Lydia Walsh, having fallen asleep with a man whose name she can’t recall, wakes up to a phone call at 3 a.m. informing her that her mother has died in her nursing home. Jittery from cocaine, she calls a cab to take her to claim her mother’s body from the nursing home and instead, instructs the driver to get her lost—perhaps an attempt to escape the barrage of memories that could be triggered by the familiar city around her, or to delay the grim task at hand, or maybe both. We’re never really sure, but the uncertainty feels intentional—choreographed by the author to make us, the readers, feel just as uneasy as Lydia does. The driver replies that as a Capitol cab driver, he “ain’t allowed to get lost.” But he drives on anyway, taking Lydia past the D.C. locations she knows so well, plunging her deeper into the memories she’s trying to avoid. Through her attempt to escape the familiar, she only becomes further entrenched in it, lost in her own memories, and though it’s uncomfortable, the reader is along for the ride.
From Lost in the City, William Morrow, 1992
A Personal Anthology 