I'm a Bad Religion

richardlawson:

She sat on the edge of the hotel bed. It was dim in the room, the diffuse lights of the city fuzzing in from the window. She reached back to turn on the bedside lamp, catching a glimpse of the clock on the nightstand. Almost the actual day. Just a little over twenty minutes. And then it would be then, finally then, this big and loud and potent then that everyone had been scrambling toward—but also warding off, like kids gingerly but excitedly sneaking down into a scary basement. What would it be? What would it feel like? She had no idea.
The truth was, she had no idea what anything felt like anymore. Somewhere in the past 18 months, she’d lost the thread of herself, lost whatever gleaming guiding star had thus far led her safely, fruitfully, through the glamorous success of her life. It almost felt like her shoes didn’t fit her anymore. She looked down at her shiny black heels and suddenly they were pinching her feet. She kicked them off, lay down on the bed with a huff. She looked at the bland white of the ceiling, looked for cracks or contours but could find none. Where was she? Where had she gone?
It wasn’t so much duty as it was love. It wasn’t so much love as it was duty. She knew where it had started, somewhere steadfast and sure and bathed in the easy and reliable glow of closely held, unquestioned righteous loyalty. Of course she would do this. Of course she would not just stand by, but reach out, work for this thing that she had to want—an innate drive, a primal goal. Because that was who she was. Who they were.
But this was a rattling car, driven by an engine that burned frighteningly hot. And along the way, she had begun to feel uncertain, grabbing the dash of the thing and watching as they caromed and swerved, toward cliff after cliff after cliff. And in that, in all that fear and confusion, some part of her had leapt out of herself, or gotten stuck somewhere inside. Lodged itself under her ribs, in the hard tube of her throat. It was itching now. This thing, this loosed and escaped and fleeing part of her. This knowing.
It was wrong. It had all been wrong. It had been wrong for so long that when she tried to reach back in her mind to find the spot where it all twisted and burnt, all she saw was the gray infinity of before she was born. Was this always a bad deal, had this tree, with its short and stubby branches, always been dead? The hotel ceiling offered her little answers, so she rolled over, let her face sink into the bedspread. She closed her eyes and let her mind wander back to a memory.
She was 10 or 11, maybe, over for supper with her dad. He was in some mood—not a new or distinct one, just a vaguely recognizable mood of distraction and temper. She had sat at the dining room table, again the lights of the city—only, of course, older lights, decades older, their glow assuredly now gone, the bulbs burnt out long ago—creating an ambient, artificial warmth. He was on the phone down the hall, stomping and fuming, the maid watching her from her dutiful corner, a look of worry subtly animating her always stern and serious face.
“Graciella,” she had asked. “Is this what your life is like, too?” Graciella’s face made a sad little crinkle before she caught herself. She smiled tightly at this lonely little child, her brothers off somewhere being attended to, prepped for whatever grand dreams roiled in their father’s head. Graciella took a step or two forward and almost said something, her mouth pursed into a tight frown. But then the phone call ended and her father came storming into the room, saying, “Where’s mine?,” when he saw his daughter picking at her plate of food.
It had never been normal, had it. And now it never would be. She righted herself off the bed and went to the mini-bar, poured herself a vodka. She walked to the window. Somewhere out there the future was waiting. She knew the sun would rise and the big day would happen and time would move on. But just then, there by the window—her father somewhere in all his fury, her husband plotting, she right there, manning so many of the controls—she wondered if maybe the darkness of that night would never lift. If she was now trapped in it forever. If it mattered even less now what Graciella’s life had been like, if it had been different or better than her own. Because this simply was it, what she had, irreparable and irredeemable. She took a swig of the vodka and it stung, a pleasing hurt. The city droned and shimmered. In the pale reflection of the window, Ivanka fixed her hair.