Robert Lennon - Familiar

Two cars and a pickup are approaching from the east. They are still a great distance away. Behind her, equally distant, is something that looks like a minivan. Far out in front of her is a white sports car that entered the highway ten minutes ago and accelerated quickly away. She expected it would continue to outrace her, to disappear, but it slowed down and is still visible.

The guardrail beyond the white line is gently bowed, as though a giant paused there for a rest. Underneath it grows an unfamiliar weed, some kind of fern, and beside the fern lies a perfect undented aluminum can.

The crack in the windshield disappears. She tries to blink it back into place because at first she thinks that her vision has blurred, but blinking doesn’t bring it back, and now she is noticing other things. The sound inside the car has changed. It’s quiet. The window is closed. The window’s closed and the air-conditioning is on, the dashboard isn’t dusty anymore, and the taste of mint gum is in her mouth. In fact the gum is there, she has gum in her mouth right now. She pushes it out with her tongue and it falls into her lap.

The gum lands not on her cutoff jeans, but on a gray cotton skirt draped over a pair of stockings. These aren’t her clothes — she doesn’t have clothes like these. She’s wearing an ivory silk blouse and there’s a sticker on the blouse that reads HELLO! MY NAME IS, then in her own block printing, ELISA MACALASTER BROWN.

She notices that the spring in the seat is no longer bothering her, and that she is wearing an uncomfortable bra.

Elisa looks up at the road. Only a second, less than a second, has passed, and the road has grown. It’s wider, the sky is taller. And it’s cloudy now, partly cloudy, many small clouds, as though the single cloud has spawned. No — it isn’t the road that’s wider, it’s the windshield, the windshield is larger.

She glances around her, at the interior of the car, and it isn’t her car.

She signals and pulls over. The shoulder here is wide, and she comes to a stop as close to the guardrail as she dares. Another car passes her from behind, startling her, because it wasn’t there before. She shifts into park and leaves it running: there are her hands on the wheel, her familiar hands. One of them reaches into her lap and picks up the gum; the other reaches for the window crank. But this car has power windows. Okay. The switch, then. The window rolls down and out goes the gum.

After a moment, she opens the door and gets out herself. When she tries to stand up she nearly falls over. It’s her shoes. She’s wearing pumps with low heels. Not sneakers. Right. She slips off the shoes and stands on the hot pavement in her stockings. Stockings! In the summer! But of course the car is air-conditioned, why not?

She turns and gets a good look at this car. It’s American. A Dodge Intrepid, sort of copper-colored.

An eighteen-wheeler passes, roiling the air, and she squints. Maybe I should find a doctor, she thinks.

Instead she gets back into the idling car, closes the window, and sits very still for a few minutes. She peels the name tag off her blouse and folds it over, onto itself, and sets it in the drink holder. (Drink holder!) Beside her, on the passenger seat, is a thick plastic three-ring binder. There’s a label stuck to it, bearing her name — laser-printed, this time — under the title 6TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF ACADEMIC ADMINISTRATORS. She opens it. A schedule, presentation agendas, handouts. New networked software applications offer statistics-driven space management models for research and pedagogical purposes. Has she attended this? It doesn’t seem possible. She thumbs through the pages until she arrives at the plastic pocket in the back of the binder. There are several printed-out e-mails, hotel reservations, maps. An envelope marked RECEIPTS in her own handwriting. She chooses an e-mail at random. It consists of an exchange between, apparently, herself and a conference organizer. Supported by a small forest of carets is a boilerplate sig line: Elisa Macalaster Brown, Graduate Studies Coordinator, Levinson Biotech Center, SUNY Reevesport. And a phone number.

This is not her job.

There’s a handbag on the passenger side floor, and she reaches over and picks it up. The movement is familiar to her, she performed it just the other day, picking up that change. But it feels more effortful now, for reasons that are not yet clear. The bag is familiar too — it’s her bag. Inside it is a cell phone, not one she recognizes, but no matter — the bag interior looks right, it contains the same mass of scribbled notes and receipts and ticket stubs and dead ballpoint pens she is accustomed to. Okay then. She turns on the phone and there’s a photo of Derek on the screen. It looks recent — he is groomed and relaxed, smiling in the shade of a tree.

She hesitates for a moment, and in that moment feels the world trembling, as though it might implode. An involuntary gasp. Have to do something. She casts her gaze around the interior of the car, settles on the printed e-mail, picks it up. She opens the phone and calls the number in her own sig line.

She expects voicemail. But: “Levinson Center.”

“Ah… hello?”

There’s a pause. Then, “Lisa?”

She laughs. She’s got to admit, it’s funny! She laughs and the voice on the other end laughs and says “Are you at the conference?” and Elisa says “Yes, no, I mean I’m on the road, sorry, I meant to call Derek” and the voice laughs again, says “See you tomorrow.”

Elisa ends the call.

If there’s a time to panic, this is it, while she’s alone. She takes several deep breaths and rests her head on the wheel. All right, she thinks, this is very unusual, this is frightening. Or it should be frightening. But she isn’t afraid, not really. Instead, she is intensely aware.

She is reminded of times in her life when everything felt different, all the time. When the small changes in her social circles, her patterns of thought, the texture of her emotions, would register as tectonic shifts, altering utterly the landscape of her life. College, grad school. The early days with Derek. Often she would stop what she was doing, close her eyes, take stock, and it would feel as though her life of just a week before, even of the previous day, was thoroughly, inalienably over, and that everything was starting again, beginning with now. And there were times when she would apprehend the impending extinction of the present moment. Out walking around the lake, or in bio lab, the sweat beading on her forehead and trickling down into her safety glasses. She would think, this moment was just born, and soon it will be gone. She would meet it, fall in love with it, mourn it, all at once. She cried more in those days. Almost daily, and often in public: silently, unobtrusively. The brutal immediacy of thoughts and emotions. This is what she has forgotten. It is here now. Her throat is tight and her jaw trembles.

Something must be wrong with her. Yet she doesn’t feel dizzy or light-headed. She only feels different. Her body is different. Jesus, this bra.

She lets out breath. Leans back in the seat and unbuttons her blouse. Quickly strips it off, unclasps the bra and removes that too. She tosses the bra onto the open binder and puts the blouse back on. Then, after a moment’s thought, she lifts the blouse and looks at her stomach. It is definitely different. Fatter. She’s what, ten pounds heavier? Fifteen? Suddenly she can feel her thighs chafing.

But I’m thin, she thinks. I walk to work.

To her lab, that is. Maybe she doesn’t walk to the Levinson Biotech Center at SUNY Reevesport. Maybe she drives this car, not her Honda. Maybe she picks up a box of doughnuts on the way.