Strangers
who did not meet approval. No boy ever met Mary's approval. In fact, Jorja married Alan in part because Mary disapproved of him. Matrimony as rebellion. Stupid, but she had done it and paid dearly. Mary had driven her to it - Mary's suffocating and authoritarian brand of love. Now, Jorja grabbed the jeans that were laid out on the bed and slipped into them, dressing fast.
Mary said, "She won't even say why she's collecting those things."
"Because she doesn't know why. It's a compulsion. An irrational obsession, and if there's a reason for it, the reason is buried down in her subconscious, where even she can't get a look at it."
Mary said, "That book should be taken away from her."
"Eventually," Jorja said. "One step at a time, Mom."
"If it was up to me, I'd do it right now."
Jorja had packed two big suitcases and had left them here earlier. Now, when it was time to go to the airport, Pete drove, and Mary went along for the opportunity to engage in more nagging.
Jorja and Marcie shared the back seat. On the way to the airport, the girl paged continuously, silently back and forth through her album.
Between Jorja and Mary, the subject of conversation had changed from the best way to deal with Marcie's obsession to the imminent trip to Elko. Mary had doubts about this expedition and did not hesitate to express them. Was the plane just a twelve-seater? Wasn't it dangerous to go up in a bucket of bolts owned by a small-time outfit that was probably short of cash and skimped on maintenance? What was the purpose of going, anyway? Even if some people in Elko were having problems like Marcie's, how could it possibly have anything to do with the fact that they'd all stayed at the same motel?
"This Corvaisis guy bothers me," Pete said as he braked for a red traffic light. "I don't like you getting involved with his kind."
"What do you mean? You don't even know him."
"I know enough," Pete said. "He's a writer, and you know what they're like. I read once that Norman Mailer hung his wife out a high window by her heels. And isn't it Hemingway who's always getting into fist-fights?"
Jorja said, "Daddy, Hemingway's dead."
"See? Always getting in fights, drunk, using drugs. Writers are a flaky bunch. I don't like you being involved with writers."
"This trip is a big mistake," Mary said flatly.
It never ended.
At the airport, when she kissed them goodbye, they told her they loved her, and she told them the same, and the strange thing was that they were all telling the truth. Though they continuously sniped at her and though she had been deeply wounded by their sniping, they loved one another. Without love, they would have stopped speaking long ago. The parent-child relationship was sometimes even more perplexing than the mystery of what had happened at the Tranquility Motel two summers ago.
The feeder line's bucket of bolts was more comfortable than Mary would have believed, withsix well-padded seats on each side of a narrow aisle, free headphones providing bland but mellowing Muzak tapes, and a pilot who handled his craft as gently as a new mother carried her baby.
Thirty minutes out of Las Vegas, Marcie closed the album and, in spite of the daylight streaming through the portholes, she drifted off to sleep, lulled by the loud but hypnotic droning of the engines.
During the flight, Jorja thought about her future: the business degree toward which she was working, her hope of owning a dress shop, the hard work ahead-and loneliness, which was already a problem for her. She wanted a man. Not sexually. Although that would be welcome too! She had dated a few times since the divorce but had been to bed with no one. She was no female eunuch. Sex was important to her, and she missed it. But sex was not the main reason she wanted a man, one special man, a mate. She needed someone to share her dreams, triumphs, and failures. She had Marcie, but that was not the same. The human species seemed genetically compelled to make life's journey two-by-two, and the need was particularly strong in Jorja.
As the plane droned north-northeast, Jorja listened to Mantovani on the headphones and indulged in a bit of uncharacteristic, girlish fantasizing. At the Tranquility Motel, perhaps she would meet a special man with whom she could share this new beginning. She recalled Dominick
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