Same As It Ever Was by Claire Lombardo

Author:Claire Lombardo [Lombardo, Claire]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-06-18T00:00:00+00:00

29

She has been regarding Alma’s admitted students weekend at Herzog with the removed optimism of a person refusing to think too hard about what’s to come, the same deluded maybe-it-won’t-be-so-bad attitude with which she has previously approached dental procedures and childbirth, and Alma does nothing to get them off to an auspicious beginning, standing imposingly in front of the driver’s side door like a carjacker.

“Can I drive?” her daughter asks.

She should have known this was coming. Her own mother—she had to hand this to Anita—had taught her how to drive, early mornings in Oak Woods Cemetery, but she has left the entirety of her children’s vehicular instruction up to their father; for all the driving she has done in her adult life she could not bear to shepherd her children through this particular rite of passage, a rite that would literally take them even further away from her than they already were.

“Maybe on the way home,” she says, and Alma, radiating rage, curls up into the passenger seat and pulls the hood of her sweatshirt tight over her head.

Her daughter is angry already that Mark has bailed on their trip at the last minute, citing a trip to New York that his assistant forgot to put in his calendar.

“I’m sorry,” he’d said last night, rolling moisture-wicking T-shirts into his stupid ergonomic backpack. “But these students at Columbia are— God, they all look like they’re about twelve but if you could see what they’re doing, Jules; it’s a robot the size of a sperm cell that accelerates the body’s recovery from major surgery.”

“And they’ll—what? Scrap it if you don’t meet them for coffee tomorrow morning?”

“They’re graduating in a few weeks,” he says. “This is my chance to meet with them before they get snatched up by someone bigger.”

“Ollie’s graduating too,” she said, but all he’d said was “It’ll be good for you two to have some time alone.”

But being alone, now, in the car with Alma does not feel particularly good.

“Oh my God, Mom,” Alma says, when Julia waves in her rearview at the car who has let her merge onto the expressway. She makes herself even smaller in her seat. “Do you know that person?”

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.