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Marianne Belor is a clerk at Wells Fargo and it isn't her fault.
That's the lie turning over in her head like a brick in a laundry machine. She clocks out. The silver and glass doors click together tidily behind her. The muted chatter and air conditioning gives to the deeper chill of evening and whistle of cars.
You must see: Marianne was told to leave her home at eighteen. She had no one to pay for her college. She had untreated attention deficits (and six other things), top single percentile intelligence, and no job experience. And she had no friends, no family to help her. Worse than no family—
(A dandelion trembling and solitary in the wind. Fraying, a shawl pulled to threads by an idiot classroom. A darling toy lying on its side at a garage sale. There was no particular reason why Marianne Belor ought have picked it up when she had already passed by so many others. There wasn't any thought in bending down to hold it, only the glimpse of a fault in the world and an impulsive wish to fix it. The dandelion calls itself Isabel Lillian Amber.)
—if other people had everything they wanted and she was the meek servant of something despicable, well, she had just started out with disadvantages. Her parents that ruined her high school years and handicapped her for the rest of her life. The girl at her apartment that needed daily hours of affection, hands stirred over her skin and whispers composed. There were constraints on her. She would pull through and get the things she wanted. Somehow at sometime, because she was smart and that was what she did.
It's not going to happen tonight. Which is fine. It's not urgent on a scale of days. She tells herself she'll set aside the weekend and come up with a plan, and she can almost force her to believe that she'll follow through on that. Right now, her feet hurt and she needs to walk home so she can lay down and not think.
