Free Road to Thunder Hill by Connie Barnes Rose Page A

with his jacket.
    But the real clincher came when it was time to slip outside for a toke with the gang. I gave Alana the signal to follow us, and she nodded. But after waiting and shivering in the alders surrounding Emily’s Pond, Danger Dave went ahead and lit the joint without Alana. I kept an eye on the Roll-a-Way entrance but Alana never came. Maybe this was what Alana had meant about nothing ever being the same again. But when we went back in, there was Alana wheeling about the dance floor with her head tossed back and her arms out to her sides like always. I joined her up there on the dance floor and everything seemed normal enough until I noticed Kim and her friends smiling at us like we were the cutest little kids. I knew right then our days at the Roll-a-Way were coming to an end. We kids were being replaced by our kids.
    Now, for the third time today, I’m watching someone drive up my lane and out of my sight. My own almost grown-up kid. Gayl has had her license for almost a year but I have never let her drive in real weather.
    I watch the Toyota bounce up the lane. Gayl reaches her arm out the window to snap the ice off the windshield wipers. That snow has now turned to freezing rain. Earlier, I’d told her it was too messy for her to drive, but she’d held her ground and said, “You’ve driven in way worse weather than this.”
    â€œBut I’ve had almost twenty-five years of experience driving in this kind of weather,” I said, knowing full well I was about to lose this one.
    â€œAnd how am I supposed to get my experience? You want to tell me that?”
    â€œJust be careful. Gayl, I mean it,” I said finally. “And call me when you get to Gran’s.”
    â€œOkay, Ma. I got it,” she said, slamming the door on her way out.
    Now that the fog has moved in, I can barely see the Toyota’s taillights. I listen for the horn to toot before she turns onto Thunder Hill Road. It was Alana who started doing this tooting of the horn business but it has since become a custom and now just about everyone toots their horn as they leave my lane. Maybe everyone has a different reason for doing this but Alana told me it was to let me know that just because I was out of sight, I wasn’t out of her mind.
    When I finally hear Gayl’s beep, I can’t help but think she’s sounding it more as a good riddance.

6. Flue Fire
    T HE BATHROOM IS SO cold, steam rises from the tub as I take off my clothes. The sight of me shivering in the mirror behind the door makes me think I’d like to get rid of it. The mirror I mean, not the body. That I still need. But does a barely forty-year-old woman always need to be reminded of how she looks? I pull my shoulders back and when I tilt my pelvis forward like I learned in that aerobics class I started in town last fall, I don’t look quite so bad. Alana’s right that I’ve lost lots of weight since Ray first left for Newville. I run my fingers up through my hair, holding it behind my head. I wonder how it might look cut really short. Maybe I’d look like those snooty university types Olive and Arthur have as guests over at Kyle House.
    Normally, it is Gayl who stands in front of this mirror looking this way and that. It’s my daughter’s turn to be young and pretty, I remind myself when I see her posing. Just like it’s my turn to be, what? A middle-aged woman? What’s so good about that?
    Then there’s Olive who goes on about a woman’s forties being the most productive time of her life. “Time to kick ass,” she says.
    No wonder Olive says that. The year she turned forty was when she took possession of my father’s house and moved her own ass down here.
    And I’m here looking at my ass in the mirror and wondering how far it will have dropped by the time I’m fifty. Fifty! Fuck.
    I wince when I step into the bath water, water that feels slightly less than boiling.