was talking about the running again.
Sam must have been twelve because Mary was still there, although she had begun to seem sick. Their last summer vacation, then. Sam couldn’t recall exactly where the climb had been, but he remembered every crease and corner of it. There was a narrow chimney and then an awkward overhang. Mike had led the way and he negotiated the underside of the shelf as if it were a mere optical illusion.
‘Climb when you’re ready,’ Sam heard him call from the invisible secure point above it.
The rock waited, bearing down on him. ‘I don’t think I can do this one.’
No answer came, and Sam sighed and began to climb. Even as he was hanging off the first hold, beginning the calculation that would achieve the next, his mind and his will disengaged themselves. It wasn’t simply that he couldn’t do it. It was much more that he had no wish to. At once he down-climbed the short way he had come and called again. He told Mike that he was going down and he wouldn’t be climbing any more that day. He felt a start of rebellious happiness. A moment or two later Mike reappeared on the ledge beside him. The space felt too small to contain them both.
Mike said, ‘Do you want to think about that again?’
It wasn’t a question, but Sam boldly treated it as if it were. ‘Uh, no, thanks. I’ll head back.’
‘I think you should climb it.’
‘I think I should go down.’
‘Do what I tell you, son.’
The rock seemed to press down on their heads.
‘I don’t want to.’
It was self-discipline that restrained Mike. He wouldn’t let anger master him out on the mountain, because anger was a loss of control and loss of control meant danger. Instead, he lowered his son safely to the ground and watched until he was unclipped from the rope. Then he turned and climbed solo up the overhang.
Sam ran the path through the woods. He made himself run faster and faster to contain his shock at what he had done. When he reached the campsite he found Mary sitting tiredly in her chair under the shade of a tree. Mary defended her son against his father. That was the year Sam took up track sports.
‘Not for 2000, I’m afraid.’
The two of them had cleared their plates. The talk show finished and a soup commercial began.
Sam took them to the sink. ‘Would you like some dessert? There’s a pie. Apple.’ A bought one.
‘Sure, if it’s there.’
He brought the helpings to the table and they ate, in silence again. That was how it was. Afterwards he washed up, and dried the cutlery and placed the dish towel – without knowing he did so – in the way that Mary always left it to dry. Mike had never bought a dishwasher.
Only then did Sam allow himself to look at his watch. ‘Time for the airport.’
‘You really going, in this?’
Sam tilted his head, pretending to listen to the wind. He wanted to switch off the TV in case the local weather report came on and closed off his escape route.
‘Oh, it’s not so bad.’ He collected his zipper bag from the bedroom that still had his college sports posters on the walls and made a show of checking for his keys. ‘Do you need anything else, Dad?’ There was food in the cupboard, fuel in storage, current magazines on the chair. Spring would be here soon.
‘Not a thing.’
‘So, I’d better be going. I’ll call you in the morning.’ From the apartment or the office, in Seattle.
‘Sure.’ The old man pinched his nose and rubbed it with the back of his hand. Then he levered himself to his feet and rested his weight on his stick. From opposite directions they reached the door at the same time. Sam looked down on him.
Michael had survived a broken back, but the terrible injury and the years of fighting back from it had robbed his father of height, as well as other things. Sam thought that the way the old man lived now was truly little more than survival. Awareness of his father’s loss depressed him as well as filling him with unwieldy sympathy. It also increased his own sense of being able-bodied and surrounded by opportunity, and still having locked himself into a life that didn’t satisfy him, or offer any immediate chance of improvement. Mike’s estimation of him as a failure only confirmed his own.
‘I’m really sorry about the Trials.’
‘Maybe next time, like you said,’ Mike answered. They made an awkward connection, a little more than a handshake but less than a clasp. Then they stood apart. ‘Thanks for buying all those supplies. I didn’t need them.’
‘Take care of yourself.’
‘You know me.’
Well enough, Sam thought. He hoisted his bag, rested his hand for a moment on Mike’s shoulder, then opened the door and closed it behind him. It was snowing hard now, and the wind rounded it into the creases of steps and walls. Sam drove through Wilding and, at last, on to the freeway. He punched the buttons on the radio, stretched in his seat and headed through the storm for the airport with unconsidered heavy metal crashing in his ears.
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ the American ticket desk clerk told him. ‘The weather’s closed right in. Maybe in an hour, if it eases.’
‘I’ll wait,’ Sam said, as if he had a choice. From the newsstand he bought a copy of Forbes and from the coffee shop a latte that might take away the taste of his father’s brew. Under the stalled departures board he found a seat and wedged himself between a boy with a snowboard and a woman holding a baby on her lap. He sipped his coffee and watched the refugees from the weather as they pushed in past the barrier of the glass doors. The concourse was filling up, a steady wash of people jostled in front of him and the boy with the snowboard sullenly left it jutting in their path.
Sam had been sitting with the empty styrofoam cup in his hands for perhaps fifteen minutes when he saw her.
The doors parted yet again and a flurry of windborne ice crystals spun across a triangle of the murky concourse floor. A woman blew in in their wake but she wasn’t hunched over to defend herself from the weather like every one of the other arrivals. Her head was back and she was wide-eyed with exhilaration. And she appeared to be wearing nothing but a pair of slender high-heeled shoes and a faded ski parka. Her legs were very long and splashed with muddy sleet.
As well as a small overnight bag, she was negligently carrying a bridal bouquet.
Sam swore, fluently, under his breath. Some fuckwit had already married her.
He followed her with his eyes to the Air Canada desk. She went through the same exchange as he had done, then turned away. Sam was almost on his feet, on his way to intercept her, when he remembered that he didn’t know her. Not yet. Instead, he watched as she bought a cup of coffee and drank it standing, her attention on the departures board. The bouquet lay at her feet, with her bag. There was no bridegroom in sight, no smirking triumphalist ready to propel her away to a honeymoon hotel. She was apparently all alone.
He stood up and placed his coat on his seat, making it the only unoccupied one in sight. He walked between the clumps of travellers until he reached her side. ‘Would you like to sit down?’
Her gaze travelled over his face, level, considering, touched with amusement. ‘There are three pregnant women and several geriatrics standing around here. Why me?’
Jesus, he thought. She’s really something. ‘Good question.’
‘Thanks for the offer, anyway.’ She was smiling. She wasn’t beautiful, her eyes were too wide-set and her jaw too prominent for that. She was better than beautiful; she was intriguing.
‘Where are you heading?’
‘Home to Vancouver. And you?’
‘Uh,