Breathing Again
It’s sunny. The sun. I've missed since last fall,
and I feel hopeful. I’m setting out to find the post office that is supposed to
be a few miles away from my apartment. No one tells you this, but moving to
another state is kind of like going on vacation. You constantly rely on a
fritzy GPS to get you to and from your everyday needs. The traffic around you
is full of tired people who know exactly where they’re trying to go and they
can’t understand why the little red car in front of them won’t speed up. The
air smells weird. The geography is even different.
When I drove out to Ohio, the cradle of the
Appalachian Mountains opened up into knitted green fields and red barns.
Americana. My mother could make an entire room décor from the landmarks that I
passed by without much thought. My mother had a congestive heart failure
yesterday.
Right. The post office. I pull out of our parking
lot and onto the road in front of me. The air conditioner blows cold at my face
as the sun browns my bare arms. Driving seems really simply in theory, but when
you’re in the middle of suburbia with a GPS that has just popped out of its
carousel and into your lap, and thirty other cars trying to do the “go” thing
at the same time, things get a little hectic.
I round a wide bend and squinting ahead, I can see
the post office. Home sweet USPS. I turn onto the side street, where I assume
the entrance is, to see “Do Not Enter”. Well, shit. There’s an orange Jeep in
front of me, and I hope that they know where they’re going.
They do. It’s just not where I want to go. The city
around me sprawls in a lazy way, long bouts of highway between sporadic up
sprouts of MIDAS and Sunoco’s. I pull off and relocate the post office. What
they don’t tell you in driver’s education is that each city has a different way
of laying out their streets. Things aren't super different but in one city
where you’ll never see someone pull a U-turn, the next you’ll see it be a popular way of cross over to the other side of the street.
After re-navigation and reconsidering my attitude, I
arrive at the post office. I step inside, and I’m grateful to have found the
building. After the drive, the line doesn't seem so bad. I’m waiting to pick up
my dress for graduation.
Graduation. Is still hasn't really hit me yet. The
idea that I’m an adult now. Now what? I guess I’ll keep breathing until I
figure it out. In the meantime, I work on shutting off the reminders in my
brain that I have homework due or that I need to get ready to drive the four
hours back to school. I don’t need to do either thing.
Graduation. The dress.
“Do you think
she’ll be able to come to graduation?”
“It’s not
looking too good. We’ll see what the doctor’s say. She had a congestive heart
failure and she’s still weak.”
“Okay. If not,
she can always watch from the live stream on her iPad.”
The postmaster calls for the next person; I move
forward and give him my pink slip, and he gives me my package. I walk out to my
car and consider the fact that there’s a Cracker Barrel another street over.
The other Cracker Barrel, about seven miles from where I sit, was hiring. Would
this one be too?
Might as well see. I pull the car back onto the four
lane highway that I’m still learning to traverse and figure my way into the
restaurant’s parking lot. I shut off the car and flip down the mirror. I’m not
wearing any makeup. My nose ring glints in my right nostril, and I consider
taking it out. I don’t.
I get out of the car, and inside is a sign that says
they’re hiring.
I don’t ask the
question on my mind: is she going to be okay? I stare at the heaving chest that
moves at an automatic drum pace. Her head is lolled to the side and she sleeps
peacefully. Sedatives will do that to you.
“She’s usually
in the hospital for a couple days when this happens.” My stepdad is keeping the
conversation going because he can see the storm raging inside me. He’s trying
to make all of this seem normal. Just a trip to the ICU.
Nothing out of
the ordinary. She’ll be right as rain, old girl, in a couple days and then
things will go back to normal. I’ll pretend to be a good daughter and make
promises of visits and she’ll call me from my stepdad’s phone to get mad at me
for not being there. I’ll apologize and she’ll hand the phone back to Randy,
her energy spent.
Application: Finished. Next, interview. The great
thing about being in the same job code for the last seven years is that I can
hand an application in and speak to a manager. That following conversation will
be considered the first interview, because really, I’m so qualified for the
position. Now, I have an interview with the GM in two days.
I set out to find the post office; I found a job.
On my way out of the restaurant, the cloud above are
darkening to grays and deep blacks. I tell the woman walking beside me that it
always rains when I wear this skirt. She laughs and tells me I should stop. I've never met her before, but this is the easy way of being around a
restaurant. You can have conversations with complete strangers. It’s normal.
Two days and a rambling interview with a GM, I have
secured a position with Cracker Barrel. A
machine’s still breathing for her.
