In Search of Eden Read Free Page B

Table,” it said. She didn’t know who Abba was, but the image captured her at once. It would be a good place. She knew that much.
    The traffic slowed. A line of brake lights lit up the gray dusk. There was an accident up ahead. Someone had probably spun out. Maybe a visitor to Minneapolis, someone not used to driving in the snow. She thought of all the places she had lived where winters were serious. There had been that winter in Chicago, a short stay in Bozeman, Montana, and the year in New York City. Yes, she’d seen her share of snow.
    The bus wound around a few more streets. She pulled the cord. The bus groaned to a halt. She stood, wrapped her scarf tightly around her neck, and got off.
    Dorrie stepped into the dark apartment and tensed.
    â€œHello, Frodo,” she said into the gloom. He was here. She knew he was.
    Thump! He pounced at her feet, and she started. She cringed as she turned on the light, but there was no mouse corpse slung over her shoe today, only Frodo himself, bored and a little angry at her for leaving him all alone again. She leaned over and tried to pet him, but he stalked away in a huff.
    â€œYou’ll get over it,” she told him, giving up her attempt at affection. She hung up her coat, put down her book bag and purse, then filled his dish with dried food and replenished his water. Not that he was hungry, for the floor was littered with his breakfast.
    She didn’t know what she would do with him when she moved to another town, another job, another apartment. For she knew she would. She didn’t ever plan to leave places, but thenagain, she didn’t plan to stay, either. It just seemed that whenever things started feeling cluttered or marred, she wanted to start over somewhere fresh. It was like turning over a new sheet of paper in her scrapbook.
    Her pattern was the only thing regular about her. She would travel, work here and there, then go home to work in the Sip and Bite until she saved up for another six or nine months of travel. She couldn’t imagine herself getting married and settling down like some of her friends from high school had done. Not that there was anything wrong with the boys they had chosen. It was just that they were so satisfied to stay in Nashville, working at the Jiffy Lube and bowling every Friday night. She knew that if she joined up with one of those men, she would never go anywhere, either. She would never go to Spain or France or any of the other places in those pictures she’d pasted in her journal. Every now and then someone would come close to convincing her, but then a part of her would become restless and drift away.
    â€œYou need to grow up, Dorrie,” her mama would say. “You’re twenty-six going on fifteen.” And she supposed Mama was right. Even about her so-called age. Fifteen was the year everything had fallen apart, so to speak. She knew that some part of her was still back there, waiting for . . . what? She had no idea, but she wasn’t getting any younger, and she supposed she needed to prove, even if only to herself, that she was not going to end up bitter and alone like Mama.
    Her life had certainly followed a different course than her mother’s, a fact that Mama was prone to point out to her on any given occasion with a definite lack of admiration. Mama was married with a baby by the time she was out of her teens. And here Dorrie was at twenty-six, still rattling around. She would go somewhere and work, sometimes renting a room, sometimes an apartment, sometimes staying in hostels.
    She just moved along until she couldn’t find another job or her money ran out. And, of course, the destination she had been saving for all her life loomed before her as an unfulfilled dream—atrip to the Basque country, that small bit of paradise situated between France and Spain high in the Pyrenees Mountains. Her father had come from there, and just the names of the cities gave her a thrill.