The Blondes by Emily Schultz

Author:Emily Schultz [Schultz, Emily]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Fiction, Literary, General
ISBN: 9780385671064
Google: uNBTXetwxJEC
Goodreads: 13531639
Publisher: Doubleday Canada
Published: 2012-08-14T04:00:00+00:00

WHEN I FIRST ARRIVED HERE at the cottage, I really thought everything would be okay. I remember steering into the driveway, which was thick with snow. I figured Karl had been here for some time and hadn’t shovelled. I didn’t know that the snow could collect that way overnight, blowing, filling in the tire grooves. As I neared the cottage I could see Karl’s Mini Cooper under the carport. A stupid car for Canada, but it lit something inside me to see it again. My hands shook as I killed the engine. When I got out, snow squeaked beneath my soles. I pounded three times on the cherry-coloured door. My knuckles turned red as I waited. My breath went in and out. I called his name. The wind seemed to take it from me.

You know, of course, that it was Grace who answered. She pulled open the door slowly, after about half an hour, when I had already circled the place, sinking flesh-deep into the snow and getting it somehow under my pant legs and inside my boots. I was standing on the deck in the back and peering through the sliding glass doors. The place was aglow, and because it isn’t large, I could see most of it from there. The back of that couch, the old-fashioned record player, the king-size bed tucked into the alcove to the right where Karl and I did it that first time, not even separate from the living space. The only things I couldn’t see were the kitchen and the bath. I was about to resign myself to the fact that in spite of the car, no one was here, when I saw the boots. Sitting on the stone tile to the left of the door. When I went round front again, I pounded and yelled, her name this time, interchangeably with his: “Grace! Karl! Karl, it’s Hazel! Grace, let me in!”

I remember Grace cracked the door and all she said was “What do you want?” Her face peered out from underneath a turban, her narrow nostrils quivering. The turban was a thin white scarf, and it gave her the appearance of wearing a bandage around her head. I thought she might have been bathing, but she was wearing makeup. Her eyebrows had been stencilled on.

“Is Karl here?”

She looked down at my torso. “What do you want?” she repeated.

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