Close Your Eyes

1

Sylvia Hall pressed her fingers to the hot glass as the city bus lurched from Rubey Park. The driver, a compact woman with a ponytail, wound her way through streets Sylvia knew by heart, and she silently bade them farewell. Goodbye, Silver Circle; goodbye, Little Nell; goodbye, my Ajax Mountain. From Glenwood Springs, Sylvia would catch a Greyhound to New York City, where she would become the person she had always meant to be. Brittle sunlight caught a small crack in her window and blinded Sylvia for a moment, but then her vision cleared.

Sylvia was forty-one years old and five months pregnant. When the bartender at the Snowmass Club said, “No offense, Sylvie, but maybe you need less cheese and more elliptical,” Sylvia realized it was time to put her getaway plan into action. She had packed a bag after Ray had fallen asleep, had lain on the couch all night, wide awake, as if plugged in to an electric socket. Instead of going to work, she had walked into town, bought a last bear claw and a coffee at Main Street bakery, and caught the Roaring Fork. She read a discarded Aspen Daily News as she waited for the bus to arrive: Aspen Club not energy-efficient today, but it could be. Elk and bighorn sheep give birth in proposed wilderness area.

Sylvia sighed and pulled her knees to her chest. Maybe she could fall asleep, despite the coffee. Goodbye, J-Bar; goodbye, sunburned men reading the condensed New York Times in the Black Saddle Bar & Grille; goodbye, Ray, who was never going to sober up, who was never going to be a great painter, who was—in the end—a jerk with a dwindling trust fund who’d made Sylvia get two abortions and a navel ring.

In other words, Ray Junior was out of the question, name-wise.

Sylvia figured she would tell the baby that Ray had died. In a car chase. A Denver cop who died in a car chase. That would be a good father to have, she thought. And as soon as that whopper was out of the way, Sylvia would be honest. She was going to use her college degree, wear cashmere. She would read Proust, the whole thing, whilst eating madeleines.

Reflected in the bus window, Sylvia’s dirty-blond hair was the same as when she’d been a teenager, but the skin around her light blue eyes and generous smile was puckered. One afternoon Sylvia had seen a leather change purse in the Junior League thrift shop and thought, That change purse looks like my face.

Life was short, as it turned out. Sylvia picked at her chapped lip. Maybe you got one chance to reinvent yourself, maybe two. She had been lazing along for so long, assuming there was always more time to begin her actual life, her adulthood. But the child inside her had changed Sylvia already: she was stronger, brave enough to climb out of the sluggish quicksand of her days with Ray. She couldn’t say he had been mean, or even distant. He loved her the best he could, and the truth was, she loved him, too. The way his hair stuck up at the crown of his head—who would smooth it down now?

Sylvia opened her window, and cold mountain air filled her nostrils. The bus accelerated, and Sylvia told herself it was done: there was no turning back now.