Summer in
Chicago; there’s nothing hotter, she
thought as she looked out over Lake Michigan for what would be, if not the last
time, at least the last time in a very long while.
Nothing hotter. With the possible
exception of summer in Iowa. That last thought brought a rueful smile to her
lips. Going from the frying pan into the
fire. Nothing new there, old girl. The early August sun was intense in both
its heat and brightness, and, reflected in the cloudless sky off the lake, it
seemed to be giving her a last, cheerful farewell. She was glad of it; a dreary,
rainy day would have been far too cliché for her liking. Far too Hemingway. She
thought of herself more as a Jane Austen character: the capable girl who could
manage everyone’s life but her own. Her record of late would certainly seem to
prove that.
She glanced down
at her watch. Time to get home and finish packing. In less than twenty-four
hours she would be on her way, west on the tollway to Interstate 80, a route as
familiar to her as the brief drive from her apartment to her office at the
university. Her colleagues had given her a going-away party yesterday, replete
with the requisite tearful goodbyes and we’ll-miss-yous and good-lucks and
don’t-forget-to-writes. She had sneaked back briefly early this morning when she
was sure the office would be empty to clean out her desk. Now nothing was left
but to seal up the last of the cartons, load everything into the rental van, and
close the door on the last decade of her life.
With a sigh, she
turned away from the lakefront and started toward her car, telling herself for
the ten thousandth time that this wasn’t because of him. It wasn’t, really. She
was ready for a change; too much time in one place, at one job, was making her
feel that she was beginning to stagnate. Which was not to say that the breakup
hadn’t taken its toll on her. Why it had taken her until she was nearly thirty
to fall in love was one of those questions she had chosen not to ponder, but
when it ended – when he ended it – she
began to suspect that she simply wasn’t meant for the whole domestic thing, the
husband and children and house in the suburbs with a fenced-in backyard. This
naturally led her to consider that she would never have a family of her own
other than the family that she already had, her parents and brothers and sisters
and in-laws and numerous nieces and nephews, all waiting for her back in Iowa.
Which eventually led her to decide that it was time for her to go home. Which
inevitably led to all sorts of philosophical speculation about what, exactly,
made one place or another home: is it where you come from, where you live, where
you’re going? Where the people you love are? Where you want most to be?
Switch to PDF If not already installed this version requires that you download Adobe Reader.