Marilynne Robinson - Lila

That was all the life she had for a long time. Three Christmases passed. She helped put up some garlands in the lobby one night, and a year later, and a year after that. Garlands. Tinsel. Everything has a name. Everybody else knows the name and they think you’re stupid if you don’t know it. Don’t matter. The third Christmas passed, then the dirty part of a winter, then it was spring, and summer, and when she was walking home to her room one afternoon with her hair still tied up in a rag, thinking she might wash up a little and get a hot dog and walk down to the river looking for a breeze, she saw two men unloading some crates from the back of a truck and one of them was Mack. He saw her, too, and laughed, and said something to the other man, who glanced at her and then sort of shook his head the way people do when they don’t want a part in something mean. She thought Mack took a step or two after her, but then she thought she heard him say, Lila, too, when he never knew her real name. How could it be that she had never told him her name? There was ringing in her ears. She almost thought she felt the brush of his fingertips at the side of her neck. The worst part of it all was that she knew better. He only teased her so Missy would be jealous. But she felt the rush of blood into her damn cheeks and even that damn sting in her eyes. And walking on away from him was like walking into a strong wind, or walking upstream in a river, and she hoped and hoped he couldn’t see how hard it was for her, if he happened to be watching. The very worst part was that he would still know even if he wasn’t watching. She thought she heard him laugh. Probably about something else. He’d probably already half forgotten he saw her.

So she left St. Louis. It wasn’t just that one thing. It was her whole life. She had told herself that she went to the movies just to see people living, because she was curious. She’d more or less decided that she had missed out on it herself, so this was the best she could do. And it wasn’t so bad. The women at work would talk about their children who used to be so sweet when they were little, and now they’d rather drink than eat, the boys and the girls, and they couldn’t keep their mitts out of their mother’s handbag. She’d be thinking how strange it was in that movie Dorian Gray that when the man’s picture turned ugly from all his wickedness, the pants in the picture turned baggy, too. She couldn’t make much sense of it. Half the people in the movie were dressed like Fred Astaire and the other half looked like they’d been sleeping in their clothes their whole lives. When that man goes off into the poor part of the city, he turns evil and ends up looking like he’s been sleeping in his clothes. The more he goes there, the worse he is. Warts all over him. Maybe somebody stole his hat and the rest of it. Swapped with him. That could happen. Or somebody saw him there stripped naked and took pity on him, since every inch of that town he lived in was always soaking wet. What was she thinking about? It was the painting that changed. She couldn’t remember if the man died in his good clothes and only the rest of him was ugly. Him lying there and the others clucking their tongues. Too bad he happened to have a knife to kill himself with. Then he was too dead to use it to make them stop staring, and that was a shame. She was wearing Doll’s knife in her garter the day she saw Mack, but she probably wouldn’t have used it even if it hadn’t meant putting herself in reach of him, probably looking into his face. That damn face. Well, her life just rose up on her, and before she even knew quite what was happening she was walking away, struggling to keep from making a fool of herself, her heart beating in her ears. The life she’d decided she would never have was there the whole time, trapped and furious, and in that minute she knew that if a man she ought to hate said one kind word to her, there was no telling what she might do. Come along, Rosie. Give me a little smile, come along. He’d forgotten he ever saw her, and she was up in her room with the window shade pulled down, stuffing everything she had into her suitcase.

She walked over to the bus station to see where she could get to with the money she had. Wherever she went, she’d get there after the stores were closed, and the rooming houses. To get out of the city would take all her money, and then she’d have no place to spend the night and no supper. She went outside to sit on a bench and think about it. A car pulled up to the curb, and the driver, a young woman, called to her to ask her where she was going. Lila said, “Iowa,” and the woman said, “Me, too!” as if she had been hoping to hear that very word. “Get in. I saw you sitting there with your suitcase and I thought, I’d sure appreciate some company. That’s really why I came by here. It’s not on my way.” Lila wasn’t sure what to think about sitting for hours beside someone who might expect her to talk or to give her more money than she had, but the woman said, “It’ll save you the price of a ticket. I’ll be driving all night, and I’d rather not do that alone.” She was a tidy, freckly little woman with her hair in a knot. She was wearing a starchy white blouse she must have spent an hour ironing, it was so perfect. At the movies you could find yourself sitting next to anybody at all, some man with polished shoes and creased pants, some woman with rings on her hands, hugging her purse. They might tip their bags of popcorn toward her, she would hear them breathe and sigh as if they were sharing a pillow with her. Sometimes she could feel them looking at her, but she never looked at their faces or said anything to them. She’d just wait until the show began and they could forget each other. Now she would probably be sitting beside this stranger for hours with no way to stop thinking about her, which meant there was no way she could stop thinking about herself. Still, it would make some things easier.

The woman said, “Where you going?”

Lila thought she might try to get to Tammany, but the woman had never heard of it, so when she asked if it was near Des Moines Lila said yes, thinking that must be where the woman was going herself. It turned out she was going to a town called Macedonia, off somewhere in the cornfields, so she left Lila at a gas station in Indianola, which wasn’t too far from Des Moines. Lila had no reason to be in Des Moines. In fact, she didn’t want to be in any town that was big enough for anybody to know where it was. She had in mind one of those no-name places along a county road. A store and a church and a grain elevator. There must be a thousand of them, all just alike, and farms spreading out beyond them. But that woman had brought her clear from St. Louis, so she was glad for twelve hours of riding in a car. It stalled as often as it slowed down. Going up a hill was a trial every time. The woman said she was glad to have someone to talk to because driving made her sleepy, but then she was too nervous to talk. Every now and then she would say she was scared the car was going to break down, and she sure didn’t want to be sitting there in the middle of nowhere all by herself. This was meant as a kindness to Lila, to make her feel welcome, but it was also true. She leaned into the steering wheel and peered out at the road as if that would help.

Lila was glad to be seeing the country again, the fields looking so green in the evening light. Knee-high by the Fourth of July. So it must be June. Every farmhouse in its cloud of trees. There is a way trees stir before a rain, as if they already felt the heaviness. It all just went on and on, the United States of America. It was so easy to forget that most of the world was cornfields.

The woman said, “My mama’s sick, and there’s nobody to help her out. I’ve got to get there fast.” It was the first time she had driven any distance to speak of. “I got a letter from her. She never mentions a problem, she never wants to worry me. She doesn’t have a telephone, so I thought I’d better bring a car in case I need to find a doctor. It might not even run after I get there. If I get there. I only bought it yesterday. Dang thief that sold it to me, I’d like to give him a piece of my mind.” It began to rain. She was afraid to stop the car for fear it wouldn’t start again, and they drove all night, except once when they needed gas. Then the man at the station had to push the car out onto the road. There was enough of a slope that the engine caught and they went on again, with no light at all but the headlights, and they didn’t show much but rain. The woman said, “I think I’d be scared if I were you, putting your life in my hands,” and Lila said, “I don’t much care what happens.” Then she could feel in the dark that for a minute the woman was wondering about her, about to ask her a question, then thinking better of it. Lila thought, Maybe she suspects I’m the kind of woman who might keep a knife in her garter. Might sleep in her clothes. The woman said, “Do you hear that?” There was a soft thumping sound. “Is that coming from the motor?”