The rain slapped fussily on the windshield. Kay peered ahead, hunched behind the wheel, a little old lady trying to see. Logging trucks, milk trucks roared by, regardless. It was like being in a car wash, hit from all sides with tides of water. Kay clung on.
“Mum, do you still love Dad?” This from Freya in the back.
“What?” Kay said, though she’d heard.
“Dad. Do you still love him?”
“Freya, sweetie, I’m trying to drive.”
“But it’s a simple question, it’s not algebra.”
“Love isn’t a thing that is or isn’t.”
“What does that mean?”
“It doesn’t stop or begin,” Kay attempted.
A silence. Then: “So you don’t love him.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“He loves you.”
He does not, Kay thought. She caught Freya’s eye in the rear-view mirror: “We love each other, we’re married, it’s just sometimes—” Another truck sped past, its wake breaking in a wave over the windshield.
“You don’t even sleep in the same bed.”
“Frey—”
“Are you getting a divorce?”
“Jesus Christ! I am not having this conversation anymore.”
“One-dollar fine!” Tom sang, shattering Kay’s hope that he hadn’t been listening.
At Kamp Wahoo, Tom ran through the rain into the building, forgetting to say goodbye, but Freya slipped her arms around Kay, kissed her cheek. “I love you, Mum.” And the slightness of her arms, the scent of her, the crumb of toast caught on her lip: how Kay wanted to hold on, press tighter, pull her daughter back into her body. But that wasn’t the point, the point was letting go before Freya pulled away, the point was timing the moment of release so she didn’t cling to her daughter.
There.
Freya spun toward a group of girls sheltering under the porch; they turned to greet her. Freya made friends so easily.
*
At White’s, she roamed the aisles, list in hand. She’d had to learn how to shop, how to cook. Before children, food had appeared or been acquired in finished form. On assignment, she’d eaten what she needed to achieve sufficient caloric intake, street food, snacks. If there had been no food, there were always cigarettes and Coca Cola. Or she had been staying in hotels with room service and buffets. When she and Michael had lived in Nairobi they’d had a cook, as well as the ayah for Freya, and Kay simply gave the cook the money, he did the shopping, he produced the fine meals.
Kay struggled to move beyond macaroni and cheese, and if she did, she was castigated by her children.
“Can I have my spaghetti without any sauce?”
“I don’t really like chicken.”
“Spinach kind of looks like snot.”
In such moments, she felt the urge to take the perfectly good, nice, healthy, organic food that she’d ceded an hour of her life to making and shove it in their ungrateful mouths. Don’t you know about the Syrian refugees? The children of South Sudan? It was an absurd idea that if her own children ate their food it made anything better for those ravaged people. She often ate the food herself, so obscene the sight of wasted food in the garbage.
Did other women feel like this about their children—the sharp rush of resentment? Did they covet such moments of righteousness? Damn you, eat the food! The carefully dressed mothers she saw at the school gates or at the camp drop-off under Phoebe’s gimlet gaze, kissing their little ones goodbye: what did they hide, shameful as bulimics in the dark? Did they stand in a cellar, hammer in hand, staring at the back of their husbands’ skulls?
Kay had never found a way to speak to them—really speak: the intimate language of coffee and a warm muffin, heads bent, attending. She felt too rough, too loud and unfashionable. What had worked for her as a journalist in Africa was clumsy, gauche in London. Who she had been before was like an old coat, hung by the door, out of season.
*
She decided to take the back way along Claremont Hill Road.
The rain obscured the view. She felt narrowed in, just the road, 20 feet ahead, herself in the capsule of the car. And because of the rain, she was driving slowly enough to see a pick-up parked on the side of the road, and a man looking under its hood. Poor bastard, broken down in the rain. She slowed even more, and was therefore able to distinguish the logo on the door of the pick-up: COMEAU LOGGING. She pulled over, wound down the window.
The rain spat in her face. “Can I give you a lift?”
He looked up at her, the rain dripping off his baseball cap. He was in a t-shirt and jeans. The muscles in his arms flexed as he moved. His eyelashes were thick as a girl’s. He studied her car, bumper to bumper, as if it was unusual in some way. Then he came over to her, wading through the rain.
“Thank you, yes, you can,” he said. She watched him jog around the car. But he didn’t get in. “I don’t want to get your car wet.”
“I have children; you can’t ruin it more than they already have.” She reached over, pushed open the door. “Besides, it’s a rental.”
And he was there, filling the passenger seat, rain dripping off his hair. “I really appreciate this. There’s a mechanic just up the road.”
She put the car in gear, pulled out into the road.
He took off his hat, pushed back his dark, wet hair. “It’s the connecting rod.”
“That’s something that connects things, right?”
He gave her a grin. “You’re not from around here.”
“London.”
“Canada?”
She nearly laughed, but caught herself. “England.”
“The Queen, tea at four?”
“Something like that.”
“You’re here on vacation?”
Their eyes held just for a moment. She turned back to the road, but she felt his gaze lingering.
“With my family,” she said.
“You having a good time?”
“Great.”
“Just up ahead.”
She saw the sign, Mort’s Auto Works.
She pulled in, stopped.
“I’m Ben,” he extended his hand.
“Kay.”
“Like K, an initial?”
“No. I’m not that cool. Three whole letters. K-A-Y.”
“Thank you for the lift, K-A-Y.”
He started to get out of the car.
“Ben?”
He turned, perhaps a little too eagerly. And she asked, perhaps a little too eagerly.
“Ben, do you know Frank Wilson?”
He was expecting a different question. His face was still and she could see the effort of the stillness. “Frank Wilson?”
She smiled, perhaps a little flirtatious. “Yes, Frank Wilson.”
He tilted his head. “Why are you asking about him?”
“We’re renting his house.”
Ben waited for more.
“The thing is, we’re having a problem with this man trapping coyotes.”
“Ammon,” he said.
“Yes, apparently, Ammon. Do you know Ammon?”
“Yeah, I know Ammon.”
The way he said this, she wished she could replay again and again, to better hear what the casual tone belied, the multiple chords within the words: what he was actually saying. Yeah, I know Ammon.
“I thought Frank might ask him to stop. Just while we’re here.”
“I’ll talk to Ammon.”
“I’d like to get in touch with Frank myself.”
Ben swung his long legs out of the car. “And why do you think I know Frank?”
“Your number’s stored on his home phone.”
Ben held her look, bland, polite, incurious. “Is it?”
“And Frank?” Kay went on. “Is he at his cabin?”
Ben turned back around now, fully toward her. “His cabin?”
“Is he at his cabin?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Ben,” she touched him now, her hand on his arm, she hadn’t meant to. “Is he dangerous?”
“Ammon?”
“No. Frank. It’s just, I don’t know, maybe being in his house and not knowing him or where he is, he and Maria. Sorry. I’m not explaining myself.”
He smiled, quick, confident. “I’ll talk to Ammon about those traps.”
He rose up out of the car. Kay watched him for a moment, he was impervious to the rain.