Théodora Armstrong - Clear Skies, No Wind, 100% Visibility

“Hm.”

“You want some help with that?” I take one look at Carin lounging in her chair with the half-finished beer and know she’ll get in the way more than she’ll help. “You can sleep in the bed with me if you want,” she says.

“No, that’s okay.”

“I can make room inside. It’ll get hot out here in the morning. Sun beats down.” Carin grins and watches me struggle with the tent poles.

“I’d rather sleep outside,” I say pointedly.

“I’ll leave the door unlocked so you can use the washroom.”

After staring at the inside of the refrigerator, Carin orders pizza for dinner. We eat at her dinette, the pizza box covering the entire table. Later I sit in one of the lawn chairs outside. Carin’s watching TV inside and it’s quiet, but for the occasional bug frying in the massive zapper she has hung from a tree beside the trailer. The contraption looks large enough to kill a small bird. A moth flutters around its fluorescent green light and gets nuked by an electrical current that lights up the patio. I stare for a while at the phone cradled in my lap and then call Anton. His voice is tired. “Were you sleeping? I guess it’s kind of late.” I say, checking my watch.

“I just finished my shift. How’s your sister?”

“Fine, same old.”

“She recovered quickly from her flu.” Something in his voice tells me he knows I lied.

“I guess. Her place is a mess,” I say. “She sold Mom’s truck. I wish she’d get her life together.”

“People do things at their own pace.”

“She’s twenty-eight, Anton. She’s going to be a waitress for life.” Another electric current lights up the patio.

“Maybe she likes waitressing.”

“Come on.” I slump back in the lawn chair and look out at the sky. I suddenly miss the feeling of Anton’s arms draped over me. “Why am I here?”

“Beats me. You probably needed to know she’s okay.”

“Who actually likes waitressing?”

“Maybe Carin does.”

IN THE MORNING I wake up disoriented, the air in the tent solid with heat. Sometime during the night I got turned around and I claw at the vinyl sides, kneeling on my glasses in the process as I blindly try to find the opening. The zipper comes into focus. With what feels like a gasp from both myself and the tent, I tumble out onto the gravel. Carin stands a few feet away with the ducks, a steaming cup of coffee in her hand. “I was wondering when you’d wake up.”

“What time is it?”

“Almost eleven.”

“What?” Across the street I can hear people unloading from the channel bus. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”

“You were snoring.”

“So?”

“So, you sounded tired.”

I climb into the trailer, looking for something to drink, and end up with my head under the kitchen tap. “I think I’ll sleep inside tonight,” I call out the window.

The rest of the morning I lounge in the shade of the trailer, reading magazines and clipping my toenails. I look for nail polish in Carin’s bathroom, but can only find an old tube of mashed lipstick and tanning oil. There’s still no food in the fridge (I ate stale Ritz crackers for breakfast) and Carin’s back in her bikini, sunbathing on a lounger, a huge glass of lemonade sweating in her hand.

“I’m going for a run,” I say, lacing up my sneakers.

“You’re on holiday,” she says, swatting the air. “Relax.”

“That is what I do to relax.” I stand to stretch my legs, leaning up against the trailer to flex my calf muscles. “I run every day.”

“Where?”

“What do you mean, where? Around.” I pull my arms across my chest. “Don’t you have work today?”

“No.” She licks at some condensation running down the side of her glass. “It’s a part-time gig, for right now.”

“What else do you do?”

“I relax.”

“You’re good at that,” I say, jogging on the spot.

“Sun’s different here,” Carin says, flipping onto her stomach. “Don’t stay out too long.”

I pad out of the trailer park and run along the channel, following the path that banks its edge. The heat hangs in the valley, stretches from mountain to mountain, sagging under its own weight as my feet raise clouds of dust. I enjoy the push against the swelter, the tightening of my leg muscles propelling me forward. It makes me feel capable, as strong as the channel rushing against the muddy banks. I take a detour into our old neighborhood, running past our childhood home, a split-level rancher with a wide green lawn and two-car garage. The new owners have changed the siding and planted some rhododendrons under the living room window, but otherwise the house looks as I remember. I run past the community centre where we took swimming lessons, the A&W where I had my first job, our old high school.

It was when Carin dropped out six credits shy of graduating that I decided to move to Vancouver. There wasn’t much left for me in the Okanagan, just motorboats and drunk driving, and I couldn’t stand to watch Carin fritter her life away. She never seemed to care, didn’t dream about anything beyond Penticton. When people used to ask her what she wanted to be, she’d make up a ridiculous profession, a monkey trainer or jellybean taster.

Mom died a few years after I moved to the coast. I thought the shock might spark something in Carin, but she stayed almost stubbornly the same. The small inheritance she was given was piddled away slowly, weekend after weekend. Somehow, being far away from her made me certain I wasn’t going to become her. Penticton became a reminder of all the things I missed about my mother, but Carin still ate at the little café near the beach where she and Mom used to go on a lazy weekend; she’d tell me about it as if it was nothing. “Went into Jenny’s today, had the best fucking bowl of soup.”

As I run along the bridge and onto the side of the highway, I try to draw deep breaths, but my throat feels raw from the dry air. Cars whip past me as I try to keep up my pace, but I’ve lost the rhythm. I stop and bend over, hands on my knees, and feel a wave of nausea pass through my body. I hear hoots behind me, a loud honk, and a whoosh of dusty baked air. The blue-and-red school bus drives by with several drunken knuckleheads hollering out the windows. I straighten and give them the finger — something Carin would do, but it feels good. “Morons,” I gasp, trying to catch my breath. Wishing I’d brought water, I start walking down the side of the highway, the ground shifting under my feet like a heat mirage. There’s another honk and a spray of gravel. I turn, ready to flip off the next bunch of assholes, but it’s my own car on the side of the highway. Carin sticks her head out the window. “Need a ride?”

Without saying anything I walk over and get in.

“You don’t mind?” she says, checking the mirrors and pulling back onto the highway. “I borrowed it. The keys were right on the counter. I needed some booze.”

I roll down the window and lean my face into the breeze.

“You’re red!” Carin says, looking over at me.

“I was running.”

“You okay?”

“I’m fine,” I say, closing my eyes.

“It’s just — you’re sweating a lot.”

“Just drive my goddamn car.”

“Well, I won’t say I told you so.”

“Don’t start.” I squint at her.

“You’re lucky I found you,” Carin says, swerving into the fast lane and cutting off another car. The highway swims in front of me. I’ve lost some small anchor.

“Fine, Carin. Thank you, okay? You were right.” I’m drifting.

“Is that why I’m getting the attitude?”

I brace my hands against the dashboard and lean forward.

“I can be right too sometimes,” she says.