Читать книгу After Helen - Paul Cavanagh - Страница 7

“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 searching for a parking spot.

Marla’s bony fingers grab me by the bicep. She yanks me back to my feet while staring down the driver of the SUV. “The car’s the other way,” she says.

My cup of coffee is now a warm brown splat in the snow. My ears are stinging from the wind. Snow is melting inside my shoes. “They should spread salt in this parking lot,” I mutter.

I let her lead me to the car like I’m a wayward child. I start to shiver uncontrollably. She wrests the car keys from my hand and helps me in the passenger side.

“Here,” she says, taking off her scarf and wrapping it around my neck. It’s one of those long crocheted jobs with tassels on the ends. I feel like I’m in drag.

“It doesn’t go with my outfit,” I say. Its warmth feels good against my cheek.

She starts the engine and runs the heater full blast. My shuddering subsides to an occasional spasm. Marla adjusts the seat and rear-view mirror so she can drive.

“You know,” I say, “this could be construed as a carjacking.”

“If it were a carjacking, I’d have left you in a snowbank.” She gets out and grabs the brush and ice scraper from the back seat, casting a warning glance my way as she does. “Don’t get any ideas about slipping behind the driver’s seat while I’m out there.”

She slams the door shut and begins cleaning snow off the windshield. I lean back and close my eyes—only for a minute, I tell myself. The sound of chipping ice blends into a gauzy background of white noise. As sleep rushes in to ambush me, the book-jacket picture of Jack Livingston comes alive in my head. I see him sitting with Helen at our old dining-room table, pleasantly pissed, seducing her right in front of me with tales of his randy adventures in Europe. And then I look again and realize that it’s not Helen he’s talking to but Severn.