Blue Diary by Alice Hoffman

Author:Alice Hoffman [Hoffman, Alice]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Trials (Murder), Legal, General, Legal Stories, Large Type Books, Fiction, City and Town Life
ISBN: 9781568951966
Publisher: Berkley Trade
Published: 2001-01-01T22:00:00+00:00

Dreamland

FIFTEEN YEARS AGO, THE FIELDS IN

this part of Maryland were yellow, burned and discolored by a season of unusual heat, but now, in the first week of August, they are sweet and green, rich with corn and soybeans and millet. Out here on the Eastern Shore, two hours from Baltimore and half an hour past the Bay Bridge, the old roads buckle in the summertime. Late in the afternoon, when the air becomes cooler, a person can smell the tide upon approaching the marshes past Blackwater. When Jorie stops for gas, she stands beside the rented car in the fading light and tries to get her bearings. The landscape is one she’s not accustomed to, with bits of extreme beauty peeking out from between asphalt and billboards. Beyond the gas station, for instance, lies a stretch of wild rice, golden and blooming riotously in the damp, brackish soil.

/ could move to this place right now and nobody would know who I was and what I wasleavingbehind, Jorie thinks to herself as she pays the attendant and gets a Pepsi from the soda machine. She holds the ice-cold can to her fore—

head and blinks in the sharp light. / could tell people anything I wantedto, and whatever I told them, that would be the truth as far as they were concerned. Whoever J said I was, well then, that’s who I’d be.

Jorie gets directions and heads out. It’s been a long while since she’s been anywhere on her own, and she has a nervous, prickly sensation up and down her spine. What would happen if she never returned? Anne is the only one who knows where she is, a necessity in case of an emergency. But Anne is disorganized and may already have lost the sheet of paper with the vitals written down-time of departure, time of arrival, the name of the town that is Jorie’s destination. With no husband and no child to accompany her, Jorie feels oddly light, as if she could float away through the open car windows; the breeze catches her pale hair so that it flies everywhere and is quickly tangled into knots. She thinks warmly of the vacations she and Charlotte used to take when they were young, always staying at third-rate motels, whether on the shore in Rhode Island or up in Maine, weeks when they ate fast food, and stayed up all night, and had a ridiculously wonderful time. It astonishes Jorie to think of how young they were, how hopeful and free. Amazing where your life can deposit you before you know it. One, two, three, and you’re on a completely different road than the one youd always expected to be on at this point in your life. There is no compass when such things happen, no rules and no maps to guide you, and no one who cares if the sun is glaring or if the asphalt is melting beneath your tires.

As Jorie drives on, loblolly pines edge the road and cast shadows across the thickening air.

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