One
Saturday night
January 26, 2019
SHE KNEW it was stupid to go out in that storm. She knew it was dangerous. When Rosie Nukilik had first started out that afternoon, the city looked like the inside of the snow globe that she used to have, the kind that you could buy on Ste. Catherine street at souvenir shops—the sparkly skyline of Montreal with two skaters twirling in a plastic circle. But now, that gentle, snow-globe winter had transformed itself into a howling wolf.
The wind was blowing her sideways, and she struggled for traction on the narrow sidewalk. As she slid inside, the tunnel offered a blessed reprieve, and she briefly considered hiding there until the worst of it was over. She’d also lost one of her cherished mittens, the sealskin ones her aana had made for her when she turned twelve. She couldn’t feel her fingers at all anymore, so she tucked her right hand inside her jacket and then squeezed it under her armpit in the hopes of restoring sensation. She’d had frostbite last winter, when one fingertip had to be amputated from her left hand. She stopped to catch her breath. He said he would meet her in the bus shelter on the other side of the tunnel. He promised. But now she realized he wouldn’t be there. Not in this. Rosie knew she couldn’t stay in the tunnel and continued carefully along, palming the wall with her covered left hand for guidance. Her right hand held her coat tightly, to protect him as much as she could.
As she emerged from the shelter of the tunnel, shards of icy snow cut into her face and a blast of wind almost blew her off her feet. The storm was so powerful now that almost everything was obliterated. She’d never seen that in the city before. There was no skyline, no trees, no cars. She remembered those whiteouts at home, where in seconds you couldn’t know which way you were heading. You didn’t even know if you were up or down. Her uncle died in one of those, trying to get her baby cousin home after a party. The baby had somehow been found alive, but no one could imagine how. Her aana said it was his spirit animal who had carried him back to safety.
Rosie leaned back into the tunnel and watched as the waves of snow tumbled overhead. She and Maggie had dreamed of having a big house in the city, where they and all their friends could live. Where they would eat country food all day, and she would play the piano for them, singing all their favorite tunes. He had promised her a piano. She looked back into the tunnel behind her but could see nothing—it had become like the black bottom of the bay in early winter. She tucked her face deeper into her jacket and pulled the bits of scarf over her head tighter, but her right hand felt frozen like a stone. She peeked into her coat. Amazingly, he was still asleep.
She stepped over the rail to make a run for it, but her feet skidded out from under her. She struggled to one knee, using her free, frozen hand for purchase in the snowdrift. Suddenly a light appeared through the tunnel like a phantom, like a revenant. She got unsteadily to her feet and tried to run. He had promised her. He had promised her.
Two
IT HAD BEEN a fantastic day. It was one of those days where everything could have gone wrong, but nothing did. Everyone showed up. No one had a breakdown. She had navigated the needs and egos of the several high-maintenance guests who had nearly driven her crazy with their idiosyncratic demands. Her own keynote speech was inspiring—she knew it—and her Women Smash the Glass! conference was a resounding, exuberant success. And it was her baby. She was the germinator—but she was more than that. She was the terminator as well. If anyone knew anything about Danielle Champagne, it was that she could see an idea, a concept, a way of life, and see it to full actualization. Yes, today was a great success. She killed it, as her daughter would say. At one point, taking in the entire conference hall from her lectern on the enormous stage and seeing her giant image projected behind her, she had felt dizzy with joy and satisfaction. There was the mayor, in the front row, flanked by Michelle Obama and Reese Witherspoon. There were young women from across the entire spectrum, from every walk of life, looking up at her like she had the answer to all their questions. She, little Danielle Payette from La Pocatière, had brought all these disparate groups of girls and women from all over North America together to find a common voice in the struggle against the glass ceiling that thwarted so many women the world over. If conferences like this could be held in every country, especially those where women were seen as barely more than chattel, they could change the world. In two years, she wanted to see simultaneous conferences in Mumbai, Los Angeles, Frankfurt, Cape Town, Jakarta, Sao Paolo, and Moscow. They had already asked her to organize next year’s, and she would be sure to at least double her fee. One of the main lessons she had learned over the many years was know what you are worth, and don’t be afraid to ask for it. She could hear her mother’s voice commenting bitterly on her success—Tu te prends pas pour du Seven Up flat, anh? Danielle smiled as she wondered how she’d translate that one for her American friends—it means you’re getting so full of yourself. She often entertained them with stories of her mother’s uniquely Quebecois expressions that even the French from France (FFFs as they were called here) couldn’t understand. Her mother’s other favorite was t’étais pas né pour un petit pain, which literally means you’re not born for a little bread. As an idiom, it means the small life is not for you. But the connotation is pejorative, like being an ambitious woman is unseemly. Unattractive. Danielle had resisted that kind of attitude her whole life. It started when she legally changed her last name to Champagne, the symbolic
snipping of the cord to her childhood self. Now she really wished her mother was still alive to see just how big a life she’d created for herself. Not her mother’s life, bitter about a husband who left her with five kids, a shitty old car, and a house with a mortgage that would take her three lifetimes to pay off.
Danielle smiled as she beeped off the alarm on her car and slid into the buttery leather seat of her white Lexus. But as she pulled out of the underground parking lot, her smile disappeared. The entire day’s experience had left her feeling so magnanimous that she’d told her assistant, Chloé, to go home early, as it was her father’s sixtieth birthday party and she was already late. But Danielle hated driving at night, and she was already regretting the gesture. She’d also had two glasses of wine—under the legal limit, she thought. Her regret turned to rage when she pulled out of the underground parking lot and onto Viger by the Convention Centre. The snow was falling so furiously that she couldn’t make out whether the traffic light was green or red. The few cars on the road were crawling along, and one was already stuck in a snowdrift, its wheels spinning and whining with futility. She considered going right back into the safety of the lot, but she too wanted to get home and into the evening she had planned—a bottle of wine and a piping hot bubble bath. Danielle soon found herself at the entrance to the 20, the highway that in the old days would take her home on a Saturday evening in twenty-five minutes, but over the past two years Montreal had been replacing its entire infrastructure, after years of using subpar materials in its construction. In broad daylight, the entire area looked like Beirut circa 1974. But this was no war—this was simply Montreal fixing what should have been built properly in the first place. In a snowstorm, with all the construction and detours, it was impossible to even know where she was. She peered at the road sign that loomed at her, too late for her to react. She was just trying to get home to Beaconsfield, but it seemed that every possibility had been closed by orange cones. She slid slowly over to the left lane, where a truck loomed out of the swirling tornadoes of snow like some avenging fury. He blasted her with his horn. Danielle was redirected to the right lane and had no choice but to follow wherever it led. Maybe she could pull over into a parking lot or a McDonald’s or something and wait for the storm to abate. Her Google maps app was calmly suggesting another route for the third time—her GPS could not keep up with the road closures that plagued Montreal. She screamed at it to shut up, and then punched it off. She inched along at about thirty kilometers an hour, clutching the steering wheel and peering out at the darkness, her windshield wipers swishing frantically and uselessly. The snow was just too thick, too relentless. She gasped at another sign that was briefly illuminated by someone’s headlights: 20 Est Centre-Ville. Somehow, she had turned herself around and was heading east, back to the Convention Centre. There were no cars out. No snowplows. No police. It was like one of those end-of-the-world movies where the hero is utterly, irrevocably alone.