City of Boys by Beth Nugent

will smoke, and she will be married to a man much like her father, and in the summers she will probably take vacations with him and their little quiet children. She closes her eyes a moment and tries again: instead of all that, she will have a different life, one in which she will doze after she has had her breakfast, and in the evening she will lie down after supper. She will have a cat that sits quietly in her lap, and when it dies, she will get another.
    —I don’t know, she says finally. —A nurse.
    —Ah, the man says. —The medical profession.
    Her mother smiles at her. —That’s what I wanted to be, too,she says. —A nurse. She looks at the man. —And I could have been. I would have made a good nurse.
    She stops and taps a cigarette from her pack. The man picks up his lighter, but she looks down at the cigarette and does not bring it to her lips.
    —I’d still like to be a nurse, she says. —But it’s too late for that.
    —Oh now, he says. —It’s never too late. Not for a woman like yourself. You’re still quite a young woman.
    Alice’s mother looks at him and smiles. —Really? she says.
    —Oh yes, he says. —Oh yes. He flicks his lighter and Alice watches the flame pass across her mother’s dark eyes.
    Her father is in the chair by the window when she returns to the cabin; the map and newspapers are spread open around him on the floor and in his lap is the Kansas City paper. From the door Alice can see the photo of the hotel with the white circle around the window. He looks around at her and drops the paper on the floor.
    —Where’s your mother? he asks.
    —Smoking, Alice says. —She’s still in the smoking car.
    —I suppose she’s making friends, he says, and Alice nods.
    —Your mother is a very friendly woman, he says, gazing at her, and she can tell he is waiting for a response, but she sits on her bed and picks up her book. Finally he reaches for one of the newspapers on the floor, and over the top of her book Alice watches him read: his eyes run quickly across the paper and all the way down it, but when he finishes, he comes back to the top, without turning the page. He is waiting for Alice’s mother to come back; he is waiting for something to happen, Alice can tell, and she wants to be far away when it does, but already she knows that it will not happen without her; if she is gone, it will wait for her to return–to come out of the bathroom, or to arrive home fromschool, or to wake up–and while it may not be something too terribly awful–a word, a look, a small mean flick of the hand–she will be there for it; she is a part of it by now. There was a time when her parents, having quarreled, would turn to her with sad shocked looks for all that they asked her to witness, but now it goes on as though she is not even there. Her father abandons the paper and looks out the window; the only light is that of the train, cutting through the black country. She wonders if he is thinking of the life he might have had in Oklahoma, or of her mother, or if he thinks nothing at all, his mind an empty field, crossed only from time to time by a few thoughts rattling over a rusty track.
    By the time her mother comes back, Alice has finished her book, and her father is cheerful again, back to plotting out their trip. He looks up and smiles briefly at Alice’s mother as she sits on the chair by the bed. She picks up a magazine and stares at it for a while, then closes it.
    —Do you remember, she says to him, —that I wanted to be a nurse?
    He looks up from the map and makes great show of closing it up carefully, along its original folds; when he is done, he smiles. —No, he says. —I don’t remember that.
    —Well, she says, —I do.
    He looks out the window, and she nods. —You know, she says, —I am still relatively young. I am still a relatively young woman.
    He does not answer, but his lips are moving and as he gazes at the passing scenery Alice tries to tell what he is saying. After a