Plowing my way through the crowds I wasn’t really concentrating on where I was going and I walked smack into a girl. I actually head-butted her by accident. We both rubbed our foreheads and looked at each other.
“Sorry, wow, I’m really sorry about that,” I said.
She had long romantic red hair and peaches-and-cream skin with freckles. I felt a cloud of foreboding when I looked at her one hazel eye and the other green one. I scrutinized her face, wondering what the likelihood was that this could be the same girl, the same buck-toothed free spirit Sullivan had written about.
She laughed and rubbed her forehead again. “You’re sure in a hurry for a person at a folk fest, is there someone you gotta see?” Her laugh was scratchy and sexy.
Was this really her? I hope she’s not an Ani fan too.
Cowboy hat, a mini-skirt. She’s just like I dreamt her to be. Except in my nightmares she was larger than life and I was a Lilliputian.
I must have fainted. Again.
Am I sleeping? It’s warm and I’m tired. Oh, oh . . . what is that? Am I being kissed? Jesus, what’s going on? That feels weird. My nose is itchy . . . I tried to shake my head back into consciousness, my eyes were heavy and I felt a mouth on me again. A dry, unfamiliar mouth, smothering me. It was breathing into me. Then it pulled away.
The next time I opened my eyes just in time to see her mouth coming toward me. She was plugging my nose too. There was a tent of red hair cascading around my face. She tasted like something tart, something . . . iced tea.
I jerked up when I understood finally what was happening. The she-devil was giving me mouth-to-mouth artificial respiration.
“Hey, are you okay? You just fainted. You passed right out. And I didn’t think you were breathing . . . I think we gotta take you to the medi-tent.”
“No, no, I’m fine, I’m sure it’s just the sun, the beer, the dope, the music, you know . . .”
“Well . . . shit. Are you breathing fine?”
“Ya, thanks for that, Alicia,” I said, still confused.
Her eyes opened wide. “That’s not my—”
I took off running, through the crowds, hoping she wouldn’t follow me. I rubbed my mouth with the back of my hand, trying to rub off her bizarre kiss. I felt stung, and slapped. After I was sure I was lost in the crowd again, I stopped for a rest breath and went to hide behind a Moroccan food tent. Gasping. An old man came back to get some more supplies for his kiosk. He looked at me and said, “You shouldn’t take drugs, you know, it’s very bad for young girls.” Then he wagged his finger at me, like an elementary school principal. He grabbed a water bottle from his cooler and gave it to me. I drank it all in one long gulp, grateful once again for the sweetness of strangers.
I shifted my canvas arm bag from one shoulder to the other. I remembered the Ani DiFranco tapes and pulled them out. I sat down in the shade of a tree. I looked at the crowds around me, making sure I was anonymous again, with no demons in sight. I pulled out Ani’s song lyrics. My eyes were bubbling over with tears.
Untouchable Face
tell you the truth I prefer
the worst of you
too bad you had to have a better half
she’s not really my type
but I think you two are forever
and I hate to say it but
you’re perfect together
so fuck you
and your untouchable face
and fuck you
for existing in the first place
and who am I
that I should be vying for your touch
and who am I
I bet you can’t even tell me that much
. . . y’know, I don’t look forward
to seeing you again
you’ll look like a photograph of yourself
taken from far far away
and I won’t know what to do
and I won’t know what to say
except fuck you
The words weren’t 100 per cent relevant, but they were pretty damn close. I remembered her singing them. I badly needed to hear her singing them again. Once we were back in the car, I could play them over and over. I would put the she-devil out of my mind, forever, she was just some hippie girl like thousands of others, a girl just like me. And maybe it wasn’t even her. It didn’t matter anymore anyway, his infidelity. I was a woman who was moving on. I had new music to lead the way.
I found Finn and Isobel sharing a beer. “Holy shit! That was incredible! I mean, wow. She rocked so hard I can’t believe . . . she’s made of fireandwaterandsmoke and passion, hallelujah . . . !!!”
“Calm down, ma bichette,” Isobel said.
“Isn’t she awesome!” Finn agreed.
“Pas mal,” Isobel said.
“Not bad? She’s a revolutionary, a radical. A hero!” I gulped.
“I don’t know . . .” Isobel said.
“What’s not to know? She rocked!” I was ending our conversation right there. I didn’t want to sully my high with irritation. Isobel’s blaséness disturbed me. She had to have been affected. Surely. What was the problem? Finn took his last sip of beer, then stood up.
“Well, see you, girls. Thanks for the ride. Thanks for the laughs. I saw Joe over there, and he said I can camp here for the weekend and go home with him.”
I looked over at Isobel pleadingly. Now that the time had come, I was sad to see Finn go. I felt it in my stomach. He had become part of our unit. He brought us to Ani. But she was unflinching. I hugged him for what felt like a long time. “See you soon, Finn. Thanks for everything.”
“No worries, Annie. I hope Hawksley gets a chance to experience you and fall passionately in love like he should.” He looked at Isobel and she said, “Salut. Arrivederci, Adios, hombre.” She was trying to be breezy but was falling flat. Finn reached out and tucked her hair behind her ear. He nodded at me and walked away.
“Well, I guess we should go to the can and then get back on the highway. We can listen to the Ani tapes! Unless, you feel like sticking around?” I asked, trying to detect any signs of doubt about Finn in her eyes.
“No, let’s go quickly. I don’t want to keep bumping into him after this.”
Back on the gravel parking lot, I took the wheel. Isobel dozed off almost as soon as I started the engine. I was amazed she could be sleepy after that gig made me so high. I put in one of Ani’s tapes with the volume on low. Whenever my mind drifted toward that girl, I steered it back to Ani. I drove away singing along to the little bits I’d picked up and tried to imagine what it would be like to be her. To be a travelling minstrel. Taking the Greyhound bus from city to city. Sleeping in late, staying up late, having adventures, living on the road, having big diner breakfasts, loving and leaving. Writing beautiful poetry in cafés. Wowing crowds across the continent. I wanted that lifestyle so badly it made my mouth go dry.
I replayed the concert in my mind, relishing again the high. All the girls there at the show seemed to be veterans, singing along, knowing all the words. They were part of a world I knew little about. The kind of people I saw at health food stores who read Ms. magazine and boycotted Nike. I had been missing out. It felt like someone had taken my perspective with her bare hands and adjusted it with a major screeching crank so I could see better. It felt big. Isobel was snoring.
At the next gas station, while Isobel snoozed in the car I went to the payphone and collect-called my dad.
“Hi, Pops.”
“Hi, sweetheart, how are you? Where are you, by the way?”
“Isobel and I are on a road trip. Sorry I didn’t let you know before.”
“Where are you headed?”
“To a gig in Montreal.”
“That’s a long way for a gig! Did they give you time off work?”
“No problem, Pops. Listen, did I ever faint as a child?”
“Are you okay, Annie? Have you been passing out?”
“Just a few times lately. No big deal, I just wanted to know if you reme
mber me doing this.”
“Actually, when you were really little, I mean quite small, up to my knees, I’m not sure what age that was, you used to hold your breath until you passed out. It used to scare the hell out of us. It was either a matter of will, being stubborn over something, like Brussels sprouts, or it was a nervous thing, like during scary movies.”
“I totally forgot about that.”
“Well, you were pretty young. Are you okay? You’re not taking drugs, are you?”
“Dad!”
“So when am I going to see you? We could go to the movies, or book hunting—you could come stay for the weekend.”
“Okay, Dad, when I get back from Quebec. See ya.”
“Take care.”
I felt a little melancholy after that call. I loved my parents, I don’t know why I didn’t make the effort more to see them. Since they’d split up, only a few years ago, everything was so strained.
But the holding-breath thing resonated. A memory came back of my older brother making fun, counting down as my four-year-old self puffed out my cheeks, ready to hold my breath for Canada over I don’t know what tantrum. “You’re going blue, no PURPLE! TEN, TWELVE . . .” He missed a number and I opened my mouth to tell him so. He won.
Isobel often commented on my sighs. I forgot to breathe sometimes, so I had to catch up with huge big gasps.
I vowed to breathe better.
“Holy shit!”
“What’s going on?” said Isobel, waking up.
“There’s rocks and hills, trees and bumps and water. It’s not flat. Not flat! Are we dreaming?”
“Incroyable!”
“It’s weird though, isn’t it . . . You can’t see for miles anymore. I kinda miss the horizon.”
Isobel looked at the map. “This must be the Canadian Shield!”
“I’ve heard of that.” We drove on, mouths open, taking it all in. All the variations of landscape we’d been deprived of having grown up as prairie girls. I liked it, despite having the sensation of being under a smaller sky than I was used to, I liked the hills, the valleys, the rock, the views of higgledy-piggledy bogs and lakes. It seemed more alive, more engaged than the big empty.
By nighttime, we’d forgotten all about the flatness that had been with us for days on end and in fact for our whole lives. We were in a whole new province, a big one: Ontario. We found a beautiful campground near Kenora along the shores of the Lakes of the Woods and unpacked the car. It was so great to be near water and trees with the dusty prairies long behind us. Under the Mexican blanket in the backseat was Finn’s guitar. I was amazed he’d left it. Around the campfire later that evening, Isobel admitted that it was kind of sad without him and his floppy eagerness. She said he was like a golden retriever. I went to the car barefoot, crunching on pine needles, sap, and dirt. I got his guitar, thinking it would somehow invoke him. We could prop it up on the picnic bench and pretend he was there. Isobel unzipped it from its case. It had a big black mark on its blond wood.
It was a scribble. To Annie—Hey Nice Name! kisses, Ani DiFranco. Finn had gotten his guitar signed to give to me. I was beyond touched. It was undoubtedly the biggest gift I had ever received. My own guitar! It had never occurred to me that it was something I could have.
I’m not sure how Isobel felt though.
She just sort of looked at it and looked at me. I couldn’t read her face in the dark with the slim light from the crescent moon above and the fire crackling on its last red embers.
side a, track 6
“You are a china shop and I am a bull
You are good food and I am full”
“You Had Time,” Ani DiFranco
Day 4
2,360 km behind us
Kenora, Ontario, to as far as we could get
Rosimund was starting to feel like an old beast at twenty-five years of age with thousands more kilometres of asphalt behind her. Bangers were like the senior citizens of the highway; you had to respect them and revere them for their mileage. Each day when I climbed on board I said a small prayer to St. Christopher, the patron saint of road trips and rustbuckets. Tom Waits had that funky song that went: “Hang on, St. Christopher,” something something something, that had been growling in my head for several klicks.
Throughout the morning I couldn’t help periodically checking the rear-view mirror. I was half expecting to see Finn again, this time maybe lying on the highway, weeping, after being dumped by Isobel yet again. Getting dumped by the same person in multiple provinces gave Finn a tragic trans Canadian epic character. The car felt massive without him in it, though. He and his voice had commanded a lot of room.
“Do you think he’ll be okay?” I asked.
“Who . . . Finn? Of course he’ll be fine, he’s a grown-up! Besides, if he can follow me to Manitoba uninvited, he can de-invite himself back home.”
“That’s pretty harsh.”
“Tough love, baby, tough love. Guys are born heartbreakers. If I hadn’t busted him up a little, he might never understand the value of a girl’s heart. C’est pas evident, mais I’m clearly doing the female race a favour.”
“That’s a bit arrogant, don’t ya think? Besides, don’t kid yourself, Finn isn’t like the others. He didn’t need your guerrilla training.”
“Musicians, especially, need to be tamed,” Isobel argued.
“He’s not really a musician and you know it. He’s only learning. You just don’t date anyone you like too much, that way you’re in control. And that’s cheating, you’re never in danger . . .”
“The stupide thing is, Annie, guys actually like being treated this way. I’d cut him loose already, and he was back for more. It’s bizarre but simple: girls like jerks and guys like bitches. Or if you prefer, some of us are cats, some of us are dogs. I’m a cat.” She lit a cigarette and reclined her seat. “You like him, Annie, because he’s a male version of you in some ways. That’s why I like him too.” She took another drag and exhaled vigorously. She often punctuated her dialogue with cigarettes—sending smoke signals to end conversations.
We drove across northern Ontario heading toward Thunder Bay in silence, listening to tunes and watching the lines get swallowed up by the car. Isobel seemed to want to stop at every single gas station can. It seemed she’d developed a toilet obsession. Meanwhile, I was focusing on the music to stay sane. I calculated that most albums would take us just over one hundred kilometres. We had played REM for three hundred kilometres. Going though their backlist. Crooning to “Everybody Hurts.” Thrilled with “Losing My Religion.” Loving “Ain’t Got No Cigarettes” except feeling a little schmuckish because I did have cigarettes and was puffing away again.
There was no keeping track of the amount of dead bugs on the windscreen, but we kept count of the roadkill on the tarmac. So far, we had counted sixteen gophers, thirteen unidentifiable smashed and bloodied feather piles, obviously former birds, a few domestic cats, and lots of rubber.
As we drove past bloody gopher number seventeen, I wondered if it was possible that a girl could have experienced one night that could just skewer her off into mankillerdom. A bad enough night. A bad enough man. That was too simplistic, it couldn’t actually have been just that night or just that man that made Isobel the way she was with men now. Her own father had been no beacon of male evolution; he had left her mother for his two mistresses, ending up in therapy for being a pigamist (one of Isobel’s word fusions), and apparently even his therapist fell for him. Too much disappointment in the male species had given Isobel the armour that I coveted. I was a turtle without a shell, while Isobel acted like she was all shell.
I chose to blame Hubert. Hubert was her Sullivan. For both of us there was a discernible before and after. It was definitely AH (After Hubert) when her heartbreaking career started: Jimmy, Johnny, Bill, Donald, Justin, Sebastian, two Davids, three Daves, etc., like bloody gophers strewn across her past.
Five songs and two cigarettes later, I could see her in my peripheral vision deli
berately jutting out her lower lip so that smoke came streaming out perfectly positioned right under her nostrils. She was trying to learn how to French inhale like we saw someone do in a pop video the other day. I was nostalgic for all things smoky. We had first started fooling around with smoking at fifteen with our headbanger friend Florence. Florence and her unicornesque feathered hairdo. She tried to teach us how to blow smoke rings in the air while we skipped math class.
By dusk time Rosimund was struggling. Something felt kind of off. Nonsensically I focused on the axle. Oh God, not the axle, I thought, not that. Not that I had any real understanding of what an axle might do. Isobel was snoozing obliviously until the bumps woke her up. She had become more despondent as the day wore on and unusually quiet. The more we drove, the worse the car noise got. It started to feel like we were the Flintstones, in a dinosaurmobile, as each spin of the wheel wahlumped. It was mysterious and sinister. I missed Finn.
Eventually it dawned on me with forehead-slapping-reality: we had a flat tire!
I knew I didn’t know how to change a tire and Isobel definitely didn’t get that in her Hubert training package. I pulled over to the shoulder. I had learned from wrecking Sullivan’s bicycle that you can seriously damage a vehicle by driving it with a flat tire. I could hear him saying, “Jesus Christ, what is it with you and flat tires, already?” Shaking his head but still smiling.
The inside car light had probably died sometime in the 1970s, and we had no flashlight. Luckily Isobel had her ’50s vintage bronze Zippo lighter. We looked at the map. There was a place called Wawa about three klicks away. Wawa. What kind of name was that? We stood beside the car with our thumbs out ready to hitch a ride on that quiet stretch of highway. My mother’s voice rang through my mind with her various mantras for me: “Stay away from the bushes, strange men hang out in them. Never hitchhike, only murderers pick up hitchhikers. Druggies hitchhike too. There’s more to life than the mattress. Men don’t buy cows when they get the milk for free . . .” The aphorisms of my youth have stayed with me all these years, but nothing about flat tires had stuck.
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