providence

rose had a dream about anna. this was after she had gone away and left anna behind. shedreamed she met anna walking up gonzales hill. she knew she was coming from school. shewent up to speak to her but anna walked past not speaking. no wonder. she was covered withclay that seemed to have leaves or branches in it, so that the effect was of dead garlands.

decoration; ruination. and the clay or mud was not dry, it was still dripping off her, so that shelooked crude and sad, a botched heavy-headed idol.

“do you want to come with me, do you want to stay with daddy?” rose had said to her, butanna had refused to answer, saying instead, “i don’t want you to go.” rose had got a job at a radiostation in a town in the kootenay mountains.

anna was lying in the four-poster bed where patrick and rose used to sleep, where patrick nowslept alone. rose slept in the den.

anna would go to sleep in that bed, then patrick would carry her to her own bed. neitherpatrick nor rose knew when this stopped being occasional, and became essential. everything inthe house was out of kilter. rose was packing her trunk. she did it in the daytime when patrickand anna were not around. she and patrick spent the evenings in different parts of the house.

once she went into the dining room and found him putting fresh scotch tape on the snapshots inthe album. she was angry at him for doing this. she saw a snapshot of herself, pushing anna on aswing in the park; herself smirking in a bikini; true lies.

“it wasn’t any better then,” she said. “not really.” she meant that she had always been planning,at the back of her mind, to do what she was doing now. even on her wedding day she had knownthis time would come, and that if it didn’t she might as well be dead. the betrayal was hers.

“i know that,” said patrick angrily.

but of course it had been better, because she hadn’t started to try to make the break come, shehad forgotten for long stretches that it would have to come. even to say she had been planning tobreak, had started to break, was wrong, because she had done nothing deliberately, nothing at allintelligently, it had happened as painfully and ruinously as possible with all sorts of shilly-shallying and reconciling and berating, and right now she felt as if she was walking a swingingbridge and could only keep her eyes on the slats ahead, never look down or around.

“which do you want?” she said softly to anna. instead of answering, anna called out forpatrick. when he came she sat up and pulled them both down on the bed, one on each side of her.

she held on to them, and began to sob and shake. a violently dramatic child, sometimes, a bareblade.

“you don’t have to,” she said. “you don’t have fights any more.” patrick looked across at rosewithout accusation. his customary look for years, even when they were making love, had beenaccusing, but he felt such pain on anna’s account that all accusation was wiped out. rose had toget up and go out, leaving him to comfort anna, because she was afraid a great, deceptive rush offeeling for him was on the way.

it was true, they did not have fights any more. she had scars on her wrists and her body, whichshe had made (not quite in the most dangerous places) with a razor blade. once in the kitchen ofthis house patrick had tried to choke her. once she had run outside and knelt in her nightgown,tearing up handfuls of grass. yet for anna this bloody fabric her parents had made, of mistakesand mismatches, that anybody could see ought to be torn up and thrown away, was still the trueweb of life, of father and mother, of beginning and shelter. what fraud, thought rose, what fraudfor everybody. we come from unions which don’t have in them anything like what we think wedeserve.

she wrote to tom, to tell him what she was going to do. tom was a teacher at the university ofcalgary. rose was a little bit in love with him (so she said to friends who knew about the affair: alittle bit in love). she had met him here a year ago—he was the brother of a woman she sometimesacted with in radio plays—and since then she had stayed with him once in victoria. they wrotelong letters to each other. he was a courtly man, a historian, he wrote witty and delicately amorousletters. she had been a little afraid that when she announced that she was leaving patrick, tomwould write less often, or more guardedly, in case she might be hoping for too much from him.

getting ideas. but he did not, he was not so vulgar or so cowardly; he trusted her.

she said to her friends that leaving patrick had nothing to do with tom and that she wouldprobably not see tom any oftener than she had before. she believed that, but she had chosenbetween the job in the mountain town and one on vancouver island because she liked the idea ofbeing closer to calgary.

in the morning anna was cheerful, she said it was all right. she said she wanted to stay. shewanted to stay in her school, with her friends. she turned halfway down the walk to wave andshriek at her parents.

“have a happy divorce!”

rose had thought that once she got out of patrick’s house she would live in a bare room,some place stained and shabby. she would not care, she would not bother making a setting forherself, she disliked all that. the apartment which she found—the upstairs of a brown brick househalfway up the mountainside—was stained and shabby, but she immediately set to work to fix itup. the red-and-gold wallpaper (these places, she was to discover, were often tricked out withsomeone’s idea of elegant wallpaper) had been hastily put on, and was ripping and curling awayfrom the baseboard. she bought some paste and pasted it down. she bought hanging plants andcoaxed them not to die. she put up amusing posters in the bathroom. she paid insulting prices foran indian bedspread, baskets and pottery and painted mugs, in the only shop in town where suchthings were to be found. she painted the kitchen blue and white, trying to get the colors of willow-pattern china. the landlord promised to pay for the paint but didn’t. she bought blue candles,some incense, a great bunch of dried gold leaves and grass. what she had, when all this wasfinished, was a place which belonged quite recognizably to a woman, living alone, probably nolonger young, who was connected, or hoped to be connected, with a college or the arts. just as thehouse she had lived in before, patrick’s house, belonged recognizably to a successful business orprofessional man with inherited money and standards.

the town in the mountains seemed remote from everything. but rose liked it, partly because ofthat. when you come back to living in a town after having lived in cities you have the idea thateverything is comprehensible and easy there, almost as if some people have got together and said,“let’s play town.” you think that nobody could die there.

tom wrote that he must come to see her. in october (she had hardly expected it would be sosoon) there was an opportunity, a conference in vancouver. he planned to leave the conference aday early, and to pretend to have taken an extra day there, so that he could have two days free. buthe phoned from vancouver that he could not come. he had an infected tooth, he was in bad pain,he was to have emergency dental surgery on the very day he had planned to spend with rose. sohe was to get the extra day after all, he said, did she think it was a judgment on him? he said hewas taking a calvinistic view of things, and was groggy with pain and pills.

rose’s friend dorothy asked did she believe him? it had not occurred to rose not to.

“i don’t think he’d do that,” she said, and dorothy said quite cheerfully, even negligently, “oh,they’ll do anything.”

dorothy was the only other woman at the station; she did a homemakers’ program twice aweek, and went around giving talks to women’s groups; she was much in demand as mistress ofceremonies at prizegiving dinners for young people’s organizations; that sort of thing. she androse had struck up a friendship based mostly on their more-or-less single condition and theirventuresome natures. dorothy had a lover in seattle, and she did not trust him.

“they’ll do anything,” dorothy said. they were having coffee in the hole-in-one, a littlecoffee-and-doughnut shop next to the radio station. dorothy began telling rose a story about anaffair she had had with the owner of the station who was an old man now and spent most of histime in california. he had given her a necklace for christmas that he said was jade. he said he hadbought it in vancouver. she went to have the clasp fixed and asked proudly how much thenecklace was worth. she was told it was not jade at all; the jeweler explained how to tell, holdingit up to the light. a few days later the owner’s wife came into the office showing off an identicalnecklace; she too had been told the jade story. while dorothy was telling her this, rose waslooking at dorothy’s ash-blonde wig, which was glossy and luxuriant and not for a momentbelievable, and her face, whose chipped and battered look the wig and her turquoise eye shadowemphasized. in a city she would have looked whorish; here, people thought she was outlandish,but glamorous, a representative of some legendary fashionable world.

“that was the last time i trusted a man,” dorothy said. “at the same time as me he was laying agirl who worked in here—married girl, a waitress—and his grandchildren’s baby sitter. how doyou like that?”

at christmas rose went back to patrick’s house. she had not seen tom yet, but he had sent hera fringed, embroidered, dark blue shawl, bought during a conference holiday in mexico, in earlydecember, to which he had taken his wife (after all he had promised her, rose said to dorothy).

anna had stretched out in three months. she loved to suck her stomach in and stick her ribs out,looking like a child of famine. she was high-spirited, acrobatic, full of antics and riddles. walkingto the store with her mother—for rose was again doing the shopping, the cooking, sometimes wasdesperate with fear that her job and her apartment and tom did not exist outside of herimagination—she said, “i always forget when i’m at school.”

“forget what?”

“i always forget you’re not at home and then i remember. it’s only mrs. kreber.” mrs. kreberwas the housekeeper patrick had hired.

rose decided to take her away. patrick did not say no, he said that maybe it was best. but hecould not stay in the house while rose was packing anna’s things.

anna said later on she had not known she was coming to live with rose, she had thought shewas coming for a visit. rose believed she had to say and think something like this, so she wouldnot be guilty of any decision.

the train into the mountains was slowed by a great fall of snow. the water froze. the trainstood a long time in the little stations, wrapped in clouds of steam as the pipes were thawed. theygot into their outdoor clothes and ran along the platform. rose said, “i’ll have to buy you a wintercoat. i’ll have to buy you some warm boots.” in the dark coastal winters rubber boots and hoodedraincoats were enough. anna must have understood then that she was staying, but she saidnothing.

at night while anna slept rose looked out at the shocking depth and glitter of the snow. thetrain crept along slowly, fearful of avalanches. rose was not alarmed, she liked the idea of theirbeing shut up in this dark cubicle, under the rough train blankets, borne through such implacablelandscape. she always felt that the progress of trains, however perilous, was safe and proper. shefelt that planes, on the other hand, might at any moment be appalled by what they were doing, andsink through the air without a whisper of protest.

she sent anna to school, in her new winter clothes. it was all right, anna did not shrink orsuffer as an outsider. within a week there were children coming home with her, she was going tothe houses of other children. rose went out to meet her, in the early winter dark, along the streetswith their high walls of snow. in the fall a bear had come down the mountain, entered the town.

news of it came over the radio. an unusual visitor, a black bear, is strolling along fulton street.

you are advised to keep your children indoors. rose knew that a bear was not likely to walk intotown in the winter, but she was worried just the same. also she was afraid of cars, with the streetsso narrow and the corners hard to see around. sometimes anna would have gone home anotherway, and rose would go all the way to the other child’s house and find her not there. then shewould run, run all the way home along the hilly streets and up the long stairs, her heart poundingfrom the exercise and from fear, which she tried to hide when she found anna there.

her heart would pound also from hauling the laundry, the groceries. the laundromat, thesupermarket, the liquor store, were all at the bottom of the hill. she was busy all the time. shealways had urgent plans for the next hour. pick up the resoled shoes, wash and tint her hair, mendanna’s coat for school tomorrow. besides her job, which was hard enough, she was doing thesame things she had always done, and doing them under harder circumstances. there was asurprising amount of comfort in these chores.

two things she bought for anna: the goldfish, and the television set. cats or dogs were notpermitted in the apartment, only birds or fish. one day in january, the second week anna wasthere, rose walked down the hill to meet her, after school, to take her to woolworth’s to buy thefish. she looked at anna’s face and thought it was dirty, then saw that it was stained with tears.

“today i heard somebody calling jeremy,” anna said, “and i thought jeremy was here.” jeremywas a little boy she had often played with at home.

rose mentioned the fish.

“my stomach hurts.”

“are you hungry maybe? i wouldn’t mind a cup of coffee. what would you like?”

it was a terrible day. they were walking through the park, a shortcut to downtown. there hadbeen a thaw, then a freeze, so that there was ice everywhere, with water or slush on top of it. thesun was shining, but it was the kind of winter sunshine that only makes your eyes hurt, and yourclothes too heavy, and emphasizes all disorder and difficulty, such as the difficulty now, in tryingto walk on the ice. all around were teenagers just out of school, and their noise, their whoopingand sliding, the way a boy and girl sat on a bench on the ice, kissing ostentatiously, made rosefeel even more discouraged.

anna had chocolate milk. the teenagers had accompanied them into the restaurant. it was anoldfashioned place with the high-backed booths of the forties, and an orange-haired owner-cookwhom everyone called dree; it was the shabby reality that people recognized nostalgically inmovies, and, best of all, nobody there had any idea that it was anything to be nostalgic about. dreewas probably saving to fix it up. but today rose thought of those restaurants it reminded her of,where she had gone after school, and thought that she had after all been very unhappy in them.

“you don’t love daddy,” said anna. “i know you don’t.”

“well, i like him,” rose said. “we just can’t live together, that’s all.” like most things you areadvised to say, this rang false, and anna said, “you don’t like him. you’re just lying.” she wasbeginning to sound more competent, and seemed to be looking forward to getting the better of hermother.

“aren’t you?”

rose was in fact just on the verge of saying no, she did not like him. if that’s what you want,you can have it, she felt like saying. anna did want it, but could she stand it? how do you everjudge what children can stand? and actually the words love, don’t love, like, don’t like, even hate,had no meaning for rose where patrick was concerned.

“my stomach still hurts,” said anna with some satisfaction, and pushed the chocolate milkaway. but she caught the danger signals, she did not want this to go any further. “when are wegetting the fish?” she said, as if rose had been stalling.

they bought an orange fish, a blue spotted fish, a black fish with a velvety-looking body andhorrible bulging eyes, all of which they carried home in a plastic bag. they bought a fish bowl,colored pebbles, a green plastic plant. both of them were restored by the inside of woolworth’s,the flashing fish and the singing birds and the bright pink and green lingerie and the gilt-framedmirrors and the kitchen plastic and a large lobster of cold red rubber.

on the television set anna liked to watch “family court,” a program about teenagers needingabortions, and ladies picked up for shoplifting, and fathers showing up after long years away toreclaim their lost children who liked their stepfathers better. another program she liked was called“the brady bunch.” the brady bunch was a family of six beautiful, busy, comicallymisunderstood or misunderstanding children, with a pretty blonde mother, a handsome dark father,a cheerful housekeeper. the brady bunch came on at six o’clock, and anna wanted to eat supperwatching it. rose allowed this because she often wanted to work through anna’s suppertime. shebegan putting things in bowls, so that anna could manage more easily. she stopped makingsuppers of meat and potatoes and vegetables, because she had to throw so much out. she madechili instead, or scrambled eggs, bacon and tomato sandwiches, wieners wrapped in biscuit dough.

sometimes anna wanted cereal, and rose let her have it. but then she would think there wassomething disastrously wrong, when she saw anna in front of the television set eating captaincrunch, at the very hour when families everywhere were gathered at kitchen or dining-roomtables, preparing to eat and quarrel and amuse and torment each other. she got a chicken, shemade a thick golden soup with vegetables and barley. anna wanted captain crunch instead. shesaid the soup had a funny taste. it’s lovely soup, cried rose, you’ve hardly tasted it, anna, pleasetry it.

“for my sake,” it’s a wonder she didn’t say. she was relieved, on the whole, when anna saidcalmly, “no.”

at eight o’clock she began to hound anna into her bath, into bed. it was only when all this wasaccomplished—when she had brought the final glass of chocolate milk, mopped up the bathroom,picked up the papers, crayons, felt cutouts, scissors, dirty socks, chinese checkers, also the blanketin which anna wrapped herself to watch television, because the apartment was cold, made anna’slunch for the next day, turned off her light over her protest—that rose could settle down with adrink, or a cup of coffee laced with rum, and give herself over to satisfaction, appreciation. shewould turn off the lights and sit by the high front window looking out over this mountain town shehad hardly known existed a year ago, and she would think what a miracle it was that this hadhappened, that she had come all this way and was working, she had anna, she was paying foranna’s life and her own. she could feel the weight of anna in the apartment then just as naturallyas she had felt her weight in her body, and without having to go and look at her she could see withstunning, fearful pleasure the fair hair and fair skin and glistening eyebrows, the profile alongwhich, if you looked closely, you could see the tiny almost invisible hairs rise, catching the light.

for the first time in her life she understood domesticity, knew the meaning of shelter, and laboredto manage it.

“what made you want out of marriage?” said dorothy. she had been married too, a long timeago.

rose didn’t know what to mention first. the scars on her wrist? the choking in the kitchen, thegrubbing at the grass? all beside the point.

“i was just bored,” said dorothy. “it just bored the hell out of me, to tell you the honest truth.”

she was half-drunk. rose started to laugh and dorothy said, “what in hell are you laughing at?”

“it’s just a relief to hear somebody say that. instead of talking about how you didn’tcommunicate.”

“well, we didn’t communicate, either. no, the fact was i was out of my mind over somebodyelse. i was having an affair with a guy who worked for a newspaper. a journalist. well, he wentoff to england, the journalist did, and he wrote me a letter over the atlantic saying he really trulyloved me. he wrote me that letter because he was over the atlantic, and i was here, but i didn’thave sense enough to know that. do you know what i did? i left my husband—well, that was noloss—and i borrowed money, fifteen hundred dollars i borrowed from the bank. and i flew toengland after him. i phoned his paper, they said he’d gone to turkey. i sat in the hotel waiting forhim to come back. oh, what a time. i never went out of the hotel. if i went to get a massage orhave my hair done i told them where to page me. i kept pestering them fifty times a day. isn’tthere a letter? wasn’t there a phone call? jesus, jesus, jesus.”

“did he ever come back?”

“i phoned again, they told me he’d gone to kenya. i had started getting the shakes. i saw i hadto get hold of myself so i did, in the nick of time. i flew home. i started paying back the bloodybank.”

dorothy drank vodka, unmixed, from a water tumbler.

“oh, two or three years later i met him, where was it. it was in an airport. no, it was in adepartment store. i’m sorry i missed you when you came to england, he said. i said, oh, that’s allright, i managed to have a good time anyway. i was still paying it back. i should’ve told him hewas a shit.”

at work rose read commercials and the weather forecasts, answered letters, answered thetelephone, typed up the news, did the voices in sunday skits written by a local minister, andplanned to do interviews. she wanted to do a story on the town’s early settlers; she went andtalked to an old blind man who lived above a feed store. he told her that in the old days apples andcherries had been tied to the boughs of pine and cedar trees, pictures taken of them and sent toengland. that brought the english immigrants, convinced they were coming to a land where theorchards were already in bloom. when she got back to the station with this story everybodylaughed; they had heard it so often before.

she wasn’t forgetting tom. he wrote; she wrote. without this connection to a man, she mighthave seen herself as an uncertain and pathetic person; that connection held her new life in place.

for a while it looked as if luck was with them. a conference was set up in calgary, on radio inrural life, or something of that sort, and the station was sending rose. all without the leastconnivance on her part. she and tom were jubilant and silly on the phone. she asked one of theyoung teachers across the hall if she would move in and look after anna. the girl was glad toagree to do it; the other teacher’s boyfriend had moved in, and they were temporarily crowded.

rose went back to the shop where she had bought the bedspread and the pots; she bought a caftan-nightgown sort of robe with a pattern of birds on it, in jewel colors. it made her think of theemperor’s nightingale. she put a fresh rinse on her hair. she was to go sixty miles by bus, thencatch a plane. she would exchange an hour of terror for the extra time in calgary. people at thestation enjoyed scaring her, telling her how the little planes rose almost straight up out of themountain airport, then bucked and shivered their way over the rockies. she did think it would notbe right to die that way, to crash in the mountains going to see tom. she thought this, in spite ofthe fever she was in to go. it seemed too frivolous an errand to die on. it seemed like treachery, totake such a risk; not treachery to anna and certainly not to patrick but perhaps to herself. but justbecause the journey was frivolously undertaken, because it was not entirely real, she believed shewould not die.

she was in such high spirits she played chinese checkers all the time with anna. she playedsorry, or any game anna wanted. the night before she was to leave—she had arranged for a taxito pick her up, at half-past five in the morning—they were playing chinese checkers, and annasaid, “oh, i can’t see with these blue ones,” and drooped over the board, about to cry, which shenever did, in a game. rose touched her forehead and led her, complaining, to bed. her temperaturewas a hundred and two. it was too late to phone tom at his office and of course rose couldn’tphone him at home. she did phone the taxi, and the airport, to cancel. even if anna seemed betterin the morning, she wouldn’t be able to go. she went over and told the girl who had been going tostay with anna, then phoned the man who was arranging the conference, in calgary. “oh god,yes,” he said. “kids!” in the morning, with anna wrapped in her blanket, watching cartoons, shephoned tom in his office. “you’re here, you’re here!” he said. “where are you?”

then she had to tell him.

anna coughed, her fever went up and down. rose tried to get the heat up, fiddled with thethermostat, drained the radiators, phoned the landlord’s office and left a message. he didn’t phoneback. she phoned him at home at seven o’clock the next morning, told him her child hadbronchitis (which she may have believed at the time, but it was not true), told him she would givehim one hour to get her some heat or she would phone the newspaper, she would denounce himover the radio, she would sue him, she would find the proper channels. he came at once, with aput-upon face (a poor man trying to make ends meet bedeviled by hysterical women), he didsomething to the thermostat in the hall, and the radiators started to get hot. the teachers told rosethat he had the hall thermostat fixed to control the heat and that he had never given in to protestsbefore. she felt proud, she felt like a fierce slum mother who had screamed and sworn and carriedon, for her child’s sake. she forgot that slum mothers are seldom fierce, being too tired andbewildered. it was her middle-class certainties, her expectations of justice, that had given her suchenergy, such a high-handed style of abuse; that had scared him.

after two days she had to go back to work. anna had improved, but rose was worried all thetime. she could not swallow a cup of coffee, for the chunk of anxiety in her throat. anna was allright, she took her cough medicine, she sat up in bed, crayoning. when her mother came home shehad a story to tell her. it was about some princesses.

there was a white princess who dressed all in bride clothes and wore pearls. swans and lambsand polar bears were her pets, and she had lilies and narcissus in her garden. she ate mashedpotatoes, vanilla ice cream, shredded coconut and meringue off the top of pies. a pink princessgrew roses and ate strawberries, kept flamingoes (anna described them, could not think of thename) on a leash. the blue princess subsisted on grapes and ink. the brown princess thoughdrably dressed feasted better than anybody; she had roast beef and gravy and chocolate cake withchocolate icing, also chocolate ice cream with chocolate fudge sauce. what was there in hergarden?

“rude things,” said anna. “all over the ground.”

this time tom and rose did not refer so openly to their disap pointment. they had begun tohold back a little, maybe to suspect that they were unlucky for each other. they wrote tenderly,carefully, amusingly, and almost as if the last failure had not happened.

in march he phoned to tell her that his wife and children were going to england. he was goingto join them there, but later, ten days later. so there will be ten days, cried rose, blotting out thelong absence to come (he was to stay in england until the end of the summer). it turned out not tobe ten days, not quite, because he was obliged to go to madison, wisconsin, on the way toengland. but you must come here first, rose said, swallowing this disappointment, how long canyou stay, can you stay a week? she pictured them eating long sunny breakfasts. she saw herself inthe emperor’s nightingale outfit. she would have filtered coffee (she must buy a filter pot) and thatgood bitter marmalade in the stone jar. she didn’t give any thought to her morning chores at thestation.

he said he didn’t know about that, his mother was coming to help pamela and the children getoff, and he couldn’t just pack up and leave her. it would really be so much better, he said, if shecould come to calgary.

then he became very happy and said they would go to banff. they would take three or fourdays’ holiday, could she manage that, how about a long weekend? she said wasn’t banff difficultfor him, he might run into someone he knew. he said no, no, it would be all right. she wasn’tquite so happy as he was because she hadn’t altogether liked being in the hotel with him, invictoria. he had gone down to the lobby to get a paper, and phoned their room, to see if she knewenough not to answer. she knew enough, but the maneuver depressed her. nevertheless she saidfine, wonderful, and they got calendars at each end of the phone, so that they could figure outwhich days. they could take in a weekend, she had a weekend coming to her. and she couldprobably manage friday as well, and part at least of monday. dorothy could do the absolutelynecessary things for her. dorothy owed her some working time. rose had covered for her, whenshe was fogged in, in seattle; she had spent an hour on the air reading household hints and recipesshe never believed would work.

she had nearly two weeks to make the arrangements. she spoke to the teacher again and theteacher said she could come. she bought a sweater. she hoped she would not be expected to learnto ski, in that time. there must be walks they could take. she thought they would spend most oftheir time eating and drinking and talking and making love. thoughts of this latter exercisetroubled her a bit. their talk on the phone was decorous, almost shy, but their letters, now thatthey were sure of meeting, were filled with inflammatory promises. these were what rose lovedreading and writing, but she could not remember tom as clearly as she wanted to. she couldremember what he looked like, that he was not very tall, and spare, with gray waving hair and along, clever face, but she could not remember any little, maddening things about him, any tone orsmell. the thing she could remember too well was that their time in victoria had not beencompletely successful; she could remember something between a curse and an apology, theslippery edge of failure. this made her especially eager to try again, to succeed.

she was to leave friday, early in the morning, taking the same bus and plane she had planned totake before.

tuesday morning it began to snow. she did not pay much attention. it was wet, pretty snow,coming straight down in big flakes. she wondered if it would be snowing in banff. she hoped so,she liked the idea of lying in bed and watching it. it snowed more or less steadily for two days, andlate thursday afternoon when she went to pick up her ticket at the travel agency they told her theairport had been closed. she did not show or even feel any worry; she was a bit relieved, that shewould not have to fly. how about trains, she said, but of course the train didn’t go to calgary, itwent down to spokane. she knew that already. then the bus, she said. they phoned to make surethe highways were open and the buses were running. during that conversation her heart began topound a bit, but it was all right, everything was all right, the bus was running. it won’t be muchfun, they said, it leaves here at half-past twelve, that’s twelve midnight, and it gets into calgaryaround 2 p.m. the next day.

“that’s all right.”

“you must really want to get to calgary,” the grubby young man said. this was a mostramshackle informal travel agency, set up in a hotel lobby outside the door of the beer parlor.

“it’s banff, actually,” she said brazenly. “and i do.”

“going to do some skiing?”

“maybe.” she was convinced he guessed everything. she didn’t know then how commonplacesuch illicit jaunts were; she thought the aura of sin was dancing round her like half-visible flameson a gas burner.

she went home thinking she would be better off, really, sitting on the bus, getting closer andcloser to tom, than lying in bed unable to sleep. she would just have to ask the teacher to move intonight.

the teacher was waiting for her, playing chinese checkers with anna. “oh, i don’t know howto tell you,” she said; “i’m so awfully sorry but something’s happened.”

she said her sister had had a miscarriage and was in need of her help. her sister lived invancouver.

“my boyfriend is driving me down tomorrow if we can get through.”

this was the first rose had heard of any boyfriend, and she immediately suspected the wholestory. some flying chance the girl was off on; she too had smelled love and hope. somebody’shusband, maybe, or some boy her own age. rose looked at her once-acned face now rosy withshame and excitement and knew she would never budge her. the teacher went on to embroider herstory with talk of her sister’s two little children; both boys, and they had been just longing for agirl.

rose started phoning, to get somebody else. she phoned students, wives of the men she workedwith, who might be able to give her names; she phoned dorothy who hated children. it was no use.

she followed leads that people had given her, though she realized these were probably worthless,given only to get rid of her. she was ashamed of her persistence. at last anna said, “i could stayhere by myself.”

“don’t be silly.”

“i did before. when i was sick and you had to go to work.” “how would you like,” said rose,and felt a true sudden pleasure at so easy and reckless a solution, “how would you like to come tobanff?”

they packed in a great rush. fortunately rose had been to the laundromat the night before. shedid not allow herself to think about what anna would do in banff, about who would pay for theextra room, about whether anna would in fact agree to having a separate room. she threw incoloring books and story books and messy kits of do-it-yourself decorations, anything she thoughtmight do for amusement. anna was excited by the turn of events, not dismayed at the thought ofthe bus ride. rose remembered to call ahead of time for the taxi to pick them up at midnight.

they almost got stuck driving down to the bus depot. rose thought what a good idea it had beento call the taxi half an hour ahead of time, for what was usually a five-minute drive. the bus depotwas an old service station, a dreary place. she left anna on a bench with the luggage and went tobuy their tickets. when she came back anna was drooped over the suitcase, having given way tosleepiness as soon as her mother’s back was turned.

“you can sleep on the bus.”

anna straightened up, denied being tired. rose hoped it would be warm on the bus. perhaps sheshould have brought a blanket, to wrap around anna. she had thought of it, but they had enough tocarry already, with the shopping bag full of anna’s books and amusements; it was too much tothink of arriving in calgary straggle-haired, cranky and constipated, with crayons spilling from thebag and a trailing blanket as well. she had decided not to.

there were just a few other passengers waiting. a young couple in jeans, looking cold andundernourished. a poor, respectable old woman wearing her winter hat; indian grandmother witha baby. a man lying on one of the benches looked sick or drunk. rose hoped he was just in thebus depot getting warm, not waiting for the bus, because he looked as if he might throw up. or ifhe was getting on the bus, she hoped he would throw up now, not later. she thought she had bettertake anna to the washroom here. however unpleasant it was, it was probably better than what theyhad on the bus. anna was wandering around looking at the cigarette machines, candy machines,drink and sandwich machines. rose wondered if she should buy some sandwiches, some wateryhot chocolate. once into the mountains, she might wish she had.

suddenly she thought that she had forgotten to phone tom, to tell him to meet the bus not theplane. she would do it when they stopped for breakfast.

attention all passengers waiting for the bus to cranbrook, radium hot springs, golden,calgary. your bus has been canceled. bus due to leave here at twelve-thirty has been canceled.

rose went up to the wicket and said what is this, what happened, tell me, is the highway closed?

yawning, the man told her, “it’s closed past cranbrook. open from here to cranbrook but closedpast that. and closed west of here to grand forks so the bus won’t even get here tonight.”

calmly, rose asked, what were the other buses she could take? “what do you mean, otherbuses?”

“well, isn’t there a bus to spokane? i could get from there to calgary.”

unwillingly he pulled out his schedules. then they both remembered that if the highway wasclosed between here and grand forks, that was no good, no bus would be coming through. rosethought of the train to spokane, then the bus to calgary. she could never do it, it would beimpossible with anna. nevertheless she asked about trains, had he heard anything about thetrains?

“heard they’re running twelve hours late.”

she kept standing at the wicket, as if some solution was owing to her, would have to appear.

“i can’t do anything more for you here, lady.”

she turned away and saw anna at the pay phones, fiddling with the coin return boxes.

sometimes she found a dime that way.

anna came walking over, not running, but walking quickly, in an unnaturally sedate andagitated way. “come here,” she said, “come here.” she pulled rose, numb as she was, over to oneof the pay phones. she dipped the coin box towards her. it was full of silver. full. she beganscraping it into her hand. quarters, nickels, dimes. more and more. she filled her pockets. itlooked as if the box was refilling every time she closed it, as it might in a dream or a fairy tale.

finally she did empty it, she picked out the last dime. she looked up at rose with a pale, tired,blazing face.

“don’t say anything,” she commanded.

rose told her that they were not going on the bus after all. she phoned for the same taxi, to takethem home. anna accepted the change in plans without interest. rose noticed that she settledherself very carefully into the taxi, so that the coins would not clink in her pockets.

in the apartment rose made herself a drink. without taking off her boots or her coat annastarted spreading the money out on the kitchen table and separating it into piles to be counted.

“i can’t believe this,” she said. “i can’t be-lieve it.” she was using a strange adult voice, a voiceof true astonishment masked by social astonishment, as if the only way she could control and dealwith the event was to dramatize it in this way.

“it must be from a long distance call,” said rose. “the money didn’t go through. i suppose it allbelongs to the phone company.”

“but we can’t give it back, can we?” said anna, guilty and triumphant, and rose said no.

“it’s crazy,” rose said. she meant the idea of the money belonging to the phone company. shewas tired and mixed-up but beginning to feel temporarily and absurdly light-hearted. she couldsee showers of coins coming down on them, or snowstorms; what carelessness there waseverywhere, what elegant caprice.

they tried to count it, but kept getting confused. they played with it instead, dropping coinsostentatiously through their fingers. that was a giddy time late at night in the rented kitchen on themountainside. bounty where you’d never look for it; streaks of loss and luck. one of the fewtimes, one of the few hours, when rose could truly say she was not at the mercy of past or future,or love, or anybody. she hoped it was the same for anna.

tom wrote her a long letter, a loving humorous letter, mentioning fate. a grieved, relievedrenunciation, before he set off for england. rose didn’t have any address for him, there, or shemight have written asking him to give them another chance. that was her nature.

this last snow of the winter was quickly gone, causing some flooding in the valleys. patrickwrote that he would drive up in june, when school was out, and take anna back with him for thesummer. he said he wanted to start the divorce, because he had met a girl he wanted to marry. hername was elizabeth. he said she was a fine and stable person.

and did rose not think, said patrick, that it might be better for anna to be settled in her oldhome next year, in the home she had always known, to be back at her old school with her oldfriends (jeremy kept asking about her) rather than traipsing around with rose in her newindependent existence? might it not be true—and here rose thought she heard the voice of thestable girlfriend— that she was using anna to give herself some stability, rather than face up to theconsequences of the path she had chosen? of course, he said, anna must be given her choice.

rose wanted to reply that she was making a home for anna here, but she could not do that,truthfully. she no longer wanted to stay. the charm, the transparency, of this town was gone forher. the pay was poor. she would never be able to afford anything but this cheap apartment. shemight never get a better job, or another lover. she was thinking of going east, going to toronto,trying to get a job there, with a radio or television station, perhaps even some acting jobs. shewanted to take anna with her, set them up again in some temporary shelter. it was just as patricksaid. she wanted to come home to anna, to fill her life with anna. she didn’t think anna wouldchoose that life. poor, picturesque, gypsying childhoods are not much favored by children, thoughthey will claim to value them, for all sorts of reasons, later on.

anna went to live with patrick and elizabeth. she began to take drama and ballet lessons.

elizabeth thought she should have some accomplishments, and keep busy. they gave her the four-poster bed, with a new canopy, and got her a kitten.

elizabeth made her a nightgown and cap to match the bed. they sent rose a picture of hersitting there, with the kitten, looking demure and satisfied in the midst of all that flowered cloth.

the spotted fish died first, then the orange one. that was before anna left. neither suggestedanother trip to woolworth’s, so that the black one should have company. it didn’t look as if itwanted company. swollen, bug-eyed, baleful and at ease, it commanded the whole fishbowl for itsown.

anna made rose promise not to flush it down the toilet after she, anna, was gone. rosepromised, and before she left for toronto she walked over to dorothy’s house, carrying thefishbowl, to make her this unwelcome present. dorothy accepted it decently, said she would nameit after the man from seattle, and congratulated rose on leaving.

rose set to work cleaning out the apartment, finding marbles and drawings and some letters byanna begun—mostly at rose’s instigation—and never finished, never mailed.

dear daddy,

i am fine. are you? i was sick but i am fine now. i hope you are not sick.

dear jeremy,

how tall are you now? i am fine.