I promise you this: I’ll be a good mother even though I’ve fucked up everything so far.
The room yawns open. I have the sensation that time has shifted, that we are in a directionless flow, as if this one room in the hospital has suddenly opened out onto the universe.
I ignore the awful prickling in my throat, the reaction to the second time she said nobody.
Later, I am about to leave the house, but then, my childhood training takes over.
Always, on four-lane highways, I have this peculiar sensation, as though I am going backwards and forwards at the same time. The future could be pouring into the past, and it would be like this, my car, the connecting bottleneck.
Church billboards. ENDTIME AT LAST! GET READY TO RAPTURE! In one enormous, empty field stretching to the sky a sign is planted that reads FUTURE HOME OF THE LIVING GOD.
“Just looking at Little Mary I can tell what a good mother you would be.”
From the picture window of the house, I can see them in the driveway, all together now, gesturing and talking, a phantasmagoria of parents […] I am at the center of some sort of vortex. I go dizzy.
I look down. At my feet there is a box of black Hefty steel sacks, no doubt placed there by Sweetie as a subtle hint. I bend over, put my pack and computer where I hope I’ll find them again, and pull the first plastic bag from the box.
I have accidentally tampered with and entered some huge place. I do not know what giant lives in this fast and future home.
