Fast Lanes by Jayne Anne Phillips

Author:Jayne Anne Phillips [Phillips, Jayne Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Short Stories, Short Stories (Single Author)
ISBN: 9780307808837
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 1983-01-02T05:00:00+00:00

Alma

At night they shut the door of my room. The shade of the one window was drawn, and the only light I saw was the light along the bottom of the door. It was the light of their world, a razor-thin sliver hovering in space, somewhere between yellow and white. Lying in my narrow bed, I said my name over and over, slower and faster and faster and slower. I was eleven years old: I thought my name was a code for what happened when I said the word that was me, a code for the way my breathing changed, for how the space of the room got big, bigger than the house or the town, quiet and full of crashing. Light flickered behind the closed lids of my eyes. Sudden red flashes erupted like visual sirens and disappeared, sucked deeper into the sound of flying and the lonely, vast whirl of darkness. All of inner space sang with a roar of wind. I could fling myself deeper, endlessly, and all the time my name sounded in the whisper of my voice.

I thought that’s what night was for everyone, that my mother, Audrey, my father, Wes, my sister, Lenny, all tumbled into themselves, falling asleep as they fell. I imagined my parents in their double bed, lying prone and silent, their heads in the exact centers of their pillows.

And Lenny, my idol, my tormentor, was her night self in my vision, a self washed free of us. I was mesmerized if I watched her as she slept, walked into her room at night after drinking in forbidden fashion from the bathroom faucet. She was fourteen: I remember standing in the dark, looking at her, the delicious metallic taste of tap water still sharp in my mouth. Lenny looked cold, but comfortably so, as though she were meant to be cold, like marble or crystal. She slept like a nun, fearless and still, on her back, her hands at her sides, her head gently inclined to one side. Her face, expressionless, perfect and smooth, seemed a face unconcerned with possibilities, a face waiting to be alive. Her long loose hair was the color of bleached hay, hay that has weathered in fields. All day her hair was bound in a long blond swatch, a silky, blunt-cut ponytail that swung when she moved. Wes, who’d learned to barber in the Army, trimmed it once a month—Lenny in the kitchen or the yard, stalwart in her straight chair, Wes with his sharp scissors and rattail comb. My mother put newspapers under them in winter to catch the hair, but in summer the pale wisps fell into the grass and took flight on any gust of breeze. Those nights in my room, in the black fields of my vision, I imagined Lenny and our father tilting and spinning through space, Lenny seated, our father’s hands in her hair. He was separate from us, a bordering country whose customs and language were mysterious, yet he was part of Lenny.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.