Close to Home: A Novel by Barbara Hall

Author:Barbara Hall [Hall, Barbara]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2014-06-30T16:00:00+00:00

14

JOYCE’S APARTMENT WAS a simple, uncomplicated place. It was also a shrine to indecision. The furnishings made no statement and offered no argument. A plain tweed couch and matching armchair, a glass coffee table, and a wide bookshelf, only one shelf of which was occupied by books. The books themselves could not be disputed—encyclopedias, book club editions of a few classics, a Time-Life series about space. There was a small television, a VCR, and a radio. The remaining open area was occupied by gewgaws, glass figurines of ballerinas and animals, and a few pieces from the Dickens Village collection. The one photograph she displayed was one of herself on her high school graduation day. She was fond of it for a couple of reasons. One was because it didn’t look like her. She stood in her black cap and gown, clutching her diploma to her chest, and her expression was decidedly sardonic. It was a characteristic she did not believe herself to possess, yet there it was, captured in full Kodak color, a woman who thought that such a ceremony meant nothing, and her participation in it was obligatory. Of course I graduated, said the easy, crooked smile. So what? Who doesn’t?

The other thing she liked about it, which was not visible to the eye of any observer, was that Danny took it. She knew that the taker of the photograph had everything to do with her expression. She was communicating with him, sharing in his own private knowledge that this was all somehow a hoax, that given her background, which he shared, graduating from high school was no more a step forward than falling out of a moving car. She had escaped, but where did that escape take her except to a hard landing on cold, unforgiving asphalt?

She never expected anyone else to see the meaning of it all, and no one ever did. In a way, Joyce thought of it as a photograph of Danny, and for that reason she valued it beyond measure. Danny was the only person she cared to recall from her entire history.

Joyce loved her apartment for many reasons, but one of them was that it carried not even a shadow of her former life. A detective could scour this place and never come up with a worthwhile clue about the person who occupied it. The identity of her place was its lack of identity; it was the life she had always strived for. Many a night she had relaxed on the couch in front of the TV, thinking, Anyone could live here. It was an accurate representation of nothing in particular, and she had spent most of her life trying to free herself of her particulars. It wasn’t an easy task, being devoid of opinion or attitude. She did not feel that way, but she could live that way, and she could hope to reinvent herself. She could create a completely malleable person, a chameleon who shamelessly adapted to her environment for purposes of survival.

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