Two

IT HAD BEEN a fantastic day. It was one of those days where everything could have gone wrong, but nothing did. Everyone showed up. No one had a breakdown. She had navigated the needs and egos of the several high-maintenance guests who had nearly driven her crazy with their idiosyncratic demands. Her own keynote speech was inspiring—she knew it—and her Women Smash the Glass! conference was a resounding, exuberant success. And it was her baby. She was the germinator—but she was more than that. She was the terminator as well. If anyone knew anything about Danielle Champagne, it was that she could see an idea, a concept, a way of life, and see it to full actualization. Yes, today was a great success. She killed it, as her daughter would say. At one point, taking in the entire conference hall from her lectern on the enormous stage and seeing her giant image projected behind her, she had felt dizzy with joy and satisfaction. There was the mayor, in the front row, flanked by Michelle Obama and Reese Witherspoon. There were young women from across the entire spectrum, from every walk of life, looking up at her like she had the answer to all their questions. She, little Danielle Payette from La Pocatière, had brought all these disparate groups of girls and women from all over North America together to find a common voice in the struggle against the glass ceiling that thwarted so many women the world over. If conferences like this could be held in every country, especially those where women were seen as barely more than chattel, they could change the world. In two years, she wanted to see simultaneous conferences in Mumbai, Los Angeles, Frankfurt, Cape Town, Jakarta, Sao Paolo, and Moscow. They had already asked her to organize next year’s, and she would be sure to at least double her fee. One of the main lessons she had learned over the many years was know what you are worth, and don’t be afraid to ask for it. She could hear her mother’s voice commenting bitterly on her success—Tu te prends pas pour du Seven Up flat, anh? Danielle smiled as she wondered how she’d translate that one for her American friends—it means you’re getting so full of yourself. She often entertained them with stories of her mother’s uniquely Quebecois expressions that even the French from France (FFFs as they were called here) couldn’t understand. Her mother’s other favorite was t’étais pas né pour un petit pain, which literally means you’re not born for a little bread. As an idiom, it means the small life is not for you. But the connotation is pejorative, like being an ambitious woman is unseemly. Unattractive. Danielle had resisted that kind of attitude her whole life. It started when she legally changed her last name to Champagne, the symbolic
snipping of the cord to her childhood self. Now she really wished her mother was still alive to see just how big a life she’d created for herself. Not her mother’s life, bitter about a husband who left her with five kids, a shitty old car, and a house with a mortgage that would take her three lifetimes to pay off.

Danielle smiled as she beeped off the alarm on her car and slid into the buttery leather seat of her white Lexus. But as she pulled out of the underground parking lot, her smile disappeared. The entire day’s experience had left her feeling so magnanimous that she’d told her assistant, Chloé, to go home early, as it was her father’s sixtieth birthday party and she was already late. But Danielle hated driving at night, and she was already regretting the gesture. She’d also had two glasses of wine—under the legal limit, she thought. Her regret turned to rage when she pulled out of the underground parking lot and onto Viger by the Convention Centre. The snow was falling so furiously that she couldn’t make out whether the traffic light was green or red. The few cars on the road were crawling along, and one was already stuck in a snowdrift, its wheels spinning and whining with futility. She considered going right back into the safety of the lot, but she too wanted to get home and into the evening she had planned—a bottle of wine and a piping hot bubble bath. Danielle soon found herself at the entrance to the 20, the highway that in the old days would take her home on a Saturday evening in twenty-five minutes, but over the past two years Montreal had been replacing its entire infrastructure, after years of using subpar materials in its construction. In broad daylight, the entire area looked like Beirut circa 1974. But this was no war—this was simply Montreal fixing what should have been built properly in the first place. In a snowstorm, with all the construction and detours, it was impossible to even know where she was. She peered at the road sign that loomed at her, too late for her to react. She was just trying to get home to Beaconsfield, but it seemed that every possibility had been closed by orange cones. She slid slowly over to the left lane, where a truck loomed out of the swirling tornadoes of snow like some avenging fury. He blasted her with his horn. Danielle was redirected to the right lane and had no choice but to follow wherever it led. Maybe she could pull over into a parking lot or a McDonald’s or something and wait for the storm to abate. Her Google maps app was calmly suggesting another route for the third time—her GPS could not keep up with the road closures that plagued Montreal. She screamed at it to shut up, and then punched it off. She inched along at about thirty kilometers an hour, clutching the steering wheel and peering out at the darkness, her windshield wipers swishing frantically and uselessly. The snow was just too thick, too relentless. She gasped at another sign that was briefly illuminated by someone’s headlights: 20 Est Centre-Ville. Somehow, she had turned herself around and was heading east, back to the Convention Centre. There were no cars out. No snowplows. No police. It was like one of those end-of-the-world movies where the hero is utterly, irrevocably alone.

She pushed the button to put a call though to her daughter and got her voice mail. Then she called Chloé but ended the call immediately. What the hell was Chloé supposed to do?

Danielle followed the road signs as best she could, but this was terra incognita—she could end up on a bridge and heading off the island at any minute. Or she could even drive into the St. Lawrence river itself, she thought. That would be a fucking ironic ending to her perfect day—not the kind of bath she was hoping for. Then, as the wind abated for a few seconds as though catching its breath for another blast, the sign for the Atwater Tunnel briefly appeared. Her relief was so palpable she felt like she was going to cry. If she could get through the tunnel and up the Atwater hill, she could just dump her car somewhere in a snowbank and go see a movie at the Cineplex there. That’s what she’d do. Or she could call her friend Monique and ask to spend the night in her condo in Westmount Square. This was just a snowstorm, and she’d survived many before, but the wind was now blowing so ferociously that Danielle could feel her car bouncing. As she entered the tunnel the wind stopped and for a few seconds, she could see. She considered just waiting it out in the tunnel, but it was much too dangerous. She could get rear-ended by a monster truck. Even if she locked herself in her car, she wouldn’t feel safe in that part of town at night. She sped up on the dry, protected surface and unclenched her fingers from the steering wheel—her hands were aching with tension. She slowed down a bit as she exited the tunnel, but the wind came up and swirling snow blinded her instantly. And then out of nowhere, a hunched, dark shape just materialized in front of her, and Danielle slammed the brake to the floor. She felt the Lexus starting to spin out, and then a sickening thud. Her car skidded off whatever she hit, slid perilously close to the concrete barricade, then righted itself and shot forward at greater velocity. Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. What the fuck was that? Was it a dog? Or a coyote? They are all over Montreal now, she read somewhere. It must have been a dog—she had seen it lurching in front of her, trying to get across the road but mistiming its run.

Danielle was finally able to pull up at the traffic light a few hundred meters ahead. It was swaying in the storm’s wind as though any minute it might detach itself and plummet to the ground. What should she do? What should she do? The dog might be badly hurt. Or dead. Should she go back? What if it was a coyote and now it was injured and dangerous? She couldn’t just leave it there. But she couldn’t go back. She couldn’t. She could call someone. Who? The SPCA? The police? But what would she say? She hit an animal and she didn’t stop for it? What kind of person does that? She tried to think clearly. This situation could be managed. She would call the SPCA as soon as she got inside somewhere safe and sound. Danielle clutched at the steering wheel and began the long, very slow ascent of the Atwater hill, her car barely visible in the whiteness that seemed to swallow it whole.