Like Life by Lorrie Moore

Author:Lorrie Moore
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Contemporary, Adult
ISBN: 9780571144419
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 1990-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

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THE SIGN SAID “WELCOME TO AMERICA,” in bold red letters. Underneath, in smaller blue, Millie had spelled out John Spee. Comma, John Spee. She held it up against her chest like a locket, something pressed against the heart for luck: a pledge of allegiance. She was waiting for a boy she didn’t know, someone she’d never even seen a photograph of, an English acquaintance of her daughter Ariel’s. Ariel was on a junior semester abroad, and the boy was the brother of one of her Warwickshire dormmates. He was an auto mechanic in Surrey, and because he’d so badly wanted to come to the States, Ariel had told him that if he needed a place, he could stay with her parents in New Jersey. She had written ahead to inform them. “I told John Spee he could stay in Michael’s old room, unless you are still using it as an ‘office.’ In which case he can stay in mine.”

Office in quotation marks. Millie had once hoped to start a business in that room, something to do with recycling and other environmental projects. She had hoped to be hired on a consultant basis, but every time she approached a business or community organization they seemed confounded as to what they would consult her for. For a time Millie had filled the room with business cards and supplies and receipts for various expenses in case she ever filed a real tax form. Her daughter and her husband had rolled their eyes and looked, embarrassed, in the other direction.

“Office.” Ariel made her quotation marks as four quick slashes, not the careful sixes and nines Millie had been trained long ago to write. There was something a bit spoiled about Ariel, a quiet impudence, which troubled Millie. She had written back to her daughter, “Your father and I have no real objections, and certainly it will be nice to meet your friend. But you must check with us next time before you volunteer our home.” She had stressed our home with a kind of sternness that lingered regretlessly. “You mustn’t take things for granted.” It was costing them good money to send Ariel abroad. Millie herself had never been to England. Or anywhere, when you got right down to it. Once, as a child, she had been to Florida, but she remembered so little of it. Mostly just the glare of the sky, and some vague and shuddering colors.

People filed out from the Newark customs gate, released and weary, one of them a thin, red-haired boy of about twenty. He lit a cigarette, scanned the crowd, and then, spying Millie, headed toward her. He wore an old, fraying camel hair sports jacket, sneakers of blue, man-made suede, and a baseball cap, which said Yankees, an ersatz inscription.

“Are you Mrs. Keegan?” he asked, pronouncing it Kaygan.

“Um, yes, I am,” Millie said, and blushed as if surprised. She let the sign, which with its crayoned and overblown message now seemed ludicrous, drop to her side.

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