The Urban Sprawl

Laurel's Story
The Urban Sprawl

Laurel Johnston was going to be an editor. She was young, fresh out of
undergrad. She wore suit jackets everyday, the light, feminine kind
that only match with skirts. She had a black, a creme and a navy blue
with silver pinstripes. Vogue magazine said that pencil skirts would be
in for fall, so Laurel went all out and bought the whole suit. Laurel's
suits were all size five. but she took the tags out. She got the zipper
up on a size three skirt once, so, when people asked, she felt
justified in saying she was a four.

Laurel also had a car, a new car, perhaps not yet quite the right car,
but new nonetheless. Today, as every day, she was driving from her
apartment to the train station. Laurel could have driven to work, but
it was easier for her to drive into the city and take the train out
than to drive all the way around the city to avoid traffic. Besides,
the car had been an early graduation present from her dad. She wanted
to use it, and this way she could and at the same time still feel
environmentally conscious.

Laurel's car was standard shift. Her mother still couldn't drive
standard, but she could. This gave Laurel a vague sense of progress.
She watched the light turn green in front of her and she let the engine
purr before the car jumped into first. The coffee in her cup jumped
too. The plastic cover filled brown, but nothing spilled over. Laurel
sipped away the coffee, set the cup back in its holder and batted,
cat-like, at her graduation tassle that hung from the rear-view
mirror.

Laurel Johnston had a good degree in English from a good school, and
she was proud of it. Nevertheless, she had marked on her calender the
day she would take the tassle down. Two years from her graduation, it
was a kind of intentional step forward, and, more importantly, taking
the tassle down was a precaution against living in the past, a fault
Laurel considered all to prevalent in women her age. Laurel was not
afraid of turning twenty-five. Lately, she was not even afraid of being
afraid of turning twenty-five.

Laurel turned into the parking garage. She pressed the button and took
her ticket. On the second floor she found an open space for compact
cars, and she squeezed in. When she turned the car off Laurel looked up
at the mirror. Her make-up was in order. The brand proved well worth
the price. She moved a strand of hair away from her eyes, but thought
again and decided to move it back. From the glove compartment she drew
out a pair of glasses, non-prescription. She set them on her nose, but
frowned, deciding it wasn't a glasses day. Quite satisfied she grabbed
her briefcase and stepped out of the car.

Laurel's heels echoed on the concrete of the parking garage. She smiled
a little; she liked that sound. When she first learned to appreciate
the clack of her shoes she thought, "Hear that, that means business."
She wasn't talking to the world. She had no plans for the world, but
she did plan to be an editor. "That means business." She liked what the
phrase meant both literally and as an idiom. "I mean business," she
added once, but she didn't like that as much.

At street level Laurel exchanged the garage ticket for a punch on her
monthly parking pass. She watched as the attendant went back to talking
to a young female employee, and she hated him for it. The employee was
hispanic, and everyday he would talk to her, using the few Spanish
words he knew as much as possible and asking stupid questions about the
language. She looked bored, and she always ended the interaction by
slowly moving out of comfortable talking range. Laurel hated her, too,
for putting up with him.

Laurel didn't have a boyfriend. She left one in Raleigh where she grew
up when she went north to Boston College. She even had to get rid of
most of the clothes he bought, because they don't wear bright colors in
Boston. A few months later she got a native Bostonian boyfriend. They
dated for a year, but one day she realized she didn't need boyfriends.
Laurel still kept a box of letters and mini-sized teddy bears. Once
she'll have put her tassle in there she'll be able to wrap it up in a
pretty ribbon and put it in storage. Keeping the box was essential. It
was proof, proof that she could get what she wanted, it was just a
matter of her not wanting it.

Laurel Johnston was punctual. She was on the platform just as the sign
changed to announce that her train was boarding. Laurel was not an
editor yet, but she was going to be. She liked to think that on the
other side of that train was an editor's office with her name on it.
When she thought this she smiled, a big teeth smile with narrow eyes,
one that she had been practicing for some time now.

It was hard for Laurel to escape the truth of what was really on the
other side of the train ride. In actuality, there was nothing more than
a ten minute walk, two flights of stairs and a little cubicle reserved
for Laurel Johnston, assistant to the copy editor of the Middlesex
County Herald. But she had taken bigger steps in no time. One day she
would be copy editor, then, in no time at all, editor. She would move
on to bigger and better papers.

Still, it was not altogether easy in the office. She was still new.
Most of the time she felt more a burden than a help. Stan, the copy
editor, seemed to assist her more than she assited him. It was hard,
too, that everyone called her Laurel. That was the way she wrote her
name on her resume, so that's what everyone called her. She preferred
Laura. Her friends called her Laura. "At least," she told herself,
"Laurel has a good executive sound to it. The kind of name that's going
somewhere."

Laurel walked towards the front car of the train thinking to herself
and occasionally practicing her smiles. She moved to the doors, but she
was hesitant to board. Above her was a thick steel roof supported by
pillars all around. Below was the concrete and steel tracks. To her
left was the station with all its people, all going somewhere,
somewhere, she suspected, better than where she was going.

But to her right the steel roof ended and the long path of the trains
began. The sky was open, a thick white sky, the kind of sky that is
full of something. Laurel saw buildings and roads and automobiles and
shops. She walked to her right, toward the end of the platform. She
even hurried a little, figuring that if she got far enough fast enough
no one would recognize or notice her and wonder what she was
doing.

Laurel came to the far edge of the platform and looked out. Beneath the
open sky all across her vision the city sprawled. She turned her head
slowly left to right, taking it all in. It was a world of brick and
concrete. High rises and strip malls, roads and bridges, smokestacks
and radio antennas, the skyline rose and fell in sharp lines. As she
scanned the horizon she felt like she was tracing the heart rate of the
city itself, active, erractic, but stretching on and on. In the
streets, going in and out of shops and offices, were the people. They
looked like paper dolls cut out of black and grey, and not a single one
looked up at her. She strained her eyes to see beyond the city. There
was a tiny piece of ocean to the left, and far, far away she saw more
land rolling and tumbling off into the thick white sky. The sheer
distance of it struck her like a thunderbolt.

Laurel took two small steps back from the edge of the platform. She was
tapping her hand on her heart and breathing a little faster than
normal. "Ah yes," she remembered. She was going to be an editor. But
for now, she was going on the train, going to be an assistant to the
copy editor of the Middlesex County Herald. Laurel held her hand in
place and smiled. She smiled quite differently from before. "This," she
thought. "This new smile...I shall have to practice this."