Free Aftermath of Dreaming by DeLaune Michel

big grand song and I try to stay focused on her, but I can’t stop looking at Andrew. The patter Sydney does between the songs helps a bit, and her jokes are distracting to an extent, except that all I do during each one is compare when I laugh to when Holly does and try to figure out which one of us is more in sync with him. Then during what I guess would be called a “romantic number,” Andrew’s and Holly’s heads lean toward each other in an aren’t-we-enjoying-this-the-most-since-we’re-married sort of way, which I have a strong little feeling is for my benefit. At least on his part. I have no doubt she doesn’t even know who I am, much less that I am here.
    Mercifully, the lights fall to complete darkness, signaling the show’s end, then they come up bright, brighter, brightest for Sydney to receive her applause. The crowd is on its feet, clapping and whooping, and the audience between Andrew and me conveniently blocks my view of him, so his of me. The irritated looks I get from the people in my row as I trip and push past them to get out to the aisle as they try to keep applauding are worth the freedom I gain as I use this perfect chaotic moment to slip out.
    The second I am outside the theater, I break into a run to my truck like I am being chased by banshees, then I quick get in, even locking the door behind me as if that will keep Andrew from seeing me from all the way inside. And Holly. That’s an introduction I have no desire to repeat. Not that she’d remember me. Or that Andrew would even greet me in front of her, or offer an introduction. Though actually, he might. With him, who knows? He might think it’d be fine, no reason in the world not to.
    Hightailing it out of the parking lot, thank you, Chevy engine, I remember that I was supposed to go to the opening-night party afterward, so I leave a “loved your show; can’t—cough, cough—make the party” message at Sydney’s home, so she’ll know how sincere I am.
    When I reach a secure distance from the theater in that barren part of the 10 near Centinela, I pull over to the shoulder, put my truck into park, and lift my hands to cover my face. I thought tears would come, but they don’t. I am in too much shock.
    There are moments right after something has happened to me, catalytic or catastrophic, when I am truly amazed that the physical objects in my life continue to look the same as they did before. Like when I was in the waiting room, right after the doctor told me and Suzanne that Momma had died, I could not believe that the hospital I was sitting in was still standing, hadn’t shattered and crumbled to the ground, no longer able to hold itself up. “My entire world has just changed,” I thought. “How can this physical object still be the same?” I figured maybe I had stumbled on a koan, one of those Zen Buddhist mysteries you meditate on, and supposedly after you sit still long enough, it reveals itself to you. Theemptiness is revealed. You can finally see past the illusion into the truth. But I didn’t know—I had never tried.
    Sitting here on the side of the freeway with every privately held image of Andrew streaming through my brain, I’m just grateful my truck doesn’t explode because it sure feels like my heart is going to.

7
    Meeting Andrew for the first time was like getting pregnant—conception had occurred. And not unwittingly by me. Which is how I’d always thought it would be—to get pregnant. That somehow in that moment I would know. My body would know. And with Andrew, it did. I felt so deposited in. Like a bank. It made me wonder about withdrawals.
    I was working and he was dining at a legendary restaurant in New York where I had managed to get a hostess job three months earlier, right after moving to the city at eighteen. “No daughter of mine will work as a waitress,” Daddy had once said when Suzanne and I