That summer she hadn't struggled to support herself. The salt had done it for her when she was thirteen on the Great Salt Lake, afloat beneath her parents' wind-borne cries. Behind white cloud-doors, she saw life as a sort of railway flat through which she'd pass from daughter, to wife, to mother, each defined, a furnished room in which she could devise the person to fit that place. Now, almost thirty, divorced, and shut out from her faith, she stuffs her daughter's lunch with Hershey bars - bribes for acceptance and ham sandwiches. Her furniture giving no identity, she weeps at comments on her graduate papers - "Banal, your thinking's commonplace" - asks, "How should I think?" as if thoughts were dresses. The white garage doors close on her last resort - to be a child curled on the back seat, eyes shut, floating on a long night journey, the motor murmuring like parents' front-seat voices. |