Falling in Place by Ann Beattie

Mary Knapp and Angela Dowell and Terri LeBoyer would be standing in a schoolroom, circling a wastebasket, discussing their meeting on the heath with Macbeth (gesturing to the corridors with rows of lockers). Then Billy what’s-his-name would pretend to have a revelation. Was it possible that in his life he had everhad a genuine moment of insight? Cynthia thought not. Unless he had realized, say, that McDonald’s was serving fewer French fries. Billy what’s-his-name would stand beneath the Stars and Stripes, in front of the chalk-hazed blackboard, and looking out at his classmates’ uncomprehending, bored faces, tell them that “all our yesterdays have lighted fools / The way to dusty death.”
    Reaching for her toothbrush, she thought of the beginning of “Howl.” She was born the year “Howl” came out, but she still felt sure that she was one of the people Ginsberg was talking about. She always felt sorry for herself on Monday morning. Spangle was taking his time about getting back from Spain, and she had no idea how to get the fan out of the kitchen window so she could turn it facing outward; all that was happening now was that hot air was being blown into the apartment. Nevertheless, when she walked into the kitchen for her morning glass of juice (with a teaspoon of protein powder), she turned on the fan and stood in front of it. Skylab was supposed to fall on the twelfth of July.
    When she turned on the car radio, she was in time for the golden oldie of the morning: the Doors, with Jim Morrison, singing “Touch Me.” It was followed by a shouted statement that today was an odd day, and only cars with license plates ending in an odd number could get gas. The announcer gave examples of odd numbers: one, three, five… 
    She thought that she did not deserve such a summer job, and that the day was going to be a disaster. She was tempted to follow the NEW YORK signs all the way to New York.
    She pulled off into the breakdown lane and sat there, staring straight ahead. The windshield was dirty. Blondie was singing “Heart of Glass.” There was no real introduction to that song; it just started, sounding like music from outer space, seeming to be pulsed out instead of played. Cars whizzed by. Monday. Always a difficult day: A lot of people got depressed on Monday. In order to keep her job, it was necessary to get back onto the highway and drive to school and listen to teenagers recite lines memorized from
Macbeth
as they circled a wastebasket To watch Karin Larsen hold out a hand, her wrist loaded with thin gold chains, to hear her say that there was no way the hand would ever be clean.
    The sun went behind a cloud, and she followed the pink cloud as the road curved, a cool breeze blowing through the window.
    The Merritt Parkway was quite nice. A man in a sports car, passing her, looked over and smiled. She smiled back: They were both whizzing along, it was a fine day, they were both young.
    She began to feel better. It was summer, and she was twenty-two, and she had a lover, if he ever got back from Spain. She could call the school and think of something to say. She could call and tell Diana DeWitt, the vice-principal, who wore sundresses patterned with butterflies the size of dinner plates, that driving to school she had realized that she was young. Not silly young like her students, but still young enough to know that she should be in New York today, not standing in a schoolroom that smelled like an eraser. Smiling, she knew not to call. She knew to keep going past the service area where there would be a phone.
    From a phone booth on Sixth Avenue, she called Connecticut information and got the number of the school and, with horns honking and a woman singing in a loud soprano as she walked by holding a poodle on a leash, told the secretary in the principal’s office that she was in the emergency room, having her stomach pumped. A taxi screeched its brakes and honked long and loud at an out-of-state car