It seemed my bad luck to keep finding myself at airports at night. I walked through O'Hare's endless corridors and out into a flat darkness, punctuated dimly by yellow, unbeckoning lights. Lights receding into ceaseless stretches of highway, of endlessly unspooling, unhomed space. The taxi with its driver whom I'd woken from his nap, sped along the highway soundlessly, encountering only the occasional flashes of another car. At this hour, it seemed as if the world had become uninhabited. On the outskirts of our town the green sign of the electric recharge station was muted to near extinguishment.

The taxi created narrow funnels of light as we drove through the dark streets, past the familiar outlines of the college buildings. I directed the driver to our neighborhood, sensing the contours of the streets through the rustling trees, the silvery sculpture in somebody's yard, the sudden hiss and yowl of mating cats. I felt both illicit and safe as long as I was in the taxi. Then we were at the house, its silhouette briefly bathed in the taxi's reflectors. I paid and got out.

"Will you be all right?" the driver asked. I think he was a bit spooked by our quiet stretch of exurbia.

"Sure," I said, and he drove away. The house was plunged in darkness again, its blind windows gaping like holes. I tried to fight off the Weirdness, the familiar strange sensation at the back of my neck, the opening into a cavernous darkness.

I rang the doorbell. There was no answer, but the light in her room went on. I rang the doorbell again. I heard her coming downstairs. The door opened.

She looked a mess. Her hair was uncombed and she was wearing a half-open bathrobe. Her face was slightly puffy. There was a quality of dishevelment about her I'd never seen before. We stood facing each other silently, taking in each other's presence, our mirroring misery. Her eyes were as wretched as mine. Her eyes were still the mirror into which I could walk and drown. She put her arms around me wordlessly, and for a moment I gave in to her familiar warmth as to a luxury. To vanquish all distance; to stop supporting my unsupportable separateness-the temptation was almost too much. Then, as if it were my very last chance, as if it were crucial to use every ounce of my strength to accomplish this, I pulled away.

"Your mother died today," I said coldly.

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Excerpted from The Secret by Eva Hoffman Copyright © 2002 by Eva Hoffman
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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