The Same Country by Carole Burns EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Carole Burns
- Language: English
- Genre: Friendship Fiction
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
2013/1992
There Is No Beginning
On my first morning back in Newfield, I drove to Aggie’s old house again,
drawn like a woman to her secret lover’s grave, as if this were the sole
purpose of returning to live in my hometown. It was Joe who compelled me
to go – not Aggie – Joe who appeared to me that morning as just a flash, my
waking dream, his face wavering near mine as I stirred, closer to me than he
ever was in life. I heard him, next, as I made coffee alone, his voice
rumbling into the still-empty rooms of my still-empty condo, disappearing
into my gasp. Why had I thought Aggie might haunt me here? Aggie wasn’t
dead.
And now he was sitting next to me in my car and talking, talking as I
drove down the leafy streets of Newfield, passing old haunts – the Palace
movie theatre, the Friendly’s where we used to linger for hours – before
turning to head toward Aggie’s. The houses became smaller, older, closer to
the road as we approached the Bridgeton city line, yet I barely noticed with
Joe beside me, animated, though I couldn’t hear him this time, the same
way I couldn’t remember what we all talked about twenty years ago at latenight diners, at our lockers, on Aggie’s back porch no matter the time or
weather, night after night that I couldn’t remember. And maybe that’s why
his words weren’t coming through, just his lips moving, his head nodding
and tilting, his quick smile between words, his swerving shoulders as he
swivelled to glance at Aggie then back at me, though Aggie wasn’t there
either.
We were just a few blocks away from the house. So quick! This clutch of
streets that led from our little town of Newfield to the more urban Bridgeton
had seemed to me like an entrance to another world, back then. I passed her
road in hope of first finding the feminist bookstore and café where we’d
sometimes browse the shelves and sip lattes like we were college students,
or, across the street, the tiny gallery that once held an exhibition of portraits
made from old radio parts – art, we learned. I braced myself for this world –
once so alluring, so sophisticated – to look small, dowdy. This was just
Connecticut after all. I crossed the city line into Bridgeton.
The neighborhood had changed drastically. Lawns were untended, houses
had not been painted in years, the blinds and curtains in windows were
tattered and faded. Here was the Connecticut divide, sharper than I’d
remembered. The shell of a car lay strewn in rusting pieces in someone’s
yard. At a light, I spotted the short block of shops where the Readers Feast
used to be. It was now a pizza joint. The gallery? A “checks cashed” store.
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