The wind picked up at the top of the path where the reservoir stretched out into one great plain. Lorna shivered under the worn grey fabric of her coat, thinking she ought to be keeping warmer than this, should have looked around for her ski jacket. She inhaled deeply, trying to focus instead on the sharp clean air. The moon was almost full, just a little nick off its chin. A mother was coming her way, dragging a small crying child on a wagon. Lorna smiled at the woman’s squished red face. Fine that the woman didn’t smile back. Just because Lorna was sick didn’t mean everyone else had to drop everything and appreciate life. This concern weighed on her with the kids, especially. Cara acted prickly and sullen these days, but Lorna didn’t mind so much for her own sake. The bad part, for Lorna, was knowing that Cara might look back and hate herself for it one day. If Cara wanted to be rude to her mother, like any teenager, Lorna wanted her to have that. And then, of course, there was Jed.
But the kids were second on her list. The pressing issue now was to make arrangements with Alex about the surgery. In nine days, Dr. Kim would remove Lorna’s reproductive organs: ovaries, uterus, tubes, and whatever else was in there. All of it would be excised, his word, in an effort to “nab it all.” Lorna thought Alex could come down for a couple of days while she was in hospital. It didn’t seem like too much to ask, though this news about an audition showed her how little she knew about Alex’s time. Last they’d spoken he was happily working as the manager of an outdoor store. He and Shari lived in a new subdivision with her two daughters.
Lorna stopped at the hockey rink and leaned against a lamppost, wiggling her frozen toes and catching her breath. She bent to fix a pant leg that had become stuck in the back of her boot and felt her dinner rise and burn her throat. Was that a symptom? She shouldn’t have eaten the potpie so quickly, but it was just what happened now. Cara ate mechanically, moved rapidly away from Lorna to the next thing, even if the next thing was homework. The question of what to make for dinner was on Lorna’s mind by eight a.m. every day, but she had long stopped thinking of eating alone with Cara as an event.
In front of the rink, a scatter of parents stood with their hands around Styrofoam cups and thermoses, watching a game between a red team and a grey team. Lorna imagined for a minute that Jed was one of the boys on the ice. She chose number eleven in grey: a tall, tentative player like her son had been. In the darkest days of single parenting, Lorna felt like she was doing something right when she took Jed to hockey practice. Even the smell of the car — humid skate liners and clothes damp with sprayed ice — gave her a twinge of pride. Boys in this climate were meant to play hockey, and she could do at least that for her son.
“Which one is yours?”
Lorna turned to the grinning middle-aged man behind her. He had a broad, handsome face, like a Kennedy.
“Oh. My son used to play. He’s in university now.” Lorna jammed her hands deep into the pockets of her coat and swung her arms forward to show she was a person on the move, not some weirdo who stood around in parks on Friday nights in January. “I’m just passing by.”
The man shook his head almost violently, like a dog drying off from a swim. “You have a son in university!”
As a matter of fact, Lorna didn’t have a son in university. She had a son who should be in university, but he had dropped out in his second week. He left her a voicemail with the news once he’d made it over the border. He said he was sorry, but not that sorry, because he had to do this thing now or he never would. This thing he planned to do, instead of university, was ride his bike the whole damn way to California. Why California? She had no idea. Maybe because Alex had gone there at his age. Maybe because it was the furthest he could get away from his mother with a bicycle.
The man pointed to a cluster of boys tussling at the north net. “Christopher,” he said. “Number seven.”
Lorna peered at the rink as the puck broke away across the ice. Number seven hammered hard toward it. “He’s fast.”
“What position did your son play?”
“Goalie.” That had been true for about a month. She couldn’t remember the names of the other positions. He quit after eighth grade.
“A man after my own heart. That was my position.”
They both stood quietly for a moment. She watched the game but could feel the man watching her. Women her age complained about their invisibility, but at thirty-nine, Lorna was beginning to feel that she stood out in a new way: she looked good for her age. She’d lost fifteen pounds in the last year and could easily pass for thirty-two. She was a real adult woman, and men like this didn’t feel ashamed to ask her out. Still, she rarely went on dates. After what happened with Ian, she didn’t trust herself not to get tangled up in the wrong kind of relationships. The few times she’d been set up on dates, it had been the wrong kind of men — men who talked too long about car engines or their mother’s scalloped potatoes — and then she’d still be too gentle with them, continue seeing them for five or six weeks. She had sex out of compassion or politeness: because dinner had been so expensive, because it was raining out and the roads could be slippery. It was a character flaw, a lack of heart or nerve. There were plenty of men she found attractive out there, but the attractive ones made her unsure of herself. Too eager to please, too nervous to make eye contact or smile with her teeth. Too on edge. She didn’t like the person she became.
“Are you off somewhere fun?”
Lorna looked back at the man. Was this a reasonable thing to ask? She scanned the parents around her, but no one was watching them or offering her warning looks. Perhaps he was just friendly.
The man seemed to sense her discomfort and made a dismissive gesture. “Ignore me. I’m being nosy.”
“No, that’s fine,” Lorna said quickly, immediately feeling guilty for the hesitation. Couldn’t anyone just be friendly anymore? Or maybe kindness was the very thing that got her into trouble.
“I was only thinking, wow, kid in university, it’s like getting your life back.” He grinned all the way to his molars.
“I’m just meeting a girlfriend at Ballantyne’s Bar. Do you know it?” Perhaps now she was overcompensating.
“That’s not so close.”
“I like to walk.”
“It shows!”
Lorna felt herself blush.
The man stuck out his hand. “Bruce Lawson.”
“Lorna.”
Out on the ice, the ref blew his whistle. The boys stopped and number seven yanked off his helmet. He looked about fourteen. Bruce leaned forward. “Shit. Who won?”
“I think you did.”
“Doubt it.” He gave his son a two-finger salute then turned back to Lorna. “Do you want a lift? I could give you a lift, if you want.”
“Oh, no.” Lorna shook her head. “I wouldn’t want to put you out. Thank you, though.”
“It’s no trouble. And it’s cold. You’re not even wearing a hat.”
Lorna touched her hair. It was like touching a wet spider web. Her mascara was probably ruined, too.
“We’ll just be five, ten minutes,” Bruce said. “It’s up to you.” There was gentleness in his manner, warmth in the way he motioned toward her with open palms.
The boys on the ice were filing into two lines to shake hands. Good game, good game, good game.
Lorna sat in the front seat of Bruce’s Lexus while Christopher flipped through a magazine in the back. Jazz music, the kind that played in the lobbies of fancy hotels, came through the speakers. Bruce had taken off his hat, revealing coarse, curly hair. His fingers wrapped around the steering wheel were rugged but well groomed. If a younger version of herself were watching a movie of her future, this scene — and the assumptions underpinning it — would certainly be pleasing.
“I haven’t been to Ballantyne’s in years,” Bruce said. “Kind of a student’s place, isn’t it?”
Was it? Lorna hadn’t been in years, either. But as a student, she remembered feeling out of place among serious artists and journalists. She shrugged in
a friendly way. “A drink anywhere will be nice. It’s been a tough week.” Lorna had no idea why she said that. She had no interest in discussing her week.
“I’m sorry,” Bruce said.
“I think it was just hard to watch my son go back to school,” Lorna said quickly. “You know, after the holidays?”
Snow was spiralling onto the windshield and sticking to the road. Bruce squinted as he drove, and she could see the fine chevron creases at the corners of his eyes.
“What’s he studying?”
“Film.”
“Sounds like a lot of fun.”
Lorna imagined she was part of Bruce’s family, part of this calm, gliding car. She imagined their house: one of those narrow Victorians with large, textured paintings on the walls and big shadows from the poplar trees lining the street. She pictured a living room with high ceilings and stained glass windows, a cat on a Persian carpet next to her mother’s piano. Thinking about Bruce’s house made the world seem like a marvellous place.
The CD skipped. Bruce pushed a button to spit it out. “Anything you want to listen to?”
“Whatever’s fine.” Lorna smiled, but not right at him. Questions of music made her self-conscious. It’s not that she didn’t like music, but she had trouble cataloguing what she liked in a way that was easy to repeat to someone else. She was always either too broad or too specific. It was a question you ought to practise, like rehearsing your smile in the mirror. Looking out at the road, Lorna found herself contemplating the possibility that she could die not knowing exactly what kind of music she liked.
As they drove, Lorna watched the buildings slip by out the window. Soon they would pass Goodyear Billiards. After their five-minute dinner tonight, Cara had taken off for “Goody’s” again, giving Lorna her usual short-tempered answers about what went on there. Lorna had seen grown men go in and out of the place. She didn’t like it, but if other parents weren’t saying no, how could she? Lorna squinted as they passed but couldn’t see beyond the amber light of Goody’s second-storey windows. She thought of Cara inside in the blue smoke, hunched in her backpack, waiting, waiting her turn to be found cute or interesting by some boy, waiting for a signal that life was really starting. She should tell her daughter it didn’t work that way. You were always waiting for life to start, even after you had a boyfriend, after you were married, after you had a good job and a house — perhaps especially then. And next thing you knew, you were thirty-nine, your abdomen swelled like a four-month pregnancy, the first sign that life doesn’t just start, it ends. And still you could find yourself in a stranger’s car, wondering how long it would be until you were as much of an adult as he was. But what should Cara do instead? What was Lorna’s great wisdom? Maybe Jed had the right idea, just checking out.
“I don’t have a lot of new stuff.” Bruce clicked open a middle console with a row of CDs. “I used to follow the trends, but . . . ”
Christopher snorted in the back seat. “Yeah, Dad. Like when Meatloaf came out with Bat Out of Hell.”
Bruce gave Lorna a sideways smile. “As a matter of fact, Christopher, I happen to know Meatloaf has a new album.”
“Sure, we’ll pretend that album’s new. Brand new.” But the boy’s tone was friendly. Lorna could tell he liked his father. She wondered about Christopher’s mom. Was she dead? Out of the picture? Or was this simply Bruce’s night?
At the red light, Lorna noticed Bruce looking at her again. “You get out to concerts much?” he asked.
“Me? Almost never.”
“It’s terrible. No time, is there?”
Lorna nodded. But it wasn’t true; there was plenty of time. Time was infinite. People — she and Bruce — weren’t.
“You like this one?” Bruce was passing her Van Morrison’s Greatest Hits.
“Of course.” Was she supposed to put it in? She opened the case and the CD flew down to her feet. “Shoot, I’m sorry.”
Bruce shook his head. “It’s been through worse.”
Lorna bent down to retrieve the disc from the slush around her boots, wiping it on her thigh.
“Uhm, you just passed VideoLab,” Christopher said.
“We’ll go after we’ve dropped off our guest.” Lorna saw Bruce look at Christopher in the rear-view before turning back to her. “Got any movies to recommend, Lorna?”
Lorna disliked this question almost as much as the one about music. “My daughter and I liked Jurassic Park,” she said, figuring it was best not to seem completely without opinions.
“Seen it,” Christopher said. “It’s pretty good.”
“You have a daughter, too?” Bruce asked.
“Yes, sixteen.”
“What does she like to do?”
Lorna sighed and raised her shoulders. “I don’t know. Blend in.”
Bruce looked at Lorna and smiled as if this were a joke. But it wasn’t a joke. Cara appeared to have resolved, some time ago, that the safest way to get by in high school was to disappear into a tide of girls, second-hand jeans, Body Shop perfume, and cigarette smoke. She wanted desperately to be normal, to fit in. Lorna wondered if this was somehow her fault, if a broken home had left Cara more needy for a group. But even as a very little child, Cara had desperately needed peer acceptance. Lorna remembered the time Cara came home in first grade after trading away all of the stickers in her album — all her precious scratch-and-sniffs and even the glittery, full-page unicorn that Lorna had given her for her birthday. Cara cried when Lorna found out they were gone, said she didn’t know why she traded them all for nothing. But Lorna knew. Cara didn’t want to have things that made her stand out. She wanted to be the same as everyone else, wanted people to like her.
Did she know that her mother liked her? Did she care?
But it was good for Cara to have so many people around. If Lorna didn’t make it much longer, at least Cara would have a crowd to fall into. It wasn’t so long ago that Cara spent too much time alone. She remembered how it troubled and even annoyed her that Cara seemed to lack social skill, that she preferred to spend her spare time beating a tennis ball against the wall. But now, she pictured Cara earlier that evening, getting ready to meet her friends, carefully applying her grape Chapstick in the hall mirror: taller than Lorna, but still drowning in her trendy corduroy overalls. She’d forgotten her hat and gloves on the way out the door. It was always so urgent to get back to the friends she’d spent all day with, all week with. Lorna never thought she would long for her lonely, tennis ball–beating girl. Why hadn’t she spent more time with her daughter when she’d had the chance?
Lorna turned the CD over and slid it in. She did her best to smile at Bruce. She tried to think of something interesting to say, something she’d read about in a magazine or heard on the radio.
“Can we get Eddie Murphy?” Christopher asked.
Bruce turned slightly. “Again?”
Lorna felt an odd twinge of longing for a time she’d never really lived. At fourteen, Jed wouldn’t have been caught dead renting a movie with her on a Friday night, much less the same movie twice. But what, in life, could possibly be more wonderful? She breathed in the damp, wintry smell of the car the way a resort vacationer inhales a sea breeze. She looked back at Christopher. “Your skates smell good.”
Christopher crinkled his forehead. “My skates?”
Bruce coughed. Did they think she was crazy? Lorna felt her face flush; she was glad for the dark car.
“You ever skate yourself, Lorna?” Bruce asked.
Although the truth was that she’d never been much of a skater, there was one memory that burned bright: Elaine Harbell’s skating party in seventh grade. Lorna and Elaine’s lockers were next to each other, but the party invitation was a total shock because Elaine was far more popular than Lorna. Talking to Elaine often made Lorna feel nervous. When Lorna turned up at the rink on the Friday night, she was instantly concerned that Elaine would not remember inviting her, but Elaine waved her over. The boys at the rink chased after the gi
rls and tried to kiss them. The girls all screamed “polio” when a boy got too close. That was back when polio was the only disease you worried about getting. Though Lorna hadn’t been kissed that night, she could still see herself skating hard on the ice, spinning fast and shrieking with the prettiest girls in seventh grade. At school the next week, Lorna had been shy around Elaine again, and a few months later Elaine moved away, so they never really became friends. It was interesting, Lorna thought now, how the memories that stuck out most were the times you got to feel cooler, bolder, more liked than you imagined yourself.
“Sure, I skated as a kid. But I’m more of a swimmer,” Lorna said.
“Competitive?”
“Yes.” Lorna hadn’t competed seriously in years, but it would feel good to show this man how fast she could swim.
“Huh.” He grinned her way and Lorna relaxed, sensing his appreciation.
They were approaching Ballantyne’s now. Lorna could see its vertical sign; Bruce was already slowing the car. She wanted to keep going, keep breathing this warm pocket of Bruce’s life a little longer.
Bruce pulled up. “Well. Here we are.”
The bar did look a little studentish with Christmas lights hanging loosely around the window frames. “Look Alive ’95!” was frost-sprayed across the biggest pane of glass.
“That was fast.”
Bruce pulled his wallet from his inner coat pocket and handed Lorna a card from inside. “I agree.”
Lorna took the card; Bruce’s hand brushed against hers. She kept her seatbelt on.
Bruce swallowed, glanced at the back seat, and gave Lorna an apologetic smile. “Listen, I don’t know what your situation is,” he said. “But I enjoyed meeting you.” His cheeks had the slightest dimples. She had an urge to touch the dented, bristly skin.
“Me, too.” Lorna wanted to say more, but she was afraid that anything she’d say might be too intense. She turned around. “Bye, Christopher.”
Christopher looked up from his magazine. “Nice to meet you.” Lorna was surprised, touched. Teenaged boys weren’t usually that polite.
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