Sabbatical: A Novel

Danielle Giroux was going through a bad time in her life. She was afraid of choking to death. She had dreams about Mama Cass dying with chicken salad blocking her windpipe. She couldn't eat solid food. She was living on Stouffer's spinach soufflé and Carnation Instant Breakfast. She was having dreams of her sister who broke her neck in a fatal car accident with her babies in the back seat. She chewed her food thirty-two times and it still wouldn't go down. Her food was cut in tiny pieces. She felt like she was starting over. Danielle dreamed of her mother's younger sister who locked herself in the garage with the car on leaving five children motherless. She felt asphyxiated.

But she went anyway. On a Wednesday in January, fear clutching at her throat, she packed the back seat with everything that would fit and set out on 81 South - first page of the triple A triptik. You can't take Spinach Soufflé in the car but she had plenty of Instant Breakfast.

• • • • •

Danielle worried all the way to Scranton about the Poconos. She was petrified that there would be snow in the Poconos. Those curving, dipping, climbing mountain roads - were miraculously clear. She kept going.

• • • • •

Danielle worked as an assistant professor of Early Childhood Education at a small community college near Syracuse. After seven years of teaching she applied for a sabbatical leave to get her master's degree. She only applied to sunny places. She was tired of shoveling snow on to snow banks taller than herself, of having her lips freeze together, of piling on sweaters, boots, coats, gloves, hats, scarves and still having stiff-with-cold toes and fingers for six months of the year. When she saw Dr. Zhivago the thing she remembered most was the gloves that Lara wore with the fingers cut out so she could still write. She always thought she would get a pair for when she marked her papers.

Danielle's best friends in Syracuse were Audrey Ann Baker "A-A" and Nicole LeCroix. A-A had a virtual halo of fire-red hair, long and rippled, billowing around her head. She was a big girl, not beautiful, but unique. She could croon and moan just like Janis Joplin, not on Mercedes Benz, but on Piece of Heart, scratchy whiskey voice soulfully rendered. Audrey Ann had never worked except once at General Electric for a couple of years; she survived because she was a born entertainer, with a lively, creative and independent spirit. People just loved to have her around.

Nicole, on the surface, was an "air head". Petite, brunette and pretty, she was the one of the three who the men called out to and followed. Her favorite sayings were "never pick your face on a Friday" and "you never know who you're going to meet." She had great style and looked wonderful in clothes. Better yet she was confident about her looks, which would probably have been enough even in the absence of beauty. But there was more to Nicole than it seemed at first. She too was an adventurer and a quester after experience, knowledge and wisdom.

Danielle was the kind of girl who people said had "a pleasant face." She was very short and sturdily built with a few sexy curves thrown in so that it wasn't a total loss. She had dirty blonde hair that she occasionally tried to change to true blonde with varying degrees of success. She had chin length thick hair which was usually permed and left to dry au naturel in an unruly mass of chunky curls. Danielle was anything but stylish and sure of herself; always self-conscious around men. Danielle was the only one of the three with a college education. She was an avid reader and knew a bit about art (who's he", her father always said) and music. She had a little common sense, no sense of adventure, but enough curiosity so that she almost always went along with the plans of A-A and Nicole.

They were an unlikely trio (Danielle was often involved in trios, probably because she grew up with two sisters). Danielle met Nicole first. It was during her first year of teaching. Danielle answered an ad in the Post-Standard for a roommate. Nicole was one of the girls who lived in the apartment. Each had something the other craved. Nicole; the style, the technique of being social, which Danielle lacked. Danielle had the education that Nicole was fascinated by. So they teamed up. Their first trip of many was to Penn State to visit Danielle's roommate from college. Nicole lost a heel; Charles Lloyd breathed on their necks. It was enough. They were hooked on wandering. They went shopping, they went to parties, they went to the bars. Nicole flirted her way innocently through the Syracuse nights. Danielle watched, marveled, and learned. Nicole also watched Danielle. She decided if Danielle could go to college anyone could. So she went to the State University and drifted in and out of Danielle's life for the next four years.