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Show Motherlunge a novel 7 By then, I had gone to college. But of course I was still a waitress. I still lived at home. For me, nothing much had changed except the hostility I felt for the girl who'd lettered ANTHRO, MASS COMM, and GENDER STUD in forward-leaning script on her file cabinet drawers: It grew. Then, six states away, Pavia suddenly called one night in uncharacteristic distress, saying, "Everything is wrong." "You go," our mother said, "You go see Pavia." She called up Walter and they bought me a plane ticket. I packed some clothes in Dorothy's yellow vinyl suitcase. I zipped it shut and buckled the belt around its middle, sensing that this suitcase-the one that would accompany me on my first trip to the big city-was as quaint as a hairnet, as a sanitary belt, as aerosol hairspray. I didn't care; I was happy. On the plane I had a seat near the window. I watched my hometown sink away and all the rest of the country rise into view, curving in front of me at last, expectant. When I got off the plane, there was Pavia with a paperback copy of In Search of Excellence, dressed in what I recognized as sportswear. You know the drill-the way she quickly counted the crowd, looking for me; the way she smiled and waved. The way we hugged, the way young women struggle with luggage that isn't, really, all that heavy. That habit of apologizing about the interior of a car, for all that customized debris-the gum wrappers and empty drink cups, the dog-eared stack of papers from work that need to be moved off the passenger's seat to make room for you. Also: the smell of her perfume-musk and spice, a grown-up smell-which slightly thrills and frightens. I had scarcely seen Pavia since her wedding day, and she did seem changed; time showed. Unwinding the car down the parking structure's nauseating ramp, steering hard |