beat, seduced and massaged by the casual inflection of lyrics, eased Laine into a confident waltz.
After navigating around the second bar, it slowly dawned on her that Joie and her friends weren't there. Why should they have waited for her? She had not gone to Joie's house like she promised. She had asked for help and when it was offered, she ignored it. She had not even called Joie to tell her she had changed her mind. And then hadn't called her when she changed it back. As she turned to head back towards the club's entrance, she nearly collided with a woman who had been walking behind her, and watched in horror as her arm made contact with the woman's drink, spilling the ice and amber liquid down the front of her shirt.
"Shit!" the woman yelled and jumped back a bit.
"I'm so sorry," Laine said. "I wasn't looking...I wasn't paying..."
"FUCK!"
She didn't know what to say. For a minute she thought of bolting.
"It's okay, really," the woman said, wiping off the front of her shirt with a cocktail napkin. Looking up at Laine, she said again, "Listen, it's okay. You don't have to get so upset..."
Laine realized she was crying again. "No..."
"C'mon," the woman said and bustled her into the ladies room. "Sit here," she said and lowered Laine into a chair by the door.
Laine marveled at the size of the bathroom. It was at least the size of the actual bar and contained chairs, a few small tables, a vanity and several full-length mirrors. She noticed the woman looking at her from the mirror.
"A lot goes on in here," she said and winked.
Laine blushed.
The woman laughed and held out her hand. "I'm Mel. That's short for Melody, but I swear, nobody calls me that."
Laine shook her hand. "I'm Laine. Most people call me that."
"Most? You have a nickname?"
"No, but people don't always remember it."
"Why?"
She shrugged. "I'm an easy person to forget. I don't make much of an impression."
"You made one on me."
"I...um, well."
Her laugh was unlike anything Laine had ever heard. She put her entire body and face into it, like an exercise, and she threw her head back and filled herself up with it, letting it cascade out like a tremendous river when the rains came. She sat down and took a few deep breaths. "I have to say that was the most articulate thing I've heard all night."
Laine didn't know what to say.
"You're not gay, are you?" she asked.
"Me? No! I'm married!"
"So are lots of people in here, sweetie."
They sat quietly for a few minutes, listening to the jungle drum beat of the techno music vibrating against the door. "There was a song playing," Laine said, "right before I baptized you, sung by a woman..."
Mel closed her eyes tightly for a moment. "Um...yeah, k.d. lang."
"Katie Lang?"
"k.d.," she repeated and laughed again. "You really aren't gay, are you?"
"I was supposed to meet my friend Joie here tonight, but I was late, and they left, I guess..."
"Joie Patrelli? Yeah, she was here."
"You know her?" Laine asked, genuinely surprised.
"Honey, everyone knows Joie."
"I work with her."
"At the real-estate company?"
"It's a mortgage company," Laine said.
"What's the difference?"
Laine sighed. "If I had to choose between talking about my job and shooting myself in the head, I'd be loading the gun right now."
"Okay," Mel laughed. "Do you want me to help you find your friends?"
"No. I suspect if they're here, they'll find me."
"What do you want to do then?"
She felt her mouth water. "I want to get very, very drunk."
Mel stood up and held out her hand. "I was hoping you'd say that."
At a small mahogany table in the back, surrounded by gold lame wallpaper and paintings of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, the watchful eyes of Babylonian gods stared out of ancient ruins as Mel instructed Laine in the proper order of tequila shots. After the third one, Laine finally mastered the sequence and slammed the empty shot glass on the table. Mel pounded the table with both hands and clapped. "Very nice!"
Laine watched in awe as a tall blonde woman floated past their table wearing stiletto heels. Her hair was teased high, heavily sprayed, and she wore false eye-lashes and enough jewelry to outshine the disco balls that spun throughout the club. None of that was what Laine first noticed, though. It was the woman's attitude. It was her pride.
"Drag Queen," Mel said with a nod.
"Yeah, I figured." Laine had quickly realized that some of the women in the bar were actually men, and that some of the men were actually female. It seemed that the ones who appeared outrageously male or female, were exactly opposite underneath it all. And some, like Mel, seemed to morph both sexes, having qualities of both, but defining neither.
It was the most beautiful crowd of people Laine had ever seen. She glanced at Mel. Her hair was short, cropped closed to her head, and was somewhere between the color of brown and dark blonde. She had a handsome face that smiled even when she wasn't smiling. Her skin was deeply tanned, weathered in some spots, but she wore the ruggedness like an old jacket that had contoured over the years to fit her body. They were the same height, about 5'6, but Mel was thinner. Laine guessed 140, maybe. And her stomach...she was entranced by Mel's stomach, its taut flatness revealed when she had stood to shake the hand of someone passing their table. Laine had almost reached out and touched it and had to clasp her hands to keep from doing so.
The liquor was making her warm and she removed her jacket. She felt self-conscious immediately, feeling the bulk of her midsection exposed to public view, and began to put it on again.
"Don't," Mel said. "Take it off."
She did so without hesitation.
"Let's dance," Mel said and took her hand.
She followed without question. On the dance floor she was surprised to find that Mel's hand encircling her waist made her heart race. The electrical vibration made her skin gooseflesh, as if announcing the presence of a foreigner invading an intimate space, a space that had long been abandoned by the troops. She swallowed hard.
"Don't worry, princess. I'm not going to hurt you."
She closed her eyes and let the music enfold her. She followed Mel's expert lead on the floor, feeling their bodies keeping time. Mel turned her around and danced from behind, moving her hands up and down Laine's thighs. She wrapped her arms around Laine's waist and whispered hard into the back of her neck, "You're so sexy."
The tears were immediate. How long had it been since someone said she was sexy? Had anyone ever told her she was sexy? She couldn't remember. She had not felt sexy, or dressed or acted sexy. If given five hundred adjectives to describe herself, sexy would never make the list.
She turned into Mel's arms and kissed her, feeling passion bubbling from a source that had clotted off from years of neglect. "Tell me again," she cried. "Please."
Mel kissed her hard on the mouth. Laine felt her lips pressed against her teeth. Each time she felt the pain might overwhelm her, Mel backed off and kissed her gently, only to take her back to that threshold seconds later.
"You're so sexy, Laine," Mel said while expertly steering her off the dance floor. They kissed the entire length of the bar, kissed and groped through the crowd, and stumbled into the ladies room as one entity. In the bathroom they bashed through a stall and slammed it shut. Mel began to unzip Laine's jeans when Laine suddenly inhaled deeply and opened her eyes. "Oh my God!" she said and looked around. "Oh, no...Mel, please."
Mel unzipped her pants without answering.
"No," Laine said, barely able to catch her breath. "I can't do this..."
Mel grabbed Laine's arms and held them over her head. With her free hand she pulled Laine's jeans down slightly. Kissing her again, she slid her hand down the front of Laine's pants.
"Oh God," Laine said as her eyes rolled.
"There we go, princess," Mel whispered, feeling her wetness. She kissed Laine hard until she felt the familiar rhythm and watched her face carefully, listened for patterns in her breathing, felt the swelling that signaled an opened invitation. "There we go," Mel whispered again as she slid her fingers inside.
The bathroom stall began to vibrate and shake. Laine quickly removed her jeans and stuck her hand down the front of Mel's tan Dockers. They kissed and held onto to each other with their free arms, at times losing footing and balance, smashing into the wall, nearly falling and being knocked about inside the tiny space. Mel propped her up on the back of the toilet and slid her fingers further inside. Laine wrapped her legs around Mel's waist.
Her screams echoed throughout the bathroom. Her cries and moans and demands went unchecked and uncensored. "Don't stop," she begged. "Fuck me harder."
She felt herself opening like never before, could feel her muscles clenching in spasms around Mel's hand. She grabbed at her like an animal, crying through her moans, shuddering through an orgasm that seemed to shred her from the inside out, exploding out of her like an explosive pyrotechnic ecstasy.
As they both spilled out of the stall, Laine caught a quick reflection of herself in the mirror. Her hair was tousled and wild, shirt opened to the middle, two of the top buttons missing. She could feel the sensation of soreness in unfamiliar muscles in her arms and legs. Her eyeliner was running and her lipstick was smeared all over her face. Her expression reminded her of the look on her son's face the first time he had ever eaten cake. Her smile was too powerful for her face to contain.
Mel sidled up behind her and kissed the back of her neck. "I'm gonna go get a beer. I'll be right back."
"No, wait," Laine began, suddenly feeling strong and sure-footed. "Listen, don't come back in. I'm just gonna get cleaned up a bit and go home..."
"Laine, let me walk you to your car at least."
"No, really. I need to go out like this. I need to remember it just like this."
Mel kissed her. "You're incredible."
Laine returned the kiss gently. She inhaled the sweat, pungent scent of Mel's neck, breathing it in like oxygen. She noted the evidence of their passion--the tussle of clothes, Mel's watch flipped inside out and higher up on her wrist, buttons missing and make-up smeared all over their skin. "You will never know what you just did for me."
Laine barely heard Mel leave, so mesmerized she was by her own reflection moments later. She got closer to the mirror and stared intently. A single drop of sweat made its way slowly down the side of her face and she wiped it away, putting her fingers in her mouth to taste the seasoning of her life.
She could see herself so clearly, it was as if she were turning pages of a scrapbook about her life, each picture bright and colorful, replete with dates and details. She could suddenly see herself as she was when she was ten years old, wearing a red cotton t-shirt and blue jean cutoff shorts, standing barefoot on the hot asphalt road as she watched the ambulance take her mother away. She could see herself at 13, hanging out with her friends Robyn and Mary at the Seasons Mall and being kissed for the first time by Lance Wilbur, an older boy who worked at Cosmic Records and who looked the other way when they stole Bee Gee cassette tapes. She watched herself getting her first speeding ticket on her 18th birthday, smiled at the expression she had when she met Michael at a Journey concert--when they were both young and believed life would only get better. She remembered tearing a small part of the hem on her wedding dress when she got out of the limosine and rushed into the church, and tasted again the vanilla in the three-tiered wedding cake that toppled over after the ceremony and had to be put back together by the caterer. She felt the glow of her face when first discovering she was pregnant, on a Tuesday afternoon, with the sound of General Hospital playing in the livingroom. She remembered feeling engulfed with the absolute promise of creation the first time she felt her child move within her, pushing against the confines of her womb, demanding notice even before drawing a single breath. She saw herself again as she was then, pregnant with expectation and possibility, unafraid of dying for the cause.
She looked hard at her reflection, determined not to look away or be afraid of what she was seeing, or be afraid of what she wasn't seeing. She looked hard and saw what was there. "Welcome back," she said and smiled.