What You Take with You by Therese Greenwood

Author:Therese Greenwood [Therese Greenwood]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781772124699
Publisher: The University of Alberta Press

8

THE CAT PHOTO

IT WAS 4:00 AM when we finally arrived in Edmonton—twelve hours since leaving City Hall—and somehow, on the very last leg of our journey, we made our first wrong turn. We missed the off-ramp and drove away from the hotel a friend booked for us while we drove. Now the little blue dot on the online map was moving in the opposite direction. We were tired and thirsty, sweaty without air conditioning, choked with smoke and ash and hoarse from talking to stay awake. I kept my eyes clapped on the little blue dot and willed it across the finish line.

I have never felt so relieved as when we finally tumbled though the door of an ordinary beige room in a business-travel hotel near the West Edmonton Mall. It was the end of a journey that started with me alone and scrambling madly in our home, making split-second decisions about what to take and tossing the items into a small blue box. After a too-long evacuation of our neighbourhood, stop-and-go in a lineup on the only road, watching ash waft down to coat the windshield, I had made it to Steve’s workplace. Then the two of us travelled for hours in thirty-four-degree Celsius heat, me answering emails and text messages from frightened family members while Steve drove past flames and through clouds of smoke. Then there we were, in a clean, well-lit hotel room.

We had no night clothes or toiletries when we arrived, not even a toothbrush. In the rush to leave, I hadn’t thought to pack the ordinary items that I’d normally take on a trip. Our clothes were soaked with smoke but we weren’t aware of the woodsy musk until we walked into a spotless hotel room. We showered and slid between the crisp, clean sheets, falling instantly asleep.

When we awoke, we had a lingering worry that everyone had not made it out of the chaos alive, that there was much we didn’t know. We tried to be cautiously optimistic. But if we got up we would turn on the television to watch the morning news, which was something we usually did when travelling. When we turned on the news we would see more images of an inferno and long lines of slow-moving cars. We would see the same on the front page of the newspaper on the stand in the hallway by the elevators. But we couldn’t just lie there.

“Let’s get up,” I said.

“Good idea,” said Steve.

“If we get up now and then go to bed early we can get back on a regular schedule,” I said. “Like we just flew to Europe and we’re adjusting to the local time zone.”

“Good idea,” said Steve. “Let’s do it.”

But we didn’t. We lay on our backs and held hands in the king-sized bed, curtains closed, not checking phones or emails. We talked about how lucky we were, how well our little car had done, how one tank of gas had lasted so long, how well Steve had

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