After Drowning by Valerie Mills-Milde

Author:Valerie Mills-Milde
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Inanna Publications
Published: 2016-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

16.

THE DRIVE OUT OF THE CITY, north, toward cottage country, is like stepping onto an over-crowded escalator two days before Christmas. Pen finds the trip vaguely surreal. She cannot comprehend how the ugly, flat hinterlands of the city just stop, and the magic of the near North begins.

Maddie sits in the back, wearing a pair of pink sunglasses and lime-green flannel pajama bottoms in a polar bear print. Jeff had been in charge of Maddie this morning, while Pen had packed and organized the bags.

“Why did you put her in a pair of winter pjs on the hottest day of the year?”

Jeff has music on in the car and he appears at first not to have heard her. Then he shrugs. “Just let her pick out what she wanted, Pen. Couldn’t imagine it would matter.”

“What she wanted to wear? Kind of negligent, Jeff. She’s four.”

Jeff looks over at her and raises his eyebrows.

“It’s okay, Jeff. You just have to help her pick stuff out, give her the choice between three outfits. That’s how it works with four-year-olds.”

“I’ll remember that next time. So don’t call the child protection services.”

He disappears into his music and Pen feels as though she’s been dropped somewhere on a polar ice field. It is that abrupt, the abandonment she sometimes feels. She flips down the mirror on the visor, finding Maddie’s reflection there. “Why,” Pen asks, “do you want to be so hot?”

“I don’t wanna be hot.”

“So, why are you wearing those?”

“I wanna wear them.”

“They make you hot, Maddie.”

“No. This car makes me hot. And the sun.”

Jeff laughs appreciatively.

Maddie stares out of the window, kicking the back of Pen’s seat. “How long before we get there?”

“Maddie don’t ask that again.” Pen feels a dark shadow descend, a sense of inevitability.

Maddie continues to kick, with more gusto in her foot-strikes now. Deliberately kicking, thinks Pen. She twists around to face Maddie whose head rests against the car seat, her pink sunglasses tilted up like a movie star. Behind the glasses, Pen thinks that her face is almost contemptuous.

“Quit it, Maddie.” Her tone is cutting, abrasive. “Soon, is the answer. And stop kicking. I mean it.” Pen grasps Maddie’s ankle and firmly pins it to the back seat.

Maddie breaks into a series of dramatized high-pitched shouts. “You’re hurting me. Take your hand off!”

Jeff has the turn-signal on and he yanks the wheel to the right, pulling the car into a truck weigh station, abruptly stepping on the break. He slams the steering wheel with an open hand. Surprised, Pen lets go of Maddie and looks at him. His hands are back on the wheel, holding it tight, his face white, his expression pained.

“For just a couple of days, can you stop being so miserable? Can you make an effort?” He glares straight ahead, not looking at her. Pen is stung, ashamed. The car is idling, cars swooshing past. It crosses her mind that he will tell her to get out and walk.

“Alright. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Maddie.”

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