Wandering between two worlds, one dead, The other powerless to be born.
—ARNOLD
They drive south. Snowbirds now, Emily jokes. They follow a thousand mile asphalt route migrating south like the birds they glimpse high above in flying wedges. They speak of the birds, of their long flight and wonder how it is birds know their way. Mozart plays on the car stereo, ‘Eine kleine nachtmusic’ like flight, accompanied by the hum of tires.
They’ve prepared for this journey: through years of work and savings, of plans and dreams and annuities. Ross has spent a great deal of time on this, to get it just right, to ensure their crossing into the U.S. will be a secure one, to confirm their Florida ports-of-call will be ready and waiting. He has ensured Emily’s medications are sufficient. He has had their car tuned and examined, filled with the necessary fluids, given new tires. He has supervised the car’s packing just as a seaman would oversee cargo loading into his ship. On a journey of uncertainty it is best to be prepared.
Emily has packed carefully. She has arranged their summer clothes in neat bundles: folding the bright colours of golf shirts and sundresses into their suitcases. The cases clicked shut with an air of finality. Robert and Anne had helped them. Justin had wanted to go along. He’d sat in the driver’s seat and cried when they bid each other goodbye. Robert looked long and lovingly at Emily.
“So, I guess we’ll see you at Christmas, mom,” he said softly. “You take care.”
It was all he could say.
“Don’t worry, Robbie. The sun will be good for me.”
Then they left the solid brick house which had been their home. It had somehow grown bigger as they had grown older and Robert had moved away. They had rented it now to a French teacher, a new girl hired by Ross’ former school. She had loved its ‘quaintness’ as she called it, all the old things that were not old to them, the antiques which had never been called so before. Her freshness had bothered Ross, her thinking beneath her young woman smile that he was old and sexless.
As they left their town behind and the car crested a hill, Emily glanced back. Their town disappeared in the earth’s curvature as one would see from a ship leaving shore. They both felt a twinge of regret. They were leaving all the familiar things which had made their lives full. The hills were covered with trees, bare now in November, old trees now. He had seen them younger. There were still patches of snow from that first early snowfall.
He recalled tying young Robbie’s skates by the pond near the back of their house; remembering Robbie on the ice with his hockey stick. Ross would pass the puck and the boy would swing with his stick and plop to the ice: Robbie’s face ruddy red from the cold, the pond ice like glass.
The pond is gone now, filled in and paved over, all part of the new town growing around him through the years. Robert’s house is built where the pond was. He doesn’t remember the pond. Ross does. He has grown old with the town. He is its metaphor. The lines on his face match the lines of streets on the town map he keeps in his workshop.
Perhaps it’s just as well we’re leaving.
“Ross! Watch those cars.”
“Huh?”
“They’re slowing down for Customs. Are you alright?”
He doesn’t wish to be caught in daydreams. He answers back gruffly.
“I see them.”
She turns her head away knowing it’s not worth the argument.
They cross the bridge at Detroit and answer the usual questions: anything to declare, how long they’ll be here ... edgy about Homeland Security; but the man in the booth is not what they expected.
“Where ya goin’?”
“Florida,” Ross says. “We’re retired. Spending the winter down south.”
The Agent is a big man. He leans with difficulty out of his booth handing them their passports. He is a cheerful, compliant type; not at all the look Ross conjures of muscular Homeland Security. Still, the man has a gun holstered to his belt.
“You two don’t look old enough. I got six years left, then I’ll see ya down there! Have a safe drive.”
Through the long flat of Ohio they travel. Late in the day they pass through Cincinnati and into Kentucky. They stay the night at a Days Inn. Their room has beige walls and two economical prints hung above the bed. It is clean, though. It smells of Febreze. Emily is tired from the drive. After dinner she goes to bed. Ross watches the news on television keeping the sound low. He doesn’t feel like sleeping.
It is Monday night. He is not marking papers. He thinks about Andy Taylor, his assistant department head, his friend from his years of school. Andy would be working tonight. He was always diligent. Andy and his wife, Carol, had planned on joining Ross and Emily in some Florida Shangri-la. Emily gets on well with Carol. It would have been fine.
But then, last year, Emily had felt something wrong. She’d hidden it from him, making secret trips to the doctor so she would be strong when she told him. The dreaded word. The tears were his. She had done her crying elsewhere. Then came the operation and months of treatments. Emily with a scarf on her head; she would not wear a wig. She was always that way. He was the one denying.
Robert had called it unfair.
Was I so different? Bitter. Bitter.
“Are you coming to bed, dear?” Emily’s voice comes past the blue light of the television.
“In a minute,” he responds, trying to shut down the sound of his mind. “I just have to brush my teeth.”
“We’ve got an early start tomorrow.”
“I know. I’m coming.”
What is her secret?
The next day takes them up into the Appalachians. The hills are aflame with colour. Walls of russet and translucent yellow glow down the valleys, the sun like brass; far off they glimpse wood smoke curling up from a hilltop. Emily plans their stay on Sanibel Island. Ross will run in the mornings and they will have breakfast and swim. In the afternoons when the sun is too hot they will read. Ross can get started on Durant’s volumes. Some days they’ll take side trips to Naples or Sarasota or down to the Everglades. Evenings they’ll walk the shore, walk for miles. They will have late dinners. They will go to bed early.
“That’s just the first week,” he reminds her. “Then we’ve got the mobile home park.”
“Oh, I wish we could stay on Sanibel.”
“We haven’t got the money for that.”
“Ever practical Ross. What would I do without you?”
“Likely have more fun,” he says, smiling, for a moment forgetting his troubles.
They drive through southern Georgia and begin to see Spanish moss. It beards the trees. They look like old men. Emily’s metaphor. Emily says the trees look wise. She says it to make him feel better. The moss reminds Ross of his nightmares.
They stop for the night near Ocala. After dinner Ross jogs down a dirt road that runs through orange groves. The run loosens up his aches from the drive. When he arrives back he is pleasantly tired. He has not ruminated this time at all. The terrain so new and the trees aromatic, he has been able to put things aside. Emily phoned home to Robert while he was out. It is snowing that night in Ontario. It makes her feel strange to know she’s in Florida.
They turn in early and Ross, despite his fatigue, dreams again.
It is not the dream of before, not the sea. This one is jungle-like. This one has visited him several times. Familiar. Muck, lacing tree branches, deep greens and black water. He does not know yet that this dream will obsess him, shake his life as no other thing has. Eventually it will become the dreaded dream: the dream that returns time and again while he searches for its meaning.
He is driving a car; driving down a dirt lane under mammoth trees smothered in Spanish moss that sways as if it were conscious. He is on a quest with some unnamed goal. There is someone else in the car with him: a woman — some ethereal presence. Yet he can’t take his eyes off the corridor running between the trees to see who it is. The track is precarious. It is rutted and narrow and overhung with branches like fingers which scrape on the roof of the car. He worries about his car’s paint. He keeps to the narrow trail. The person with him is some kind of guide. She is not Emily. He does not know her, does not even attempt a look at her. The path narrows further. Danger on either side. Then the trees form a wall in front of them: a green leafy mass. The car can go no further.
He stops the car and gets out. The air about him is thick and hot. It stinks of mould. He can feel sweat trickle down his back. He spies an opening, an aperture through the branches, forbidding and shadowed. He sees his hand in front of him pointing down that dark tunnel.
“Don’t go in there, Ross,” the woman’s voice utters. Not Emily’s. “You’ll be alone.”
“I am alone,” he says back.
A hand on his shoulder. Cold hand. He shrugs it off but it returns; on his shoulder like ice. She is trying to stop him from following his path.
“Ross. Ross?”
A woman’s voice; this one familiar.
He comes heavily back to consciousness.
Emily shakes him gently, a silhouette in the darkened room.
“Are you alright, Ross? You’re sweating buckets.”
“I was ... dreaming.”
His heart is beating too fast, pounding. He is drenched in salt sweat. Emily turns on the light. The light snaps off the final fragments of the dream.
“Are you sick?” she asks quietly.
“No. No, I’m alright, Em. Just a nightmare. I’ve never ... it felt so real.”
Somewhere in the back of his mind: old, bearded trees. Spanish moss.
A guide?
“It’s passed now?” she says.
“What?”
“Your dream?” Her voice is filled with dread. She is frightened.
“What time is it?” he asks.
“Nearly five. What was it about?”
“What?”
“Your dream.”
“I can’t remember,” he says, lying.
“Do you want to get up?”
Anything not to think of trees.
“Might as well” — he tries to sound calm — “get an early start. Beat the traffic.”
“Are you sure you’re alright?”
“I’m fine.” He hears himself sounding stronger.
Yet the dream recurs in flickering traces as he drives. The yawn of the passage winks in and out of his mind. The voice warning him. Ross finds it hard to concentrate. Who was it with him? Who told him not to enter the passage? Emily discerns something is wrong. She knows better than to say anything.
When the rainstorm hits it comes with a fury. The rain pelts against the windshield, so hard and heavy the car’s wipers have trouble keeping up. Neither of them can speak now as Ross concentrates on the road and Emily marvels at the force of the storm. There are purpling clouds and splits of forked lightning and always the incessant downpour. From beneath the car waves seem to wash up from the road. It is hard for Ross to hold the car straight.
There is a truck ahead. It is splashing up water, along with the rain pouring down, making it nearly impossible to see. Ross considers pulling onto the shoulder but if he does, he thinks, he will become an obstruction. A vehicle might clip his rear left. He cannot stop. Road travel is really a matter of inches. Too far to one side or the other and vehicles collide. He cannot pull off. He grips the wheel tightly, Emily notices and gasps as he pulls into the passing lane. For a moment the liquid spatter conceals everything. For a moment he must drive on faith: that the truck driver knows he is there, that no one comes up behind him, that he will not hit what might be ahead. It is a very long, dangerous moment. Then suddenly he is past the truck’s splash and, despite the rain, can see again with his car’s wipers smacking back and forth at full tilt.
He relaxes slightly yet remains alert. The storm lasts twenty minutes. It is twenty minutes of tension which exhausts them both. And suddenly, the sun reappears, as though nothing had happened. The rain has soaked into the ground or drained efficiently from I-75. Only the trees droop lower, their grey beards weighing them down.
They drive in silence until they reach Tampa. The road becomes choked with traffic. It seems the storm has had its effect here. There has been an accident. They pass the scene of the mishap: a transport truck has run over a car. The car is crushed, the truck still on top of it leaning at a precarious angle. There are firefighters desperately trying to free the people trapped inside. Ross does not think they will be alive. The storm takes certain travellers for its own. They are thankful it is not them. Emily talks about tricks of fate, how someone could simply be out for a drive and suddenly life would change, or end, meaninglessly.
Cancer is like a car accident.
On the night of her birthday she told him everything. The cancer not cured: the tortures of surgery, chemo and radiation all for nothing except they have given her a little more time; Ross, a little more time. He had no idea what to say to her, how to comfort her through his own shock. He could only embrace her wordlessly. The candles on the birthday cake remained lit as the two held each other. She’d been making a birthday wish when she’d told him, knowing her wish would never come true. It was simply a matter of time.
“How much time?” Ross asked, desperation in his voice. “Did they say anything at all?”
“It could be a year. I don’t know.”
“Surely they must have a better idea than that?”
And with that declaration of his despair, Emily seemed to have gathered her power around her. She pushed him away just enough to gain an objective distance, impatient with his lack of thought.
“All I know is I’m not going to let it tear at me. I’ve had a good life and I don’t want it ending in bitterness. We have time left to do things together and with the kids. I don’t want you to tell them. Eventually they’ll have to know, but not now. I don’t want this to be the only thing in our lives.”
“Em, don’t say that.” But she was swathed in determination.
“It has to be said. I’m not giving in to it and I don’t want you to either. That would destroy me.”
“I’ll do whatever you want. I promise.”
By the time they’d returned to the table, the candles had melted, their flame gone, wax smothering the cake’s icing. Each ate a slice without the icing. Emily had insisted.
A highway patrolman waves them around the accident. Ross resolves to pay more attention to the road. Accidents will do that.
Bitter. Bitter.
At Fort Myers they cross the bridge that soars over the Caloosahatchee River and then leave behind I-75 for the first time in twelve hundred miles. They turn onto a little highway that follows the river and leads to the causeway for Sanibel Island. Over a bridge it’s as though they’ve journeyed back in time. The road is a narrow, slow two-lane with its blacktop cracking. It is called Periwinkle Way. Many homes along it are old and comfortable looking. It is not as it was, but close enough.
“Oh Ross,” Emily says, smiling, “thank God we came back here.”
“I was worried you’d be disappointed.”
“I expected more development.”
“It’s nice they left some of it.”
“We’re going to have a lovely time.”
“It’s still different. Older,” he murmurs.
“So are we,” she responds cautiously.
It comes to him abruptly then that they have arrived here together, yet somehow separately. This is the last time she will see this place. She has come here to end. He has come, he knows now, for some kind of beginning. Just what it might be he has no idea. The dreams are its harbinger; the dreaded, frightening dreams which will not go away.
“It’s going to be fine,” he says with another lie. “I can feel it.”
“Now we just have to find the cottage.”
“It’s up near the north end by Wulfert ... take a while.”
“Ross, we’ve got all the time in the world.”
He wishes he could believe her.