“You took the keys with you.” She calls over Sophie’s hoarse shrieking as I get into the front seat. I check my shorts and find them in one of the back pockets. It was autopilot: turning off the car, pocketing the keys as if I was alone. “Shit,” I say, turning the ignition and cranking the air-conditioner. The seatbelt is burning hot. I can tell Angie has been crying. “Sorry, Ange. My head’s not on straight.”
“It’s just Sophie.” Angie fusses over the child, adjusting her clothing, smoothing the sweaty wisps of her hair. “I don’t care about me.”
“I’m not right today,” I say, turning the dial higher, the frigid air making the sweat run cold along my hairline.
For a while, neither of us says anything. Angie’s crying again in the back seat, but not for attention. As soon as a tear hits her cheek she wipes it away quickly with the back of her hand and looks out the window, jutting out her chin. I keep checking in the rearview mirror and the tears keep coming. The tail lights and car engines are a false hope — we haven’t moved a foot. I sit like all the others in their cars, waiting blankly, staring straight ahead.
“We’re not going to make it there before dark,” Angie says.
Up ahead the tail lights glow again, a red wave of light coming down the rows. I put the car in drive. “Are you moving up?”
“I’ll stay back here.” Her head is back on the seat, her pink cheeks turned pale, the colouring of someone who has slept through a year. “I’m stroking her hair.”
We wait another half hour before we are led down the mountain. Our car is near the back of a convoy of fifteen travelling along the highway, ushered by mountain patrol. The forest is charred, burned out like a war zone. Higher up and even through the thick smoke, I can see the bursts of bright flames climbing to crest the mountain peaks.
“Who was it who called this morning?” Angie says, as we round the corner and begin our descent. Her voice is fragile, nearly transparent. She’s distracted by something out the window, the twisted remains of a forest.
“Oh, my supervisor. I’m in the clear.” There’s no reason for the lie. I fiddle with the air again. It’s too cold now.
“That’s a relief.”
Sophie’s calmed with Angie’s fingers through her hair and I’m not hearing much of anything all of sudden, following the route down the side of the mountain, wheels rolling along the smooth pavement. Something switches over in my brain and everything goes quiet. Angie’s stopped crying. All I have to do is follow the line and I’ll find my way out.
THE MOTEL PARKING LOT borders the beach and when we pull into a spot the headlights stretch right across the sand into the water and the reflected neon of the vacancy sign.
“What are you doing?” Angie says, turning to look at me.
“I’m too tired.”
“Why don’t I drive for a while? You can sleep on the way.”
“I want to stay here tonight.”
We unload, leaving Sophie in her seat to dream, making sure one of us is always on our way to or from the car so she’s never alone. Angie sets out Sophie’s pajamas on the floral bedspread, and the playpen next to her side of the bed. In the morning, when we step out of the motel room, the sun will blind us. We’ll spend the day under the willow tree at the edge of the lake and we’ll agree it was a good idea to change our plans.
“Everything in?” I say, poking my head in the door as Angie sets up a spot for diaper-changing. “I’ll bring her in.”
“Don’t wake her up.”
I lean over Sophie in the car, slide my hands beneath her and gently lift her out of the seat, her body drooping over my arms, face turned skyward, mouth hanging open, ready to drink down the night sky. Abandon. Angie stands in the door of the motel watching us, a broken shaft of light stretching across the concrete and hitting our feet. “Don’t wake her up,” she whispers across the parking lot.
“Tell them we’re not coming,” I say.
“Are you sure?”
“Call and tell them Sophie got sick.”
Behind the curtains Angie is on the phone. The motel is illuminated under streetlights and neon, but when I turn toward the lake I’m surrounded by a darkness so immense I can’t wrap my head around it. I tip my head back like Sophie, so far back my mouth hangs open under the black bowl of a bottomless sky, like the black water of a lake over our heads. Abandon. I spin her gently, dipping her head toward the warm sand and back up into the night, bringing her ear to my mouth and whispering, baby, baby, baby. The smell of her makes every minute of my life thus far — shitty or not — worth it.
The air is dry and I can feel my skin shrinking, pulling tight, the moisture sucked from my pores. Standing at the edge of the water, I worry about what’s developing inside of me. Silver grasses along the edge of the highway hide crickets and the heat of the day still radiates, rising now from the concrete. There are remedies for a dull heart.
It takes time for my brain to make sense of the opposite of what it expects. It’s the end of August, with temperatures the hottest anyone’s ever seen and wildfires burning in the backcountry. During the day the mountains circling the lake are gold, tinder-dry, but at night beneath a clear sky and an almost-full moon, the entire valley is white. The mountains look like they’re covered in snow, but the breeze smells like grass, green and sweet.
MOSQUITO CREEK
I CAN HEAR KATE. Her bare feet rubbing through the grass. Her lips leaving the rim of the bottle.
“You’re getting warmer,” she says. She’s flicking her lighter. It won’t catch.
I move slowly in the same direction, waiting for it — open air, tumbling space, anything.
Kate inhales. I can hear the smoke leave her lips. “You’re hot,” she says.
My left foot slides off an edge and I stop. Somewhere below, rocks spill and bounce away. I stand still as a rush of wind passes over me. My breathing comes heavy. I think steady as my hands work in and out of fists. I don’t want Kate to see them shaking.
When I pull off the blindfold the entire inlet stretches out in front of me. Everything spills into it — the rivers, the forests, the suburbs, the city. The toes of my left foot hang out over the edge of the cliff. Below, the trains squeak and groan, barely moving along the tracks. Beside the tracks are the grain towers, ugly and grey, connected by pipes twisting like anatomy. The seagulls perch on the towers, fat and stupid and hungry.
I take a step back and turn to Kate. She’s already up from the blanket, coming toward me all antsy with excitement. “My turn,” she says, taking the blindfold and giving me the bottle of Malibu.
I don’t know why we come here, but we’ve been doing it for a while. Kate invented the game. Sometimes we play, sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we just smoke or talk or sleep.
The wind tangles Kate’s hair in the blindfold and I pull the strands away to help her tie it around her head.
“How was it?” she asks, arms outstretched.
My heart is beating fast. I spin her once, twice, three times.
“I’ve never been that close,” I say.
IN THE SUMMER LYNN CANYON is swamped with tourists. They come in by the busload, gathering white-knuckled on the suspension bridge with their cameras, clutching the rails as they try to get the ultimate shot of the falls. From the bridge it’s a fifty-metre drop into a gorge of rocky ledges and tumbling water — head-splitting stuff, an instant death kinda deal. Standing in the middle of the bridge in flip-flops and a bikini, I let go of the railing and clasp my hands behind my back. A tour group in matching red baseball caps circles me as they angle their cameras, but I focus on the bottom of the canyon and start counting — it’s a test of courage or faith or strength or something. The bridge swings and bounces as people nudge past on their way to the other side. We hucked a watermelon off the bridge once, watched it explode into a billion microscopic particles below. I get to twelve before I have to grip the rail.