“Here we go,” Heather, the driver, says. She has a calm, collected voice.
Charlotte — you saw a picture of her once, dark-brown hair tied in a low ponytail — has her feet propped up against the dashboard. Her toenails are lacquered a deep sea blue. In the back seat, Jean leans forward, nodding appreciatively at the coastal landscape. The earth is red, the way they imagined it would be. It is rolling and the colors segue together, red and coffee brown and deep green. A flower garden on a hill shapes the words Welcome to New Brunswick
Beside the road there are cows standing in a circle, heads together, like football players in a huddle. Charlotte points through the windshield at them. “Strange sight,” she says. Her words get lost under the radio and the engine accelerating, but the other two nod and laugh. They wave to the cows. The car is shooting down the highway, trailing over the yellow line and back again, down to a curve in the stretch of road where they slip out of sight.
This country is a mystery to you. The farthest east you have been is Banff, Alberta. To imagine these three women then, Charlotte and Heather and Jean, you have to make everything up as you go. Take Atlantic Canada, for instance. You remember postcards of white clapboard churches, high steeples glinting in the sun. You’ve never met Charlotte, but you picture yourself with the three of them, driving by, snapping pictures. Along winding dirt roads, they chance upon coastal towns, lobster boats bobbing on the water. Or else abandoned canneries, paint bleached and peeling, the wood still smelling like the sea.
Instead of working, you daydream or sit cross-legged on the couch roaming the television channels. For you, news is a staple food. There’s a story about a freighter that sprang a leak crossing the Atlantic Ocean. Thousands of boxes fell into the water. Months later, the cargo — a load of bathtub toys — washes up on the shoreline. Children and adults comb the beach. “I am six and three-quarters years old,” one boy tells the cameras proudly. “I have collected fifty-three rubber ducks.” He smiles, his pockets and hands overflowing with yellow.
You’re writing a book about glass, the millions of glass fishing floats that are travelling across the Pacific Ocean. They come in all shapes, rolling pins, Easter eggs, perfect spheres. And the colors, cranberry, emerald, cobalt blue. In North America, these glass floats wash up in the hundreds. Decades ago, boys and girls ran to gather them in, the buoys shimmering at their feet. They sold them for pocket money. Now, the floats are harder to come by. In the wake of storms, collectors pace the beach. Every so often, a rare one appears. Recently, on Christmas morning, a man and his granddaughter came across a solid black orb. Shine it as he did, the glass float remained dark as a bowling ball. The float has no special markings and, to date, its origins are unknown.
For hours, you stare at the computer screen thinking about the load of bathtub toys. You have far too much time on your hands. Sometimes a thought settles in your mind like a stray hair and refuses to leave. Like now, you remember your husband coming in after a jog in the rain. He went straight into the bathroom. When you heard the sound of water drumming against the bathtub, you snuck inside, steam and hot air hitting your lungs. For a full minute, you watched your husband shower, his back to you. The skin on your face broke into a sweat. You watched his body, the runner’s muscles, the tendons. You reached your hand out and placed it flat against his spine, where the vertebrae curved into sacrum. He didn’t even startle.
You think now that he always knew you were there. You think of the million ways he could have read this gesture. But what did you mean, putting your hand out? Perhaps you only wanted to surprise him. Perhaps you only wanted to see if through the steam and heat he was truly there, or just a figment of your imagination.
Sometimes when they’re driving, no one wants to stop. Like they’re married to the highway, the exit signs flashing past. They’re thousands of exits away from Vancouver.
It’s food that lures them off the road. A Tim Horton’s at the side of the highway, beckoning. You watch them giggle into a booth, styrofoam cups of coffee balanced in their trembling, stir-crazy fingers. The first half-dozen doughnuts go just like that. Heather lines up for more. “Get the fritters,” Jean says, laughing, her voice shrill in the doughnut shop. “I just love those fritters.” Heather buys a dozen. They’re sugar-crazed by the end of it, strung out on the sidewalk in front, their legs stretched in front of them.
At night, the three of them pile into a double bed. “I’ve forgotten what the rest of my life is like,” Heather says. They’ve each written up a handful of postcards, but have yet to send them off.
Charlotte lies back on her pillow. Her hair has come loose from its elastic band and it floats down beside her. “Don’t you ever wonder what it would be like not to go back?”
“If I had a million dollars,” Heather says.
“Don’t you ever think, though, overland, we could drive to Chile. If we just started going in a different direction. Instead of going west, we could be in Chile.”
The next morning they continue west and no one complains. Outside Thunder Bay, they pull over at the statue of Terry Fox. Charlotte sits down on the stone steps and cries. She can’t stop. “It’s the fatigue,” she tells them, struggling to catch her breath. “God, I’m tired of sleeping in motel rooms every night. Let’s pull out the tents and camp. To hell with indoor plumbing. Can’t we do that?” The tears are streaming down her face, mascara thick on her cheeks.
Later on, in the dark of their tent, she tells them how she remembers the day he died. When she describes it — how she stood at her elementary school in a jogging suit, listening to the announcement on the radio, watching the flag lowered to half-mast — she feels her life coming back to her. Bits and pieces she thought were long forgotten. Before that moment, she was too young to fully understand that death could happen. But then the young man on the television, the one with the curly hair and the grimace, he died and it broke her heart.
Your husband has the body and soul of a long-distance runner. He is a long-haul kind of man. Even asleep, he has that tenacity. At a moment’s notice, he’ll be up again, stretched and ready. Unlike you. When you lie down, you doubt your ability to up yourself again. You are the Sloppy Joe of women. You watch TV lying on the couch, you read in bed, curled up on one side. Sometimes, when the lights are out, you drag your computer into bed with you. While your husband snores, you write about the woman who owned four thousand glass floats. An arsonist torched the building she lived in. The apartment collapsed but, miraculously, no one was killed. The morning after, passers-by came and picked the surviving balls from the rubble — black and ashy and melted down.
At night, in the glow of the screen, you type to the up, down of your husband’s breathing. It’s difficult to look at him in these moments. His face is so open, so slack-jawed, vulnerable and alone. Both of you have always been solitary people. Like big cedars, your husband says, bulky and thick, growing wider year by year. You are charmed by your husband’s metaphors, the quiet simplicity of them.
Your husband has never been unfaithful to you. But only a few months ago, you found the letter he had written to Charlotte. They had grown up together and, in the letter, he confessed that he loved her. Your husband left the letter, and her reply, face up on the kitchen table. You imagine the instant he realized, standing on the warehouse floor, broom in one hand. He tried to call you, but you just stood there, letting the telephone ring and ring. When you read his confession on that piece of looseleaf, your husband’s perfect script stunned you. You thought of his face, his brown eyes and the receding slope of his hairline, the way he sat at the kitchen table reading the paper, frowning, his lips moving silently to read the words.
The woman, Charlotte, had written back. She had told him to pull himself together. She’d returned his letter, telling him that their friendship would never recover. And then he left both letters on the kitchen table. Not maliciously. You refuse to believe he did it maliciously. Your husband is not that kind of man. He is the kind of
person who honors privacy, who can carry a secret until the end. Shell-shocked and hurt, he must have forgotten everything.
You’ve imagined it perfectly. Before he left for work, he took both letters and laid them on the kitchen table. He read them over and over. He’d offered to leave his marriage for her, but she had turned him down flat. Pull yourself together. He made a pot of coffee and poured himself a cup. He put on his shoes, then his jacket. The envelope was on the counter. He folded it up and tucked it in his pocket. Hours later, while his mind wandered back and forth, he pulled it out, only to discover the envelope was empty. The letters were still face up on the kitchen table, where his wife, sleep-creased and hungry, had found them. He called, but the phone just rang and rang.
That night, you went out and didn’t come home. You climbed on a bus and crossed the city, crying intermittently into the sleeve of your coat. At a twenty-four-hour diner, you ordered a hamburger and fries and sat there until dawn, when the early risers started showing up for breakfast. You read the paper from the night before, and then the paper from that day, cover to cover, and then you walked home, through the tree-lined streets and the slow muscle of traffic heading downtown. At home, your husband was already gone. You turned on the TV, then you lay down in bed and slept for hours.
You’ve pictured it from beginning to end, upside and down, in every direction. You’ve pictured it until it’s made you sick and dizzy. Your husband has never been unfaithful to you, but something in your life is loose now. A pin is undone. When he came home and lay down beside you, you told him, “We’ll work things out,” and he, ashen-faced, nodded.
His skin was pale in the white sheets and you hovered above him, kissing his skin, trying not to miss anything. You have never been unfaithful. That’s what you were thinking every time you kissed him. Look at me, you thought. I have never been unfaithful, and here I am, kissing you. You looked straight at him. Your husband’s heart was broken and it wasn’t you who did it. That’s what you thought, when he pushed his face against your chest, his body taut and grieving.
There’s a memory in your mind that you can’t get rid of. The two of you in bed, lying next to one another like fish on the shore, watching images of Angola. Out on Oak Street there’s the white noise of traffic, endlessly coming. Catastrophe. Your husband said that line again, “Too many cameras and not enough food,” and the two of you watched a woman weep. She wiped her eyes in her dirty handkerchief. And you, on the other side of the world, on another planet, watched soundlessly.
Instead of writing your book, you are watching the midday news. Like some kind of teenage kid, you’re lying on the couch, the remote cradled on your stomach, hand in the popcorn. The world is going to hell in a handbasket. You think this but never say it aloud because it’s terrible to be so cynical. But look at the world. While your city works its nine-to-five, bombs detonate, planes crash, accidents happen. You sound like your mother. While your marriage stutters on, revolutions rise and fall, blooming on the midday news like some kind of summer flower. There’s dinner to be made. Lately you have discovered your weak heart. Instead of sitting at the kitchen table writing your book, you’re watching flood waters in Central America, you’re watching Dili, people in trucks with rifles strung on their arms. You’ve never even heard a shot fired. You know you think about your marriage far too much. You know that, given the chance, you will sit all day on your couch like this, watch what happens in another country. There is a woman clinging to a rooftop. A flood in Mozambique. A lack of supplies, everything coming too late. By morning, the water may rise over the spot where she sits. You want to get on a plane. You who have always wanted to please people, you want to sandbag and work. You know what you think of this woman on the rooftop — she did nothing to deserve this. But what would she think of you? She would look at you with disbelieving eyes. She would look at you with only the faintest expression of pity.
Through small-town Ontario, the three women snap photos of water towers. While you watch from the background, Charlotte climbs through the passenger window, her body swaying recklessly out. When she ducks back in, her hair is wild, blown frizzy around her head. She smiles a lopsided grin.
Past hockey arenas and high-steepled churches, blue sky over dry fields, they’re singing along to the radio. Looking forward to night, when they will pitch their tent under cover of stars, break out the beer bottles which clank in the trunk. They can see themselves dancing carelessly in the hot evening. Charlotte, drunk and spinning, saying, “Girls, I’ve known you all my life. What would I do without you, girls?” How bittersweet it is, when she says that. How she wonders what it would be like to be nineteen again, or twenty-one. But she’ll settle for this, curled up with her friends in front of the fire. When they arrive in Vancouver, her life will return to normal. Heading home to Saskatoon again, catching up on all the time she’s missed.
You’re afraid of why it comes to you, clear as a picture. You tell yourself you’re bound to Charlotte, but what you’re afraid of is this: instead of getting on with your life, you’re following her. To make sure that she’s gone. To chase her out of your life. In all these vivid imaginings, you are the spectator, the watcher, the one who refuses to leave until the last act. You move through your emotions, anger settling on you like some forgotten weight. It makes you watch until the end.
So badly, you want to be the person who grieves for her. Not the envious one, the one whose heart has toughened up. You’re standing on the road. There’s even a space for you. A bus stop, of sorts, lit up with harsh fluorescent lights. You never stray from it. No matter what, come hell or high water, come death or disease, you’ll stand there watching it all unfold.
When you see the accident, you know it must have happened a hundred times before. The stretch of highway heading to Lloydminster, straight as an arrow. Wide open, it tricks the driver into believing she’s awake.
You almost convince yourself you’re there, that it’s you, semi-conscious in the driver’s seat: exactly when you realize that the car is out of control, that it cannot be undone, exactly when, you’re not sure. Even the impact seems part of your dream. It knocks you out. But not before you see Charlotte, sitting beside you, the slow-motion crumbling of the passenger side. Her sleeping body, belted in, thrown sideways. She’s in your lap, slouched awkwardly against your body. You know you’re going under. The car. You have the sensation the car is closing in. Then you don’t even know it, you’re under, the three of you in your seats.
Later on, Heather can only say, We were speeding and the car slipped out of control Hundred and forty kilometers on a flat stretch of highway. Over the ditch and straight for a tree on the border of a farmhouse.
When the crash comes, this is what you see: lights flashing on all around. Houses you couldn’t see for the dark. Snapping to life. Hurrying out into road, all these people, half-dressed. Running in the dewy grass.
The car is wrapped around the tree, the interior light miraculously blinking.
You don’t want to be lovesick. You dream yourself sitting in an orange rocking chair, a steaming cup of coffee resting on the arm, the chair tipping back and forth and nothing spills. As if you could do that. Keep moving and the tiny thing you balance, the thing that threatens, stays secure. You love your husband, love him in a way that makes you heartsick. You think it is irrational to feel this way, to be so overwhelmed by the small tragedies of your life when all around you, there are images of men and women and children, in Dili there are the ones who never ran away to hide in the mountains. You pray for them in the best way you know how. You picture them standing on the street on a summer day, dust against their feet. You picture them safe. Before you know it, your hands are clasped in front of your face. It takes you aback, the way you sit there, shocked and unhappy.
Hardly a month passed between the time you found the letters and the night the accident happened. In the morning, your husband heard the news by phone. He stayed on the phone all morning, calling one person then
another. He knew them all, Jean and Heather and Charlotte, childhood friends from Saskatoon. You learned that after the car hit the tree, Jean and Heather stood up and walked away. In shock, Heather started running, straight down the road. An elderly man, still dressed in pajamas, guided her gently back to the site.
It was Heather who called your husband. “Charlotte was asleep the whole time,” she told him. “She never felt a thing.”
If your husband grieved, he did the gracious thing and refused to show it. When you asked him how he felt, he held himself together. “I dont know,” he said. “It’s over.”
The expression on his face was closed and you knew better than to push. You left him alone in the apartment. It’s space that he needs and that’s what you give him. No confrontation or rehashing of that small betrayal, though each day you tilt between anger and sorrow. You expect his grief, are willing to understand it even. Still, he refuses to part with it — his private sorrow is not on display for you. It belongs to him alone.
These days, he spends hours reading the paper. But you can tell that it’s only a cover. Like you, he’s thinking. Your house is a silent place. The two of you, solicitous but lost in thought, the radio constantly murmuring in the living room. And because you believe in protocol, in politeness and respect, you don’t ask him and you never mention her name. When you dropped those letters into the trash, you were telling him the terms of your agreement. Don’t mention it, you were saying. Pretend it never happened. Both of you like two cedars, side by side and solitary.
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