Page 94 of A Better World

The air today was cleaner than usual because of a recent snow. Linda’s sinuses didn’t instantaneously clog, nor did she feel the need to don a mask.

The ride was quiet. Linda’s conversational openers had been misfiring for months. She had no confidence she’d say the right thing this time, either. “I had a bad day yesterday. I’m sorry if I frightened you.”

Josie dead-eyed straight ahead. When kids are little, you do so much together that your thoughts are often in lockstep. You know what they’re thinking. Then they get older, and they look like adults. It’s right and healthy that they should separate, but the access you once had to them is gone. Sometimes, they even seem like strangers.

“I felt overwhelmed,” Linda said to this pained young woman sitting shotgun.

“Oh,” Josie said. A tear rolled down her cheek.

“Why are you crying?”

“I don’t know.”

“I didn’t mean to yell at you about the snow globe. That was an accident. I was upset.”

Josie sniffled, looked at her hands. Linda appreciated that theywere driving in a car past so much snow, and not trying to have this conversation while sitting inside that big house at 9 Sunset Heights. It felt safer here.

“You’re not spoiled. Or if you are, you don’t act it.”

Josie rolled the window a crack, breathed the frigid air.

“And maybe you’re right. Maybe I do treat you differently. Maybe I treat myself differently. When you’re living a thing sometimes you’re too close to know.”

Josie didn’t answer for a while. Linda looked ahead at the snow, the small houses, the salt on the road that kept her tires from skidding. With the open window, their breath fogged the air. “It was a good snow globe,” Josie said at last.

“I’d put it at medium to junky with high sentimental value,” Linda answered.

They passed the clinic and went down the small main street, the run-down and shuttered stores. Josie wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Why did you leave me alone on New Year’s Eve?”

They passed the last store, Diem’s Auto, and were on the road going opposite the highway. Only one lane had been plowed. There wasn’t any place to pull over. But it was an early weekend morning. There weren’t other cars around. Linda cut the engine and stopped right there.

“I made a mistake,” she said.

“Oh,” Josie said.

“It’s hard to know the right thing to do in the moment. I didn’t know. I felt bad all night. I wanted to come back to you.” She was tempted to add,Daddy and Hip, too. We all missed you.But Josie would smell the lie. She wouldn’t see it as a kindness. She’d see it as an insult. “You have to tell me what you want, Josie. I can’t always think of it. If you’d told me, I’d have stayed.”

“You were mad at me,” Josie said. And then, eyes scrunched tight: “I know I should tell you. But I don’tknowwhat I want.”

The cold air felt good. PV was oppressive. Its walls were oppressive. The people were oppressive. Even the air, cycled through vents, tasted both fresh and dead, like a recording of music instead of the real thing.

“What’s going on with you?” Linda asked. “Can you try to tell me?”

Josie pursed her thin lips and seemed to think. Then she did try, and Linda had the idea it wasn’t because she’d said anything right. It was necessity. Things couldn’t go on as they had been going. Josie had to tell someone. “It’s like I’m not here. Like, I can see everything. I can see me, but it’s not me. Sometimes it’s like… like my heart.”

“What about your heart?”

“It’s beating too fast. I think I’m dying. But I know I’m not. I never was like this back home. I’m going crazy.”

Linda’s eyes watered. She’d been crying a lot lately, and on every occasion, it had happened because she’d learned something new and disquieting about this town. It had felt like carrying a heavy weight that kept getting heavier, until yesterday, when the weight had sunk her and she’d stayed in bed. This time, with her daughter, her tears didn’t feel like a weight. They felt like a release.

“God, Josie. You’re not crazy. It’s this place. Crazy is the only sane reaction.”

“No one likes me,” she said.

“From what you say, they suck, so you’re better off.”

“No. Not them. They don’t matter. Hip doesn’t like me. And Dad doesn’t.”

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