I escorted them out to the parking lot. A fine dusting of snow had settled on Helen’s car, and I helped her brush it off. The cold made me feel like a snotty-faced boy on a toboggan run. Mowat quietly handed me a Kleenex so I wouldn’t have to wipe my nose with the back of my hand in front of Helen.
“Thanks,” I whispered.
Helen was leaning across the hood, scraping away a stubborn patch of ice on the windshield with one leg extended like a ballerina. She left a wispy imprint where her breasts had gently brushed against the powdery snow.
Mowat noticed my spellbound gaze. “Don’t get your hopes up,” he said under his breath. It was offered to me as sage advice. He gave me a fatherly pat on the shoulder. “I’ve seen many unfortunate souls brave these waters before you.”
My cheeks flushed despite the cold. I felt strangely betrayed. I’d almost begun to see myself as Mowat’s comrade, a confidant, a fellow member of Helen’s inner circle. But as they drove out of the ice-rutted parking lot and I waved goodbye, having lost my nerve to ask Helen out, I sensed I’d been put back in my place, no matter how kindly.
Chapter 5
“You should really let me drive,” Marla says.
The sun is a pale silvery smudge just above the horizon ahead of us. Everything outside is shades of grey—the other cars encrusted with road salt, the heavy sky. The windshield wipers pound furiously in a vain attempt to clear the thick spray thrown up by the unending parade of trucks churning along in the slow lane. I crane my neck, straining to make out the lane markers ahead, tugging on the steering wheel when the shadow of the concrete median suddenly presses in on my left side from out of the dirty mist. I estimate that we’re almost to Woodstock, about a half hour out of London on a good day, but I have no way of knowing for sure. All the normal landmarks are indiscernible, the road signs caked with snow.
“There’s a service centre somewhere around here,” she says. “We could switch there.”
We close in on the tail lights of another car in the fast lane. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice Marla’s foot instinctively pressing down on an imaginary passenger-side brake. I slide into the middle lane, in front of a flatbed truck that’s carrying stacks of automobile chassis, and pass the car on the right.
“Is my driving making you nervous, by any chance?” I ask.
“Now that you mention it . . .” she says.
“Traffic in Toronto’s going to be a mess,” I say. “I want to make up time while I can.”
Through a momentary parting in the mist, we see a minivan in the ditch alongside the westbound lanes. Its shell is battered and scratched, the windshield spider-cracked, telling me it went for a roll before landing back on its wheels. At least an hour’s worth of snow has settled on the wreckage. The driver’s door yawns open. There’s no one inside. Passing cars crawl by like mourners viewing the casket at a funeral home.
Marla stares at me once the accident’s behind us. I sigh and ease my foot off the accelerator.
“All right,” I say. “I’ll slow down.”
“There’s an exit sign coming up,” she says.
“I’m fine,” I insist.
“Well, I need to pee.”
I silently curse women and their microscopic bladders. In contrast, I pretend to be a camel, drinking only the occasional cup of coffee and fossilizing my kidneys in the process.
I pull off at the next service centre behind an empty garbage truck. Snagged remnants of grocery bags, junk mail, and diaper liners wave at us through the truck’s thick wire mesh. The driver’s probably dumped his load in a Michigan landfill and is headed back to Toronto for a refill. He pulls onto the exit ramp’s shoulder and rumbles to a halt behind a long line of rigs. He’s not the only trucker who’s pulled off the highway because of the weather. Fortunately, the parking lot reserved for cars is only half full.
The floor mats inside the entrance to the service centre are so thick with slush that the doors won’t close properly. Marla makes a beeline for the washroom while I line up at the Tim Hortons counter behind a heavy-set trucker in a Detroit Tigers ball cap and an insulated vest. He smells of stale cigarettes and wet woollen socks. When it’s finally my turn to step up to the counter, I order a couple of large coffees, along with a box of assorted Tim-bits. By this time Marla’s done her business, and she waves to me from a table she’s laid claim to.
I give her one of the coffees. “I thought we’d drink these on the road,” I say.
She stays rooted to her seat and holds out her hand, palm up. “The keys,” she says.
“I’ve got my caffeine,” I say. “I’m fine.”
Her hand remains extended.
“I’ll drive slower,” I tell her. “All right?”
She snorts. “Did you even sleep last night?”
“Did you?”
A man with stubby fingers and paint-spattered coveralls eyes us with sullen curiosity from the next table. His hair is speckled with plaster dust. The shadow of his beard looks permanent, as if he started shaving when he was five. He probably thinks Marla and I are a married couple having a fight. I’m tempted to tell him to mind his own business.
“The snow’s getting heavier,” she says.
“I’ve driven in worse,” I reply.
She pulls an orange out of her knapsack and starts peeling it. “Sit down,” she says, no longer bothering to conceal how thin I’ve worn her patience.
I plunk myself in the chair across from her in exasperation. “Does Avery do this kind of thing often?”
She keeps peeling, ignoring my question.
“I’m only asking because you seem awfully calm about the whole thing,” I say. “Like you’re an old hand at this.”
“Have an orange slice,” she says.
“Tell me about him,” I say. “We’ve never actually met, he and I. Unless you count last week, when he was sitting in the back of a police cruiser.”
She sets the orange down and scorches me with a dirty look.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “Am I being a little too inquisitive? How impolite of me. Must be because he’s run off with my daughter.”
She slowly wipes her fingers with a paper napkin. I can see her jaw muscles twitching. “I’m as concerned about them as you are,” she says.
“That’s good to hear,” I tell her, getting back to my feet. “Because I’m heading back out to the car.”
As I stand, the blood drains from my head, causing the room to tilt and the babbling voices around me to suck into the distance. Marla’s face slips out of focus. I feel submerged, as if I’m staring up at her from the bottom of a pool of water.
“Are you okay?” I hear her ask from a million miles away, her voice both annoyed and concerned.
I turn towards the exit, trying to mask my disorientation, spilling part of my coffee on the floor in the process. My internal compass is still spinning as I stagger through the doors into the teeth of an Arctic wind. I don’t look back to see whether Marla is following me.
The snow covering the parking lot is the consistency of brown sugar blended with butter. My shoes can’t get a firm hold. I wade into the morass, searching for the familiar outline of my car under the new layer of snow, unable to remember where I parked it. I trip over a curb obscured by the drifts and topple into the path of an SUV that’s