The World in Half
Page 24
and before that,
and before that,
and before that,
and before that,
and before that,
and before that,
and before that,
and before that,
and before that,
and before that,
and before that,
a woman named Catherine is born. She crawls on the hardwood floor and sucks her thumb. She brings a cheese sandwich to school for lunch every day. She sits in the backseat of a wood-paneled station wagon while her parents sit in the front, not speaking to each other or to her. She gets in trouble for spilling grape juice on the front of her school uniform. She dreams of horses. She sews her own prom dress. She shaves her legs with soap and a razor. She meets a boy named Brant Strickland. She says yes when he proposes. She moves to Panama. She meets another man. She understands what it means to fall in love. She lets other people decide her life. She misunderstands what it means to be a good girl. In a way, she breaks her own heart. She has a daughter. She is alone. She grows gruff and stubborn as steel. She is short with cashiers. She works as a pizza delivery driver, a waitress at a chain restaurant, a receptionist, a receptionist again, a receptionist once more. She dreams of a life as an actress, a life less practical, full of whimsy. In a different way, a life of escape. She has brown eyes embedded with flashing flecks of gold. She has freckles that march across her slender shoulders and over the bridge of her nose. She talks in her sleep and sings in the shower. She takes pride in dressing up and doesn’t understand the philosophy behind dressing as though you don’t care to impress. She cooks dinners at home. She grows scared of the stove. She forgets to turn it off. She forgets a lot of things. She doesn’t feel them slip away, but when she goes to look for them later, they’re gone. She is stern with the rules. She reorganizes everything. She has her soft moments, those times when she is tender and bruised, but mostly she is a plank of wood, braced and erect, weathering anything and everything. She puffs her chest out to the world and walks through it—all the way to the end of it—without taking a breath.
Acknowledgments
With deep, deep gratitude to Megan Lynch, Kate Lee, Diana Spechler, my parents, and as always, Ryan Kowalczyk. Additional thanks to Tracy Mobley for generously sharing her knowledge and herself.