June, 2011
Linda wondered why all the earth-shattering events of her life always took place in an Illinois hotel room. She gazed at herself in the mirror as she applied her expensive, hypo-allergenic eyeliner. The wands of it cost ten dollars but nowadays she had no choice. If she used less expensive store brands, her eyelids swelled up, causing people to wonder if she'd been domestically abused.
She inspected her chin line, and the way faint creases appeared near the corners of her mouth when she smiled. Not bad for pushing 52, she thought, remembering a whole life full of cover-ups and sunscreen whenever she went to a beach or pool. As she brushed her hair, she wondered what her real hair color was these days. She decided it was probably a pale shade of dishwater. In the past couple of years she'd gone through the change, and while in one way she was grateful to no longer have to shop the tampon aisle, she had to eat less and exercise more to keep her pear shape slim. And when her part widened and more hairs clogged the shower drain when she washed, it sent her screaming for women's Rogaine.
In her pretty, bright floral dress and short, sensible hairstyle with highlights and flips, she felt good about herself as the mother of a soon-to-be college graduate. A knock on the door startled her. "Honey, are you almost ready?"
She opened the door and saw Stephen, wearing one of his best gray worsted suits, with accents of teal sewn into the fabric, which made it seem cheerier. He'd developed deep furrows on his forehead from all the working and worrying over the past ten years. "Yeah, just a couple of more minutes," she told him, answering his original question. As she scrambled around the room putting things away and slipping into her shoes, her mother called. Where were they?
As soon as she finished in the room, Stephen piled her into the flex-fuel hybrid Jeep they now owned. He used the navigator in it to find Seward's stadium on the campus of Illinois Polytechnic, where Hayley's class would graduate in a lavish, morning ceremony. "This is really something," Stephen murmured, as they drove along past the flat fields and saw the white and glass buildings rising from the prairie. "At one time this was all an air force base. Then Clinton trimmed everything. One of my buddies was stationed here for a little while. There were these claptrap wooden dorms all over the place, and hangars. Now look at it!"
Linda felt her arms and legs tingle when they reached the parking lot "tailgate party" that her mother had told her about. Five SUVs and hybrid puddle-jumpers had been parked in a row along one of the edges. There was Hayley's aunt Molly and uncle Chris, who had Linda's beefy son Matthew with them, his short cropped athletic haircut shimmering in the morning sun. Linda's brother Bobby and his wife Sherilyn lingered nearby, with Sherilyn looking frail underneath a glamorous white hat with a navy bow. Next to them, her mother and father talked animatedly with Stephen's parents John and Mabel.