THE BUS DEPOSITS US right in front of the Sunnyside trailer park and we pad barefoot across the hot asphalt into the cool shade of the willows that line the road. Carin has a lot near the channel, close enough that the ducks wander over for bread crusts and if you look hard you can get a glimpse of the water sparkling between the trees. “Want a tour?” Carin says, hopping up the little steps to the trailer.
“I’ve been in there before.” I drop into one of her lawn chairs.
“I’ve upgraded,” Carin says, disappearing inside.
“Where’s Mom’s truck?” The hitch trailer is noticeably missing our Mom’s white Dodge. We made the long drive to the coast every summer in that truck to go to the PNE fair. Weeks before we left, it was all I could talk about — the rides I was going to go on, the carnival games I was going to win. As we followed the highway through the mountains, I would get lighter and lighter until I was bouncing around the cab.
“I sold it,” Carin says, from a little window above my head. She was always stunned by the entire trip to Vancouver. She played along, but I don’t think she ever liked going to the city. I had to drag her onto all the rides at the fair. She missed the ducks. She missed the lake.
“Never used the truck anyway,” Carin says, coming back down the little trailer stairs with two bottles of beer.
“I would’ve bought it from you.”
“What do you need a truck for in the city?”
“That’s not the point.” All the coolness from the channel ride has left my body and I feel overheated and annoyed.
“Would’ve been a bitch to park downtown,” Carin says, taking a drink from her beer.
“Doesn’t it seem pointless to have a hitch you can’t actually hitch to anything?”
“Where would I go, anyway?”
“I don’t feel like beer,” I say, heading into the trailer to find something else to drink. The living area with the kitchen and fold-down dining table are the same, except for the new flatscreen in the corner. There are clothes scattered across the black leather couch and breakfast dishes on the table. I open the fridge — it’s mostly empty and smells of sour milk. To get to the bed, Carin has to climb past the breakfast benches. There’s a little tan-coloured curtain for privacy.
“I would’ve cleaned up if I knew you were coming,” Carin says when I come back down the steps with a glass of water.
“You don’t have a phone,” I sigh.
Two ducks waddle onto the lot expectantly. I reach out to the one closest and it snaps at my finger.
“Yeah, he’s a nasty one,” Carin says. She goes back into the trailer and comes out with a bag of bread, pulling out a slice and throwing the entire thing at the duck’s head. He snatches it and drags it behind a tree, flapping at the other ducks approaching him. “Don’t take it personally.”
“Do you have power?” I ask, pulling my phone and charger from my bag.
“Of course. Didn’t you see my TV?”
“So you can afford cable, but no phone.” I unload a tent from the back of the car and begin arranging the poles by size on the gravel.
“The phone is more of a lifestyle choice.”
“Hm.”
“You want some help with that?” I take one look at Carin lounging in her chair with the half-finished beer and know she’ll get in the way more than she’ll help. “You can sleep in the bed with me if you want,” she says.
“No, that’s okay.”
“I can make room inside. It’ll get hot out here in the morning. Sun beats down.” Carin grins and watches me struggle with the tent poles.
“I’d rather sleep outside,” I say pointedly.
“I’ll leave the door unlocked so you can use the washroom.”
After staring at the inside of the refrigerator, Carin orders pizza for dinner. We eat at her dinette, the pizza box covering the entire table. Later I sit in one of the lawn chairs outside. Carin’s watching TV inside and it’s quiet, but for the occasional bug frying in the massive zapper she has hung from a tree beside the trailer. The contraption looks large enough to kill a small bird. A moth flutters around its fluorescent green light and gets nuked by an electrical current that lights up the patio. I stare for a while at the phone cradled in my lap and then call Anton. His voice is tired. “Were you sleeping? I guess it’s kind of late.” I say, checking my watch.
“I just finished my shift. How’s your sister?”
“Fine, same old.”
“She recovered quickly from her flu.” Something in his voice tells me he knows I lied.
“I guess. Her place is a mess,” I say. “She sold Mom’s truck. I wish she’d get her life together.”
“People do things at their own pace.”
“She’s twenty-eight, Anton. She’s going to be a waitress for life.” Another electric current lights up the patio.
“Maybe she likes waitressing.”
“Come on.” I slump back in the lawn chair and look out at the sky. I suddenly miss the feeling of Anton’s arms draped over me. “Why am I here?”
“Beats me. You probably needed to know she’s okay.”
“Who actually likes waitressing?”
“Maybe Carin does.”
IN THE MORNING I wake up disoriented, the air in the tent solid with heat. Sometime during the night I got turned around and I claw at the vinyl sides, kneeling on my glasses in the process as I blindly try to find the opening. The zipper comes into focus. With what feels like a gasp from both myself and the tent, I tumble out onto the gravel. Carin stands a few feet away with the ducks, a steaming cup of coffee in her hand. “I was wondering when you’d wake up.”
“What time is it?”
“Almost eleven.”
“What?” Across the street I can hear people unloading from the channel bus. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”
“You were snoring.”
“So?”
“So, you sounded tired.”
I climb into the trailer, looking for something to drink, and end up with my head under the kitchen tap. “I think I’ll sleep inside tonight,” I call out the window.
The rest of the morning I lounge in the shade of the trailer, reading magazines and clipping my toenails. I look for nail polish in Carin’s bathroom, but can only find an old tube of mashed lipstick and tanning oil. There’s still no food in the fridge (I ate stale Ritz crackers for breakfast) and Carin’s back in her bikini, sunbathing on a lounger, a huge glass of lemonade sweating in her hand.
“I’m going for a run,” I say, lacing up my sneakers.
“You’re on holiday,” she says, swatting the air. “Relax.”
“That is what I do to relax.” I stand to stretch my legs, leaning up against the trailer to flex my calf muscles. “I run every day.”
“Where?”
“What do you mean, where? Around.” I pull my arms across my chest. “Don’t you have work today?”
“No.” She licks at some condensation running down the side of her glass. “It’s a part-time gig, for right now.”
“What else do you do?”
“I relax.”
“You’re good at that,” I say, jogging on the spot.