A dream described
This is a short story I’m workshopping this week for my Creative Writing class. I get to wear the ‘cloak of silence’ (ie not say anything) while everyone else smacks my story around. I’m actually looking forward to it and will post a revised version of this next week after hearing what people have to say.
After four short years of self discovery, Grace moved to the city. Unfortunately, it was a move she had to make everyday: an hour each morning on the Purple Line which turned into the Red some time before she fell asleep. She’d lean back behind her oversized sunglasses and let the Chinese podcasts blur into the down-the-stairs conversations she used to overhear late at night. She could never figure out what her parents were talking about; after skipping Chinese school, Grace could only recognize her name. She had expected her parents to make her continue — like they did with everything else — but they didn’t. Now it was her problem to fix. Funny, that.
Seeing Chicago evoked Shanghai. Her trip two summers ago had turned her Chinese school victory into a regret. She was too old to respond to relatives by running off into the corner and she’d discovered that all the good restaurants didn’t need pictures on their menus. And so she atoned for her lost language, one ride at a time, during this gap year that was still only half a summer long.
Grace got off at Chicago and State Street to walk the rest of the way East. The first two blocks were Loyola and she’d blend in with the students thanks to her turquoise backpack. Most of them probably got to live in the city, lucky them. Grace had gotten cornfields instead. To be fair, Urbana-Champaign was basically a city and more importantly, one of the few places her parents would pay for. But there are times when you want to sulk no matter how thankful you are, and she knew she couldn’t be the only one that felt that way this morning.
She crossed Michigan Avenue and continued to Lakeshore Drive, where she went South through the hospital to her building in the med school. Her building — as if it belonged to her. Really, only a cubicle did and that was just until the other name on the name tag returned from somewhere else in the world. For the love of not-sharing, Grace hoped that never happened.
She spent the morning at her computer, picking at her peeling lips and thinking of other things.
There was the genetics research she used to dream of. She was living the dream now — only technically though. Grace grew up associating labs with Erlenmeyer flasks and Bunsen burners, not text editors and stats programs, and so was thoroughly disappointed to discover what could qualify. There was med school too. Though if it turned out anything like research did, what then? She didn’t know. There was something poetic about a dream deferred, but a dream disappointed? Tragic, that.
There was also that kid at the train station. Apparently high schoolers these days were already doing summer research, here even. Grace always thought she had it worse as her parents’ eldest but this was something new.
That brought her back to the years when everything was fifteen minutes away by car and her parents circled around her like two sweepers about a curling stone, guiding her towards some unseen target at the end of the sheet. Where was she going anyways? She never really knew. Maybe that’s what her parents discussed downstairs. That, and what to make for dinner.
Dinner was how they remembered where they came from. Chinese veggies bought from the Korean supermarket forty minutes away. The rice cooker puffing steam in the garage. Chopsticks, always chopsticks, on the table.
Dinner was how she remembered where she came from. The one time of day with her full family at eye level. Her role as designated rice scooper and empty-plate-remover. Her parents asking about school as if they could cook success in a crockpot if the settings were just right.
Dinner was different last night. She had gone out for pho with a friend.
“No flavor,” Grace said.
“What?”
“I said this broth has no flavor.”
“Hmm?” he sipped.
“Hoisin please” she asked. He passed her the bottle of hoisin when she was done half-emptying the salt shaker. “My parents love their soy sauce. I think that’s how they connect to their home country.”
“You’re going to get hypertension,” he said.
“My dad has it so I’ll get it too.”
“No way. You do genetics. You know that’s not all.”
“You think that’s true?”
“I think it’s true.”
The pho was a sad substitute for the soups she remembered. But the meal was pleasant and they agreed to a redemption dinner later in the week.
“Hey Grace, lunch?
“We’ll meet you at the elevator in five.”
The two grad students from the cube next door didn’t even stop for a reply today.
Pacing in the elevator lobby, she realized she could only afford a six dollar lunch if she wanted a coffee later. There was the hospital cafeteria two blocks down. Boring, that. She’d spent too much time daydreaming about dinner to settle for a sandwich. Five minutes passed and she suddenly realized she couldn’t wait anymore.
She took the stairs down alone and turned left at the door. It was cloudy now and she heard thunder. Good. So she wasn’t the only one upset today after all. Already too far out to retreat, she put up her hood and entered the drizzle.
The walk back was faster now with no bag on her back and one thing on her mind. Somehow she had reduced all her desires to a bowl of noodle soup. And after a two minute wait under the train station eaves, she was on the Red Line again.
She leaned back against the seat, sunglasses on even though she didn’t need them. Where was she going now? Chinatown. Somewhere in Chinatown where she could get some beef noodle soup and a reminder of a memory for six dollars or less. She knew a couple places that qualified.
She remembered only then that she had a lab meeting at one.
It didn’t matter though. She’d give up the whole afternoon, the whole world, this whole dream she didn’t dream of to be in this empty train car, a lunchtime Lenin on her way to cause unrest in Petrograd.
