a/n: thank you thank you thank you to all of the kind reviews. they've made my holidays merry and bright. happy thanksgiving to all, if you're back in the states. if you're not, eat, drink, and be merry anyway.
comment your comments, and what you're thankful for this year, and hey, something else you'd like me to know.
a comment for a comment: most of this was written during my anthropology course. this year, i'm thankful for old friends and new adventures and for having a big-girl home to welcome my family into for thanksgiving dinner. after nine years of injuries, tears, and performances, tomorrow i retire my sequins and my jazz shoes for good.
happy reading and much love. -inez
"Chapter One:
He Adored New York City.
He idolized it all out of proportion...
no, make that:
he -
he romanticized it all out of proportion.
Yeah.
To him, no matter what the season was,
this was still a town that existed in black and white
and pulsated to the great tunes of George Gershwin.
Uh, no let me start this over.
Chapter One:
He was too romantic about Manhattan,
as he was about everything else."
- Woody Allen, Manhattan
There was something unspeakably sad about driving back towards the home of her Girl Scouts and Bible School and high school prom days.
It came in waves of emotion and failed detachment, driving the green, windy roads back into the South, past little houses, front yards full with Christmas lights and the cars of four-generation families, converging in a sort of tradition that would probably always endure in the small-town South.
Some part of her still saw the looks of flippancy on her mother and aunt's faces as they'd wished her a safe road home the last time she'd been back—it was the same part of her that wanted to roar that this little snow-spattered place on the edge of nowhere was the only place she'd ever known and ever would know as home. A cold apartment in a cold city will always be just that—cold.
Some bigger part of her wondered, even now, especially now, as she drove back, car loaded down with failure, if she'd ever stop being the disappointment of the family. The disappointment of the entire town. The one who always couldn't wait to get away.
It was a strange sort of feeling, a sort of pushing and pulling as she tried to fit her soul back onto the shelves of journals that marked years and years of cheering for one team, loving one boy, singing hymnal hymns beside him every Sunday morning, and also years and years of dreaming of New York.
With every single part of her being, she pushed and shoved and tried to figure out what parts of herself she could stand to throw out. With every single part of herself, she wished that that town and that little church and that wonderful, kind boy had been enough.
And some days, even at Christmastime—especially at Christmastime, after life had fallen apart again, she resented God and all the powers that be for taking her out of Roseville, for showing her that there was more, for instilling in her some insatiable need to be a part of bigger places than stretch-forever-flat sunsets, early morning fog-covered orchards, and whole-county's-there county fairs.
It was the summer of 20 that it all set in. She'd been long gone from Roseville for a long time by then—she was in her sophomore year at NYU, and she wasn't looking back—and there was still a whole world out there for her to see. She'd had the money, the time, and so she would go.
She didn't tell him that she was leaving. It wasn't her obligation, she'd told herself as she held hands with another, younger city boy who promised Saturday mornings of strolls through Central Park and the security of inherited penthouses in Tribeca and kind words, but the insecurity of misunderstanding and knowing that everyone would always look at him and say 'why is he stuck with her?'
The first? His name was Zach, but she couldn't say much else about him—that would require too much introspection; too many disconcerting thoughts. The second? His name had been Josh, and he'd deserved better. He really did.
She dated Josh for two years—a whirlwind that she preferred not to think on too hard—and then she'd fled again, to Rome, to Paris, to London, and to one wild weekend in Sweden that involved a firefighter she met at a Christmas market, and God, how she regretted that entire journey, even though it had taught her who she was.
A tumbleweed. Cameron Ann Morgan was a tumbleweed, and the wind was blowing her back home.
As she braked around the final curve, and Roseville came into view, she began to wish that the wind had changed direction. But there she was, stumbling back into something and someplace she'd worked so hard to fly out of.
Isn't that how it always happens?
She sniffed, pretended that her eyes didn't burn, and drove on.
It wasn't warm in Virginia, but compared to upper Brooklyn, it might as well have been July in New Orleans. At least to her. She'd always hated the heat. It made her feel claustrophobic—smothered—like she would be caught in molasses for the rest of her life, destined to become the victim of all great Southern Small Towns.
She saw the lights before she even got into town—the square was always lit up this time of year, colorful bulb strands wrapped carefully around even the smallest, highest limbs of each tree, intermingling with the moss. She'd always wondered at how none of it caught fire. It was beautiful, all of it—always on the edge of burning.
The whole town was—actually was torched in the Civil War—and hadn't been stable ever since.
"I'll put some records on while I pour…" Michael Bublé sang through the radio.
She turned it up and rolled another window down. It smelled like evergreen and smoke from the barbeque joint on the corner and home.
The streets were deceptively deserted; all of the parking spaces were full.
The door to the coffee shop opened, and out stepped a mirage from the past. He was even taller—broader, but she didn't look for too long—than she remembered, but she'd know that grin anywhere. He was with two women—one his mom, and the other certainly his wife. She looked away as he turned to look at her car passing.
This was ridiculous. They couldn't see her, and they wouldn't know her if they did. It wasn't as if she made returning to Roseville a habit.
A light rain started falling, and for a moment, she was surprised it wasn't snow.
She rolled her windows up. Jesus, it was hot in Virginia.