Infinity Read Free

thereof.
    Out in the parking lot, my mother and I buckled up and I backed out slowly, careful of the cars lining up for the drive-through.
‘Good turning,’ she said, praising my slow but effective merging into traffic on the main road. She had her hands in her lap,
fingers locked, and we didn’t talk as we moved through three intersections, catching the green light
at each. Up ahead I could see the signs for the roundabout, warning us of its approach. My mother pulled her fingers tighter,
like a Chinese puzzle, and looked out of the window quickly, as if the office-supply store on her right was suddenly fascinating.
    I could do this. It wasn’t any different to all those nights I’d merged and circled the roundabout with Anthony or my father:
the traffic was just a little heavier. I was not the bravest of girls, but I’d never been branded a coward either. I told
myself I wasn’t just doing this for me, but for my mother as well. I pictured us breezing easily round the curves, the weight
of this burden suddenly lifting, my achievement sparking something in her as well, just as my father had hinted. The traffic
was picking up now, the last intersection coming up in front of us. The engine seemed to grind as I downshifted, the other
drivers pressing in around me.
    There was a honk a few cars back – not at us, but loud nonetheless – and I have to admit it threw me,
sending a quick hot flush up the back of my neck. It didn’t help, of course, that my mother gasped in a breath loud enough
for me to hear over the wind whistling through my not-quite-shut window. And, just like that, I lost my confidence, my hand
reaching up to hit the right turn signal as if it had made the choice all by itself. As we took the turn on to Murphey’s Chapel
Road, my mother loosened her fingers, pressing them against the fabric of her skirt. Puzzle solved.
    ‘It’s okay,’ she said as we breezed past a few neighbourhoods, with only two left turns, one access road and a shopping-centre
parking lot to traverse before home. ‘You’ll do it when you’re ready.’
    She was relieved. I could hear it in her voice, see it in the slow easing of her shoulders back against the headrest. But
I was angry with myself for ducking out. It seemed a bad way to begin things, with a false start, a last-minute abort so close
to take-off. As if I’d come this far, right to the brink, and in
pulling back set a precedent that would echo, like the sound of my mother’s gasp, next time.
    I avoided the roundabout for a week and a half. There were several almosts, most of them with Anthony in the car, pep-talking
me like a motivational coach.
    ‘Be the road!’ he urged me as we coasted up to the ROUNDABOUT AHEAD signs. He’d made mixed CDs, full of bouncy, you-can-do-anything kind of songs, which he blasted, thinking they were helping.
Instead, they distracted me entirely, as if by failing to complete the task meant letting down not only myself and Anthony
but several bands and singers from all over the world. ‘Visualize it! Breathe through it!’
    But, always, I took that last possible right turn. The music would play on, unaware of its ineffectiveness, while Anthony
would just shake his head, easing an elbow out of the window, and say nothing.
    His urging was gentler, but no less insistent,
when the car was off and we were alone together at the beach. There was music then, too, but it was softer, soothing, as was
his voice, in my ear, or against my neck.
    ‘I love you, I love you,’ he’d whisper, and I’d feel that same hot flush, travelling up from my feet, the adrenalin rush that
was a mix of fear and longing. We’d got very close, but again I pulled back. Scared. It seemed ludicrous that I was unable
to follow through with anything, as if from sixteen on I was doomed to be ruled by indecision.
    ‘I just don’t understand why you don’t want to,’ he asked me one night as we sat looking at the water, him now leaning against
his door, as far