I breathe deeply and shut my eyes. My head is pounding. When had that started? The pain is centered just over my eyebrows, like a heavy rubber band pulled too tightly. Beneath the band, the pain seeps down behind my eyes. I rub my temples, circling my fingertips round and round and press in.
The hum of tires against the road soothes the pain a bit and the vibration massages my neck. I recline in my seat, eyes closed, listening.
Albert’s breathing is slow and deep—always steady as a rock, that man—my foundation. Tom is a noisy breather. He doesn’t really snore as much as he purrs. The air sort of sputters around in his throat on its way in and out, as if it’s feeding a tiny outboard motor. Carol’s breath is shallow and quick, like she’s in a hurry even in her sleep. That’s Carol all right—busy, busy, busy—too busy to breathe deeply. Too busy to stay at home, eat dinner with us, spend time. I can’t complain though. Here we all are, together, heading somewhere with Albert at the helm.
“Albert, what about my job? I can’t just leave the students behind with no teacher. Take Daniel—no
one understands him like I do. He doesn’t get math unless I present it in hockey terms—you know—if your team
is second in the standings and the first-place team is 8-0 and 3 and your team has won 6 games, what is the score? That sort of thing. He can figure it out in a flash as long as it involves hockey. And Jean needs to sit near the front. She can’t concentrate at the back. And Sarah—if she says she has to go to the bathroom, she means it. The students need me.
“There is always marking to be done, too. I should have brought it along. But it is summer. Of course—summer holidays—that’s why we’re all together. We must be going camping.” My muscles relax and I imagine the scent of pine as we zip ourselves into the tent.
16
Highway 628 North East, Waldeck Access Road; Central Waldeck Access Road; West Waldeck Access Road; Airport Road to Swift Current Airport. I’m reading the signs along the highway. Rayne and Audrey are very quiet, their eyes focused straight ahead along the white line that leads to who-knows-where.
“Where’s Swift Current?” I ask.
“Saskatchewan,” Rayne answers. “You’re awake! How’re you feeling?”
“I’m fine, a little groggy. Was I sleeping long?”
Rayne nods. “About an hour and a half. Gambling must have tired you out.”
I’m not sure what he means. I wouldn’t even know how to gamble. “Are we gonna stop soon?” I ask.
“Can you last a couple more hours?”
“I’ll be okay with that as long as we have a quick bathroom break,” Audrey says.
“Yeah, yeah, that’s fine,” I agree. I’m still tired. Maybe I’m hungry. What can I make for supper for the three of us?
“Could we get some potatoes and carrots and onions?” I ask. “I think I’ll make a pot of stew for supper. I guess I’ll need some meat too.”
“Ooh, that sounds good,” Audrey says.
“Where will you cook this stew?” Rayne asks. “Do you have a stove back there that I don’t know about?”
I look around. “No, I guess not.” We’re in a van. Of course there’s no stove. What was he thinking?
His tone is apologetic. “We’ll look for a restaurant that serves home-cooked meals. Maybe they’ll have stew on
the menu.”
“I just thought it would be something for me to do.
I feel useless.”
“It’s your job to keep us entertained,” Rayne says. “Tell us a joke.”
“Hmmm. I’m terrible at telling jokes. I can never remember the punch line or the beginning or the middle.” I smile at my own shortfall.
“Well, that makes it more difficult,” Rayne says. “Audrey, know any jokes?”
“What’s black-and-white and red all over?” Audrey asks.
“A newspaper—read all over?” Rayne says.
“No.”
“A sunburned zebra?” I say.
“No.”
“A nun rolling down a hill over shards of broken glass?” Rayne says.
“Oooh! No.”
“What then?”
Audrey turns to look out the window. A minute later she asks, “Are we going to stop for that bathroom break?”
“What? You didn’t tell us the answer to your joke,” Rayne says.
“I don’t remember the answer.”
Rayne laughs, slowly at first. But he can’t stop. He laughs until tears well in his eyes. He wipes them dry with his sleeve and drives on in silence.
We stop near Gull Lake at a roadside rest area, use the bathroom, and let Shadow out for a stretch, all without uttering a word.
Back on the highway, Audrey turns to Rayne. “I guess it was pretty funny that I couldn’t remember the answer to that joke.”
“No,” Rayne says. “I wasn’t laughing at you. It’s just that I can’t get a handle on this thing. You remember some things in such detail—things your husband said to you thirty years ago—and yet you forget halfway through a joke that you started thirty seconds ago. It doesn’t make sense. It’s crazy.”
Audrey just looks at him with a blank stare.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“No offense taken, Dear. Here’s one. What’s the best thing about having Alzheimer’s?”
“I don’t know. What?”
“You don’t remember that you don’t remember. Did I say that right? Someone told me that and for some reason, it’s the only joke I can remember.”
I watch the plains slip past the window. Fences shape corrals and separate fields of horses from cattle. Grain grows in the spaces between.
“So much land,” I say, marveling at the farms spread out on either side, barns and outbuildings outnumbering homes.
“It’s a different lifestyle here,” Rayne says. “Kids ride horses as soon as they can reach the stirrups.”
“I’ve never ridden a horse,” I say. “You must feel so alive up there, no seatbelt, no windshield, no roof.”
“Sounds dangerous,” Audrey says.
“But hairy and free.”
I want to live on a ranch, care for horses, and ride as far as I can see without leaving my own property. I picture myself galloping through the fields and I fight the urge to cry. What if I never get to ride a horse? I am probably too old now, and as much as I hate to admit it, possibly too frail. Such a cruel way to finish out a life. It should be like reading a book—fine to have a sad part in the middle, but the ending should be happy.
The light is changing. It isn’t dusk yet, but even through the tinted windows, I can see the touch of yellow-pink in the sky.
We pass into Alberta. A short distance down the road, there is a small stand of trees clustered together at the side of the highway—a tiny forest—a picture-perfect backdrop for a motel and adjoining diner.
Rayne slows and steers into the lot. “How’s this look?”
“I’m so stiff and tired, a mattress tossed on the ground would look good to me,” Audrey says.
“I’ll take that as a yes then?”
“Yes for me too,” I say, as I search for the release button on the seatbelt.
Inside the office, each of us massages a different body part—arm, shoulder, hip—while we wait in front of the desk. Finally, a young girl appears from somewhere in the back. She strolls in and, without eye contact or greeting, steps behind the computer and prepares to type. “Name?” she says, barely looking up.
“Do you have two rooms for tonight?” Rayne asks.
“Yep. Name?”
“Rayne Carpenter.”
“And?”
“Lucy and Ethel Jones,” Audrey says, stepping forward as she speaks. “We’re sisters.”
The girl looks up briefly w
ithout expression and enters the names on the screen. We finish registering and, keys in hand, find our rooms.
“She was pretty rude,” I say. “How old do you think she was? Not old enough to be running a motel, surely.”
“Probably a high-school student,” Rayne says. “Summer job, bored to death, pissed about having to work out here in the middle of nowhere. Or her parents own the place and expect her to work whenever she’s not in school.”
“Either way, it wouldn’t kill her to crack a smile.”
The rooms are clean and bright with big windows at the back overlooking the small woodlot. We open the window, and through the trees, I’m surprised to see that the ground slopes down to a river that bubbles and swirls past the motel, then swings away across the fields. I hadn’t even seen the water from the highway.
Rayne and Shadow appear at the door.
“Want to go for a walk before supper?”
“You go ahead, Dear. I’m going to freshen up and when you get back, we’ll eat,” I say.
“I’ll come with you,” Audrey says to Rayne.
I start toward the bathroom. “We haven’t eaten yet, have we?”
Rayne looks at me, the corners of his mouth creasing downward. I know that expression, that look that means I’ve said something crazy.
“I’ll be fine. I can manage on my own for five minutes. Go ahead. Jeez Louise! I’m not a child.”
I watch the three of them round the corner of the building before I turn to go into the bathroom. The full-length mirror inside forces me to stand up straighter. I examine my reflection, starting with the flashy shoes and moving up to the little bulge that swells under my shirt at the tummy, the rounded shoulders, gray hair, and sagging skin on my face.
“You look old, Girl, but not half bad. I’d have to say you look better now than you have for months.”
The splash of warm water on my face is like a long, firm hug. The towel is plush and smells of fabric softener. I hold it on my face and breathe deeply. I love this place.
Voices in the other room tell me they’re back.
“The smells coming from the diner are great,” Audrey says. “Are you ready to eat?”
“I sure am.”
The hiss of hot grease bubbling up from the baskets of home-cut fries and the scrape of large metal spatulas flipping hamburger patties on the steel grill draw me in. We sit near the back by the window. The late afternoon sun is still high enough in the sky to cast shadows on our table.
“We’re getting closer,” Rayne says. “By tomorrow we should start to see mountains in the distance.”
“Did you ever think we’d get this far?” Audrey asks.
“A few times I didn’t think we’d make it out of Ontario,” Rayne says. “I still can’t believe it, to be honest.”
I shake my head. “I knew we would.”
Rayne smiles. “You’re pretty sure of most things.”
“Except when I’m not…not sure of anything.”
“I guess we could all say the same,” Rayne says. “That’s what keeps us humble.”
I don’t like talking about these things, what we did yesterday, what we’ll do tomorrow. I only care about now, right now. I pick at my fries; stab one at a time and swallow before stabbing another.
“Maybe when we get there, I’ll introduce you to my dad, and we could show you around,” Rayne says. “I’m sure he’d say you could stay with us for a few days, but then we’ll need to make arrangements for you to get back to Ottawa.”
This catches me totally off guard.
“We should call your families from here, and they can book flights. They might want to fly out to join you for the trip back, or I can take you to the airport and they can meet you at the other end.”
I put down my fork. I haven’t thought about how we will get back until now. How could this have happened? I must have known Rayne would stay in B.C. Maybe I thought we would stay there too. No…. I really haven’t even considered it.
“I don’t think we should call yet. They don’t see us like you do. They’d never trust us to finish the trip. They think we’re helpless.”
“I’ll talk to them, convince them,” Rayne says. He seems so confident.
Audrey has stopped eating and is listening. “They’re gonna blame you for this. They think we’re just clueless old ladies,” she says.
I bury my face in my hands. “I’ve made such a mess of this.”
What a selfish old woman I’ve become, only thinking of myself. A fog circles my head. I search in my purse for the room key, pull out some bills and put them on the table.
“I need to lie down. Please finish your meals. I’ll be fine.”
“I’ll come with you,” Rayne says, rising to his feet.
“Just stay here. I’m just going to lie down.”
He sits back down, and I leave the diner. My legs are behaving. They’re taking me in the right direction, I think, but my head is blurry. I walk past the first few rooms, peer through the windows. Nothing is familiar. Farther along,
I recognize the van.
The curtain is open in the room nearest the van. I lean close to the window, shade my eyes, then jump back, nearly losing my balance. Shadow has seen me and leapt up to the window.
I try the key. The door opens and Shadow is there wagging her tail. I glance back toward the restaurant. Rayne is standing just outside, watching. He waves and steps back inside. I burrow into the room and lie on the bed with Shadow close beside.
I concentrate hard, trying to breathe deeply and evenly. I learned this from a few yoga classes I attended somewhere. It helps.
My father was always calm and composed, always
confident. He treated me as an adult even when I was young. He’d say ‘You know the answer Lilly, just ask yourself and listen. The answer’s there.’ Sometimes I just wanted him to tell me the right thing to do but that wasn’t his way. He trusted me. I wish I knew where he was so I could ask him now.
Albert is so much like my dad. I didn’t see that before. Why is he not here with me? Where is he?
He’s dead.
The thought comes to me like a recording, an announcement that’s repeated several times through the day reminding me of rules that need to be observed or what time the next bus will arrive. It is informative. Just so I’ll know.
Rayne is a child with an old soul. He watched me walk back to the room. He trusts me, but only so far. What would my own kids have done if I’d asked them to take me on this trip? If they weren’t too busy?
Shadow scrambles to her feet as someone knocks at the door. I ease up and shuffle to open it. It’s Rayne and Audrey.
“Sorry. You have the key,” Audrey says.
“It’s okay. I was awake.”
They follow me into the room. We sit together at the small table, near the door. Rayne sets a Styrofoam container in front of me, along with a cardboard cup of coffee.
“You didn’t finish. We thought you might be hungry.”
“Thank you.” I poke a couple of lukewarm fries into my mouth.
“Are you feeling better?” Audrey asks.
“Yeah, I think I am.” I sip the coffee. It’s hot and fresh. “We should call the kids, like you said.”
Rayne looks at me from the corner of his eye. “Are you sure?”
I nod and take another sip.
“I think it’s a good idea,” he says. “They’ve already heard that you’re okay, but if we call them, they’ll be able to start planning your return. I’m glad you’ve changed your mind.”
“Who should we call about me?” Audrey asks.
“We’ll start with the nursing home and they can give us everyone else’s numbers,” Rayne says.
“Will you come back with us?” Audrey asks.<
br />
“No, I’m going to stay with my dad for awhile. I realized this week how much I miss him.”
“You’re not coming? When will we see you again?” Audrey asks with a devastated look on her face.
“I…I don’t know,” he says. “I’ll definitely visit you next time I’m in Ottawa. You can count on that.” He brightens. “But we still have things to see together. I can’t wait to drive you through the mountains and all the way to the Pacific Ocean. It’s gonna blow you away.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s freakin’ amazing. You’re gonna love it.”
I stuff another fry into my mouth and close the container. I try to swallow. There is a lump in my throat that wasn’t there a minute ago. I notice a phone on the desk.
“How do we do this? Can we call from the room?”
“You can,” Rayne says. “I bought a long-distance card the other day to call my dad. You can use it.”
“I don’t know the number.”
“I can call it for you,” he says, “and then you can explain.”
He dials directory assistance, asks for the number, and jots it down on the motel paper. “Are you sure you want to do this?” he asks.
“I’m sure.” My stomach reels.
Rayne keys in the nursing home number. “Hello. My name is Rayne. I’m calling on behalf of Lillian—” He pauses and whispers, “What’s your last name again?”
“Lillian Gorsen and Audrey—Clark,” he says after prompting Audrey as well.
“Hello, yes, they’re fine. They’re here. Lillian would like to talk to you.”
He hands me the receiver.
“Hello?”
The voice on the other end answers cautiously, “Lillian, is that you?”
“Yes.”
“Where are you?” I hear the woman whisper to someone else, “It’s Lillian and Audrey. Shh.”
“Where are we?” I ask, looking to Rayne for the answer. “We’re in Alberta,” I say. “We’re fine.”
“Alberta? How on earth did you get there?” the woman asks.
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