lifted her suitcase into the trunk. She’d never cared for the Oldsmobile, but as she climbed into the passenger seat, she felt a pang of regret that her father’s sturdy blue car would be replaced.
Her mother started the engine and pumped the gas pedal. She set the heat on high and the CBC on low. Then she extracted a pack of Virginia Slims and a plastic lighter from her purse, pinched a long cigarette between her copper lips, and closed her eyes as she lit up. Clare frowned and cracked her window.
“When did you start smoking again, Ma?”
Isobel examined the cigarette between her fingers as if baffled by how it had come to be there. “Oh. I hardly ever. I decided to treat myself on my fiftieth, and I guess my body just remembered how much it enjoys them.” She slid open the ashtray and squashed the cigarette into a mess of lipsticked butts, then she wrestled the gearshift into reverse.
The word body, coming from Isobel, sounded foreign and off-key.
Clare rubbed the car window with her fist, but in the waning afternoon light and the dirty snow of late winter, the world outside was hardly worth looking at. She stared at the dashboard. Inside her pockets, her hands clenched and her thumbs fretted her index fingers. The question, Emma’s question, made her absurdly tense. It was pathetic. Her mother wouldn’t care, and the answer would hardly change anything. There’d be the jolt of having her suspicion confirmed, of looking at a portrait she’d professed to know intimately and discovering in the corner something new and out of place. But aside from those small shocks, there’d be nothing remarkable. The answer to her question would be just another oblique reminder of something she already knew: in the social world, Clare Fraser was a failure. A bore. A mute, staring spinster from a different century.
Oh, for God’s sake, the Emma in her head blurted. Don’t be so negative.
I’m just being realistic.
She removed her headband and shook her hair down in front of her face. Emma had suggested she colour it. Highlight the blond, or darken it all. It might look good, she had to admit, though surely people would see through the disguise. Her mother had been colouring for years, but the red had once been natural. Clare had her father’s hair, his blue-grey eyes.
“So you had a good holiday?” Isobel said.
“Uh-huh.”
“And how’s our little Emma?”
Clare slid the headband back across her head. “Not so little. But she’s fine. She’s teaching voice this term.”
“Oh, lovely. Does she ever miss Montreal? How long has she been in Vancouver now?”
“I don’t think so. Almost six years.”
“That long! Are you sure?”
“She left right after I moved back with you.”
Isobel changed lanes without signalling. “Gordon Bennett! Does that mean it’s been almost six years since your father ...”
“I guess so.”
“Good lord.”
Ask her now, Emma’s voice urged. While she’s on the topic.
She’s remembering Dad’s heart attack. It wouldn’t be fair.
Fair-shmair. Your mother has dealt with his death just fine. You’re the one who still has issues.
“And are the flowers out yet in Vancouver?” Isobel said, switching on the headlights.
“Uh-huh.”
Clare closed her eyes and leaned back against the headrest. She could be lazy with her mother. Conversation for Isobel was a gliding over smooth surfaces, an avoidance of bumps and cracks. Her questions never challenged; they led directly into short, easy paths of response. Emma’s questions, on the other hand, opened onto vast and frightening terrain. Politics, ethics, relationships, sex. Apart from the ones about sex, she didn’t mind Emma’s questions. Talking to Emma wasn’t like talking to other people. It was the closest she came to the conversations in her own head. But on this last visit, Emma had been pushy on the sex thing. In her view, sex was a character-defining experience, a crucial element of one’s humanity, and, having made this argument, she’d forced a blind date with the recently divorced director of the jazz studies program at her college. Not, she pointed out, that it would necessarily lead to anything at all. Just to get Clare in the swing of things.
They’d gone for coffee on the east side of town. The Jazz Studies Director had carried their cappuccinos to a table in the middle of the café, and as he sat down he smiled and said, “Emma tells me you’re quite the pianist.”
“Not as good as Emma,” Clare had answered, her hands clenching under the table. A terrible answer—and not even true.
The Jazz Studies Director then raised his eyebrows. “So what was it that drew you to music?”
If he’d been a voice in her head, if he’d been Emma, she could have answered him, easily. But everything about him—his skin, his clothes, his raised eyebrows—was so real and physical, so other, that the space between them seemed gaping and uncrossable. He was terrifying in the way that all strangers, with their unpredictable words and boldness of existence, were terrifying.
“I’m not sure,” she’d said, and sipped her coffee. “It just happened, I guess.”
The date had ended with a handshake.
Emma had stifled her disappointment admirably. She suggested that Clare’s social difficulties were a result of being born prematurely. “I’m serious,” she said. “You came into the world before you were really ready, and now everything still overwhelms you.” To Clare, this explanation missed the obvious. But then Emma hadn’t known her father very well.
Her mother exited the highway onto St. Giles Boulevard. They passed the Provigo, the Chinese restaurant with the revolving red dragon, the shopping mall, and Emma’s family’s church, a building that looked more like a recreation centre than a place of worship. Just before Morgan Hill Road, Isobel swatted the turn signal, and Clare sensed the pattern of her life closing around her, tucking her inside of itself. It wasn’t a terrible feeling; her life suited her in many ways. But if pressed, she’d have confessed that this particular life wasn’t exactly what she’d imagined for herself.
The lights in the Fraser house, timer-controlled, were on, warm and welcoming. While Isobel put the car in the garage, Clare wandered to the end of the driveway to collect the empty garbage can. Across the street she saw shadows behind the Vantwests’ living room curtains and recalled Emma’s latest musings about Rudy.
“He always looked so exotic, don’t you think?” Emma had said, wide-eyed. “He sort of intimidated me when we were teenagers, but I’d love to meet him now. Do you ever see him? Don’t you think it would be amazing to have sex with someone like him?”
“What do you mean ‘like him’?” Clare had said. But her friend just smiled knowingly.
Remember the day his brother was born? the Emma in her head now coaxed, as Clare, eyes still on the Vantwests’ house, picked up the garbage bin.
Not as well as you.
It’s kind of creepy to think about, but, God, that afternoon was the highlight of the whole summer.
I hardly remember anything. Just the car.
And one other image: Rudy Vantwest standing with two suitcases at the edge of his lawn, looking across the street at her. She might have imagined the suitcases; most of her childhood fantasies had involved packing up and running away on an adventure. But she remembered the scrawny legs and the squinting smile clearly—one of those useless memories that hangs on for no apparent reason, even when more important things have drifted out of reach. She hadn’t seen Rudy in years, she’d