Snow Road Station

ALSO BY ELIZABETH HAYAll Things Consoled: A Daughter’s MemoirHis Whole LifeAlone in the ClassroomLate Nights on AirGarbo LaughsA Student of WeatherSmall ChangeCaptivity Tales: Canadians in New YorkThe Only Snow in HavanaCrossing the Snow Line PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF CANADACopyright © 2023 Elizabeth HayAll rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published in 2023 by Alfred A. Knopf Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto. Distributed in Canada by Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.www.penguinrandomhouse.caKnopf Canada and colophon are registered trademarks.Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in PublicationTitle: Snow Road Station : a novel / Elizabeth Hay.Names: Hay, Elizabeth, 1951- author.Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20220261008 | Canadiana (ebook) 20220261016 | ISBN 9781039003323 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781039003330 (EPUB)Classification: LCC PS8565.A875 S66 2023 | DDC C813/.54—dc23Text design: Kelly Hill, adapted for ebookCover design: Kelly HillCover art by Shannon Pawliw; (falling snow pattern) Creativika Graphics / Adobe Stock Imagesa_prh_6.0_143153840_c0_r0 with love and gratitudeMartha Kanya-ForstnerChristopher MacLehose Grow accustomed to the desertand the starpouring down its incandescentrays, which arejust a lamp to guide the treasuredchild who’s lateJoseph Brodsky, “Lullaby” CONTENTSCoverAlso by Elizabeth HayTitle PageCopyrightDedicationEpigraphProloguePart 1: SnowChapter 1Chapter 2Chapter 3Chapter 4Chapter 5Chapter 6Chapter 7Chapter 8Chapter 9Chapter 10Chapter 11Chapter 12Chapter 13Chapter 14Chapter 15Chapter 16Part 2: RoadChapter 1Chapter 2Chapter 3Chapter 4Chapter 5Chapter 6Part 3: StationChapter 1Chapter 2Chapter 3Chapter 4Chapter 5Chapter 6Chapter 7Chapter 8AcknowledgementsAbout the Author Fields go back to forest, first love runs to fat.Lulu was alone when she left the theatre. In the cold night air beyond the stage door, she replayed that last scene in her mind: the private audience after the audience had left. The sound of him coming down the hall, calling to the four winds, surfing on his own hearty and unstoppable momentum, “Let’s see! Let’s see if she recognizes my voice!” She had swung around in her chair and there in her dressing room door was Orson Welles gone to wrack and ruin.“Lu,” he grinned, “it’s Tony Lloyd.”Milder shocks have turned a person grey overnight. The last time they had been together, in a sailboat on her lake of bays, his hips would have slid into Cinderella’s slipper. What a transformation from heartthrob to this: bloated face, shaggy white hair and beard, wild moustache.“Honey, you’re a mess,” she said, getting to her feet in amazement. “You should lay off those candy bars.”Laughing, he engulfed her in a hug from their hippie days and her embarrassment burned deeper. “You saw the play,” she said, and winced.But his sheepish smile. “I wanted to. I saw the ad in the Citizen, but I had a commitment I couldn’t break.” He pulled up a chair and settled beside her, resting his hands on her forearms, lightly, in the old way, before letting them fall between his knees. He was bulky in his winter coat, a man out of a tall tale.She had been crazy about him all those years ago, his way of being a bad boy but kind, living on coffee and cigarettes, wearing jeans without underwear, collecting books but never reading them, disarming her with eager loving that cost him nothing. Had he ever given her a present? Not even at Christmas.And now they were sixty-two years old and it was snowing again. She raised her collar, turned her back on the dark fortress of a theatre, and headed in the direction of Confederation Park and her hotel. The eerie quiet of downtown Ottawa on a Saturday night in March. Every time she had looked up these last few weeks it was snowing. On her walks to the river, dinning her lines into her head, snow came over her boots. She remembered her mother saying that across the river, in Quebec, they call the snow that falls in March a broom that sweeps away the old snow. What a cunning way to soften the blow of the never-ending accumulation. This snow is helping to get rid of that snow. This broken heart is getting rid of that broken heart.Had she recognized his voice? Only after he began telling her about himself, how he was a businessman based in Asia, “although my business isn’t really kosher,” he’d chuckled, taking her into his confidence in his old unabashed way. Listening to him, the play and her humiliation receded. The bare wire of the past touched the bare wire of the present and zapped her heart. 1979 then, 2008 now.In the park she rested her eyes on the lampposts: snow globes turned upside down, their spotlit cascades sweeping sideways, then dashing down, then up again, then down, riding the nerve ends of every air current. Effortless, she thought. A beautiful performance for an audience of one.Despite the hour, she too was on the move. Her car was in the hotel’s parking lot, her suitcase in the trunk. She wasn’t driving back to Montreal, she was escaping to her lake of bays.=Almonte, Middleville, Hopetown—she had known these dots on the map since childhood. The two-lane road curved its way west, gradually rising into the Lanark Highlands. On either side were sloping white fields, up late and reading themselves in the dark. Nan would be awake too, waiting for her, wanting to hear how it went, and what could she say? That she had muffed her lines and it was like falling from a great height: the bottom came up so slowly to meet her. What’s the line? The last one, yes, but what’s the next one? Come on. What’s the next line? Dry mouth, icy hands, the full-on horror of her vision going dark at the edges—as if she were about to faint—and all she had was a strange hyper-focus on not knowing what came next and the audience’s growing dismay. “Line! Line!” Until the prompter fed her Winnie’s next words in a