Infinity (2 page)

He wanted to sleep with me. He hadn’t come out and said it, but he didn’t really have to. He was a senior; we’d been together
six months. Us having sex would be a natural progression, after kissing to letting him go up my shirt, then down my jeans:
like moving from learner’s permit to licence, there’s only one thing left. And so I have this choice. To either merge in or
take the long way home.

‘I’m so proud of you!’

That was my mother when I came out of the
DMV office, holding my new licence. It was still warm in my hand from where they’d laminated it, as if it was somehow alive.

‘Let me see the picture,’ she said. She squinted down at it. ‘Very nice. You’re not even blinking.’

It was a decent shot. I’d even had a second to brush my hair while the guy was arguing with some woman over her picture –
she’d blinked, I guess – which I figured was a bonus. And there, next to my face, was all my pertinent information. Height,
weight, eye colour. Birthday. And expiry date: 2014. Amazing. Where would I be in four years?

‘McDonald’s,’ my mother said when I asked her this. We were in the car. I was driving.

‘What?’ I said.

‘I thought we should go to McDonald’s,’ she said. She fiddled with her sun visor, up then down. Although she’d never admit
it, my mother was nervous riding with me. ‘To celebrate.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Okay.’

McDonald’s was smack in the middle of the lunch rush, the noise of registers and commotion and the crackling of the drive-through
speaker almost overpowering. My mother told me to go find a table, then stood in line clutching her purse. The people behind
her were all public-works guys in orange jumpsuits, talking too loudly.

I found a table by the window and sat down. The surface was covered with salt, like a dusting of snow, too thin to see but
you could feel it. I moved my finger through it, leaving a circle behind, until suddenly someone put their hands over my eyes.

‘Guess who?’ a voice said right next to my ear. It was Anthony. Without my sight, the McDonald’s seemed to get quieter, as
if you needed to see all the commotion for it to really be happening.

‘I know it’s you,’ I said softly, reaching up and putting my hands over his. I could feel the silver ring he wore on his index
finger pressing gently against my eyelid, cool and smooth. He went to move his
hands, the joke being over, but I kept them there for a second longer before he slipped loose and it was bright again.

‘So, did you get it?’ he asked, dropping one hand on to my neck and leaning over me. I reached into my pocket and pulled out
my licence, showing him. ‘Nice. Good picture too. You’re not even blinking or making a weird face.’

‘Nope,’ I said. Anthony’s licence picture was terrible. Just when the guy was about to pop the flash someone slammed a door,
and Anthony was startled: in the picture he looks surprised, like his eyes are bugging out of his head. But it doesn’t bother
him. He says no one really looks like their licence picture anyway. ‘I’m lucky, I guess.’

‘Yes,’ he said, curving his hand round the back of my neck the way that always gave me chills. ‘You are.’

‘Well, hello there!’ My mother set the tray down in front of me. Two chicken sandwiches with no
mayo, two large fries, two Diet Cokes. We both always get the same thing. ‘Are you joining us?’

Anthony reached over, took one of my fries and popped it into his mouth. ‘Nope,’ he said. ‘Some of us have to get back to
school.’

‘Poor you,’ I said, taking my fries off the tray.

‘I’ll call you later,’ he said, bending down again and kissing my cheek in a very chaste, little-sister kind of way. Normally
I would have at least got it on the lips, but my mother was right there. Still, she ducked her head and pretended to be very
busy opening ketchup packets until he walked away, waving once over his shoulder. ‘Get ready for that roundabout!’ he called
out, and then the glass doors swung shut behind him.

My mother picked up her sandwich, adjusting the one piece of lettuce and one tomato: they never give you enough, and the distribution
is always all wrong. ‘You know,’ she said finally, taking her first bite, ‘you don’t have to do the roundabout right away.’

‘I know,’ I said. We’d already discussed this during the weeks I’d had my permit, when she’d officially taught me all of her
extended shortcuts. ‘But I think I should just go ahead and get it over with.’

She took a sip of her drink and glanced out of the window. We’d both known this day was coming, eventually. My mother and
I were close, always had been. She didn’t fall into any of the specific Mom types: she wasn’t Nagging Mom, or Trying-To-Be-Young-And-Hip-Mom,
or Super-Strict Mom. My parents were rumpled academics. Books had been their greatest love, before me, and I just knew that
when I had flown the nest and was long gone they’d continue their set patterns, floating from the breakfast nook, which had
the best morning light, to the big couch by the fireplace, where they could each take an armrest with their stacks of journals
and novels between them. Sentences and paragraphs, themes and symbols, these were things my mother never feared. She had a
Ph.D and did
The New York
Times
crossword every morning before she even had her first cup of coffee. Words didn’t scare her, only shapes. Like circles.

She’d expected me to fall in with this. I knew it by the way she’d easily assumed I’d learn her shortcuts, memorizing them
so that I, too, could take a four-mile circuitous route to the post office that was, measured by the clean numbers of my odometer,
a mere half mile away. My father had harrumphed at this, my mother’s lessons in avoidance, and hinted broadly that maybe my
induction into the driving public would be a good excuse for my mother to finally face this, the fear of all fears. But I,
for one, doubted this would ever happen. My mother had got accustomed to taking the long way everywhere: it wasn’t even a
burden for her any more. That’s the thing about habits. And fears. At first they might seem like trouble, but eventually they
just fold in, becoming part of the fabric, a jumped stitch you hardly notice except when someone else points it out.

Now, watching her sip her drink, I felt a tug of obligation. She was the lone roundabout holdout, and wasn’t it my duty, as
her daughter, to stand with her in allegiance? On the other side was not only the rest of our town, but more importantly my
father, fearless warrior of traffic circles, and Anthony, who had crashed his parents’ Volvo once on a roundabout one town
over and still not thought twice about going back for more. I longed for the simple, solid logic of traffic lights, no decisions
necessary: green means go, red means stop, yellow means slow down or run the light, make up your mind though because time’s
a-wasting. All straight lines, or variations 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 away from me as possible, as if the fact that I didn’t want him made it necessary to put the maximum amount
of distance between us. There was no grey here, no compromise. We’d come up so quickly on all or nothing that it blindsided
me, a mere glint out of the corner of my eye before full impact.

‘I want it to be right,’ I told him.

‘How can this not be right?’ He sat up straighter, jutting a finger up at the windshield. ‘Moonlight? Check. Crashing waves?
Check. I love you? Check. You love me …’

It took me a second, just a second, to realize it was my turn to say something. ‘Check,’ I said quickly, but he glared at
me and let his finger drop, as if this explained everything.

As the days passed, and I found myself consistently taking the long way to everything, I got frustrated with all these decisions.
A part of me wanted to barrel into the roundabout blindfolded, pushing the accelerator hard, and let whatever was going to
happen just happen, anything for it to be over. The same part sometimes was so close to giving in to Anthony’s pleadings,
wanting to finally just relax against the seat and let him do what he wanted, let his fingers spread across my skin, trailing
downward, just give it all up and finally ease myself of these burdens. Scenario
number one, of course, was stupid: I’d cause a multi-car pile-up and kill myself. As far as number two, well, it was harder
to say. What would change? Maybe there wouldn’t be visible damage, dented bumpers or crumpled hoods. But something in me would
be different, even if no one else could tell. Like a car that’s been wrecked and fixed, but the frame stays bent, and only
the most trained of eyes can feel it pull on curves, or nudge towards the right on straight roads. Just because you don’t
see it doesn’t mean something isn’t there. Or gone.

The fall carnival appeared in one afternoon, with rides and sideshows and the huge Ferris wheel cropping up in a field by
the shopping mall as if dropped from the sky itself. In daylight, as I took my shortcut to school, everything looked tired
and rusted, the tarps covering equipment flapping, workers walking around with craggy faces, half asleep. But by that night,
with the lights blazing and the sounds
of the carnies rounding up business for the games, it was like a whole new world.

Anthony walked in, bought some cotton candy and proceeded to lose twenty bucks in about five minutes playing a game that involved
shooting water pistols at stuffed frogs. I just stood and watched him, silent after my first three tries to point out he was
never, ever going to win.

‘Tough luck, buddy,’ the guy running the game said in a monotone voice, his eyes on the crowd moving past, already looking
for the next sucker.

‘One more time,’ Anthony said, digging out some more bills. ‘I’m getting closer. I can feel it.’

‘How badly do you really need a frog anyway?’ I asked him. They looked like the typical carnival stuffed animals I remembered
from my childhood, the kind with nubby fur that smelled faintly like paint stripper. They always looked better before you
actually won them, as if the minute the carnie handed
them over they faded, or diminished somehow, the golden ring gone brass.

‘It’s not about the frog,’ Anthony snapped at me, bending down to better line up his shot. ‘It’s about winning.’

‘Winning a frog,’ I grumbled, but he just ignored me, then slammed his fist down and stalked off when he lost. Again. He cheered
up a little bit when I used my money to buy cake and tickets for the Ferris wheel, then stood in line with me, chewing loudly,
the frog forgotten.