In Every Way Read Free Page B

happen. But she cannot believe it.
    The Volvo is not parked where she’d expected to find it. She looks frantically from side to side. She presses the panic button. In the corner of the parking lot, the car flashes and screams as a trio of passing students yelps in delight.
    Maria drives slowly through the empty lot, shuffling oil change receipts and paper napkins from the glove box in a desperate search for a cigarette, which she knows she is not supposed to smoke, but what does it matter? She surprises herself by even taking the child’s health into consideration. It is as if she has discovered a secret plot within her own brain, one covertly planning a safe transition into motherhood. She has the feeling that she should not indulge it. Her fingers locate a loose Parliament, and this is when her face smacks the dashboard. The car shudders. The engine ceases to run. The radio falls silent.
    Maria raises her head to a cracked windshield, on the other side of which the hood now holds a loose grip on a concrete telephone pole. She drops the now broken cigarette and gingerly lifts a hand to her forehead. Her fingers come away dark with blood. The rearview reveals a small cut just below her widow’s peak.
    â€œI hit a telephone pole,” she says into her phone, gasping.
    â€œWhere?” Jack says.
    â€œThe parking lot!”
    Within minutes Jack appears, wearing a yellow fanny pack secured beneath the camel hair blazer that Maria bought at Goodwill. It is too small for his frame. He shivers in the light from the arc lamp.
    â€œHow fast were you going?” he says.
    â€œOne mile per hour?” Maria says.
    â€œWill it start?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    Jack looks closely into her eyes, then removes Maria’s hand from her wound.
    â€œYou can’t go to Rite Aid,” he says.
    â€œI’m fine.”
    â€œNo, I mean, even if they’re open, the pharmacy won’t be. Give me the phone.” He dials. “Dr. M? We can’t find your pills. Maria’s upset. But I have some stuff. And it’s medicine in most states. OK?”
    Maria has never heard Jack speak like this to anyone. Some inner leader has been unleashed. She has been her mother’s caretaker for so long that she can almost feel a physical weight lift from her as Jack backs the Volvo away from the telephone pole. The grill falls off the car and wobbles slowly on the concrete as they pass it.
    â€œI still have one,” Jack says.
    He opens his hand to reveal a pill, oval and yellow and small.
    â€œIf we give her just one, she’ll know you’ve been taking them,” Maria says.
    â€œThen you take it,” Jack says.
    Maria does not know if Jack has read the label on the bottle yet or not, but she doubts it. And if a pregnant woman does take these pills, then what? Maria has knowingly avoided prescription drug warningstoo many times to count. One of anything will not matter. And if it does matter, she thinks, maybe that’s a good thing. She scrapes the pill off Jack’s palm and swallows it dry. It lodges somewhere inside her neck, feeling ten times its actual size. She is scared it will become some time-release choking hazard, swelling to block all oxygen at a later hour. Silently she swallows again and again, willing it out of her throat.
    A campus devoid of life. The lake. The streets of Maria’s childhood. Stenciled by the fingers of bare limbs, here and there a window still glows softly. They reach her mother’s house. Almost every light is on. Long rectangles of pale yellow stretch across the lawn. The back door is unlocked. The kitchen wall holds an odd, semi-abstract portrait of Maria painted by Professor Rigby. The image embarrassed Maria as a child. It now seems profound. In an uncontrolled rush, she feels the desire for this object once her mother is no longer alive.
    Jack says, “Dr. M?”
    â€œIn here,” her mother calls. Her voice is labored