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New Jersey knows winter and how to handle it. Heavy-duty plows and coats, no snow days unless hell freezes over along with all the major highways. Regional hazing to weed out the weak. Lisa heads south without a hitch, navigating traffic and precipitation with time-honed finesse.
Out on the edge of Ohio, bare branches and stark rock faces spear into the air, gray on gray. There's the not-quite skid of tires on unsalted asphalt and piles of slush that have accumulated in filthy heaps on either side. The steady but vaguely unsettling whir of driving over it is audible through the stubbornly soothing music on her iPod. Here, there isn't much traffic, which is a strange but not unwelcome change from home. There's an old roommate a few hundred miles away, Thanksgiving just around the corner, and Lisa driving off in the general direction of both in response to one too many straws piled on the camel's back known as her job.
It's the pre-holiday time of year when people are meant to be stuffed like turkeys and sitting in sinfully comfortable chairs, fireplaces roaring and families laughing. Not bolting into the cold on their own like misfired bullets. November is an ill-conceived month for catharsis, and Lisa staunchly thinks of other things as she steers through miles and miles of clear country air too cluttered with snowflakes for her to truly enjoy. Her car protests violently after bumping over some large unidentified pile of roadkill she swerves too late to avoid, and suddenly her playlist is a lot less Zen. Sunset is streaking through the stony sky and the signs for Cincinnati are still giving numbers in the triple digits. She doesn't have service out here in the middle of nowhere and Bridget isn't expecting her until tomorrow and somewhere there has to be a hotel. Lisa vows to pull over to the first place she sees out when the wheel starts shaking and doesn't let up.
According to the road signs, there's gas within thirty miles, but precious little else. It's the only chance she's seen in a long time and the steering wheel feels hot under her clenched hands. A turnoff and an incline and around the bend of an unlined one-lane road she sees tread marks frozen into the mud and slush, a convenience store with old-fashioned candy barrels clearly visible through the big plated windows, and few desultory gas pumps next to it. A big yellow sign simply proclaims "Tires" and, below that, a discounted oil change for the month and a reminder for anyone needing an inspection for the next year to come and get it now. It's a mystery to her how many people could possibly know about this place or live nearby enough to access it, or even how far away the closest town is--maybe this sort of establishment only exists for people like her, unexpectedly derailed and needing assistance.
She steps into the store to the tune of a chiming bell and her own feet automatically stomping off against the industrial welcome mat. No sound but some muffled thumping from behind the shelves, and both her footsteps and voice sound too strident against the worn wooden flooring.
"Excuse me. Do you have anyone who can take a look at my car?"
The only other person inside is a girl scarcely visible behind a condensation-misted freezer door. Lisa waits as she finishes stocking six-packs and turns to her, nodding with an oddly aristocratic air. "Yeah."
She's expecting the girl to summon someone else, not to shuck on a jacket and ask for her keys. Five minutes later, they're situated in the garage and she's having her information typed into a computer and home is feeling incredibly far away.
"It's a simple bent tie rod, not a wake," chides the mechanic when Lisa's staring a little too forlornly at her Prius. "I can have it done in less than an hour."
"That's all?"
"Just needs an alignment and a replacement and you're good to go." She's gesturing towards the puny waiting area, which consists of a couple dilapidated chairs and some dog-eared magazines. "I can't say how far you'll go with the snow getting like it is."
Lisa stifles a sigh. "Is everything icing over?"
"Jersey plates and you end up in Carmodia, Ohio. When weather's this bad, we stay home." Her gaze slides sardonically over the screen and Lisa blinks back into a pair of startlingly green eyes. "I almost went to Jersey for school, but ended up taking on some things here." That's the only answer she gets before being shooed into the waiting area a second time as the girl turns toward the car, faded jeans hanging low on boyishly narrow hips.
The proceedings actually do take less than an hour. She kills time by checking her messages and finally getting through to Bridget, setting a tentative arrival time for tomorrow afternoon. It should make her feel better, having a shoulder to collapse on sometime in the foreseeable future, but instead it doesn't seem quite right. Like that time when she was eight, had a quarter for candy and the gumball machine was empty.
Afterward, she notices the girl's grease-knuckled hand clutches too tightly at the plastic when she swipes Lisa's card, all that capability from handling her car seemingly drained away. Ice on the ground, a sliver of moon visible behind fast-falling snow, and the girl—Remy, according to the nametag, a name that causes Lisa to mentally stumble over whether or not the E is meant to be elongated—stops her on the way out, hovering between the doorway and a frosted plastic canister of rock candy. "Look, you don't want to just plunge out into that. I've got snow tires. I can set you up with some of your own or give you a ride into town till you can get a fresh start in the morning. There's not too much around here."
Nothing but the silvery feathers of her own breath in the air and the click of a duly snow-tire outfitted car unlocking after she murmurs assent. Lisa goes in first and there are printed pages scattered over the passenger's seat. Too many common themes on too many sheets for her not to notice; she gathers them up too slowly not to skim and, after locking up, the girl gathers them away from her and into the backseat with a grimace.
Once it's clear that the road isn't entirely ice and the friendly neighborhood mechanic isn't going to vengefully swerve them into a ditch, Lisa shifts her gaze from the wet windshield and ventures, with artful neutrality, "Have you been working here long?"
In response, Remy gives a small snort that somehow sounds exasperated and disbelieving at the same time. "My uncle's place, he took care of me when my mother died. He's got some property and I've got a job. It worked out okay."
Lisa's sure that answering back instead in the script, but she pretends to ignore the note of finality in Remy's voice and does anyway. She still doesn't have a clue what a tie rod is and she'd prefer not to risk another one, but risking an uncomfortable conversation is comfortably normal. "I thought you said there wasn't anything around here."
"There is if you make your own fun. I've got a friend who's a beekeeper and another one works on a bison ranch. Haven't you ever had a bison burger?" Coming from this big-eyed, auburn-haired sylph, it should sound sweet and light instead of blasé. Remy maneuvers around a bend in the road with ease, her mouth twisting a little along with her fingers. Pretty, but not quite right. Sharp and empty, no sweetness left. Gumball machine without the gumballs. Lisa doesn't say anything for a minute.
"And that's why you didn't go to New Jersey."
The girl actually laughs, ice-brittle, ponytail shimmering as she shakes her head. "Okay, two things: obviously you're nosy, and obviously there's no point going off to school and blowing through your hard-earned money when you'll most likely be dead before you finish." A beat, then her voice loses some harshness and her lips press into a line. "My uncle made me get the test. My brother, too. His was negative and he's a lawyer now." Matter-of-factly, eyes flat. The road ahead of them is overrun with white. "There's a Knight Inn that's close by, if that's okay."
"You're okay with that?" She isn't referring to hotel choices and they both know it.
"I want to stay with what's left of my family and be comfortable in case I lose it all. Isn't that what matters?"
This is exactly the kind of question that isn't meant to have a yes or no answer, and Lisa doesn't fight it. "My family is all over the map and I pick and choose which parts I want to reconnect with."
"Must be nice," Remy says unconvincingly.
Lisa surveys her, and vaguely wonders if her vacation would have turned into a consult even if there hadn't been a few dozen pages of Huntington's information riding shotgun. "Are you symptomatic?"
"Not so far." The beginning of a frown forms between her brows and smoothes away as easily as the water under the wipers.
"Then why not take it into account as a possibility without resigning yourself to it?"
"Are you into self-help books?" Remy eyes her, rather distrustfully, and Lisa's hand twitches involuntarily toward the wheel.
"No. I just run a hospital." The second part is true, anyway.
Those cool eyes slowly close and open a few times. "Got a husband?"
Lisa is too surprised by the non sequitur to do anything but tell the truth. Maybe she really is on vacation. "No."
"Any kids?"
"Not yet." She doesn't want to talk about that, in particular. Tomorrow, there's Bridget, happily married ten years, with a set of twins and a permanently sunny outlook. Just the sort of infusion she needs in her life right now, provided it doesn't backfire and end up making her melancholy.
"So it's just you," Remy murmurs. "Running your hospital and doing what you want. Must be nice," she says again.
"Right." If she had the energy, she might muster up a laugh of her own, but there's a blocky gray building ahead of them and a sparsely salted parking lot already swallowing up the car. "I…" Remy's black and white hands are resting in her lap like miscast shadows and her face is turned the other direction. "I really do appreciate the ride. I'm sure they have coffee, if you—"
"I didn't count out the register."
"You told me not to be out there. At least come in for a minute. It's cold and you're a mess." Ridiculous, that's how she has to sound, and Lisa internally cringes. This mechanic isn't Eliza Doolittle, stepping in front of an audience long enough to wash her hands and face, have a life-altering talk, then continue on her way. Counting out the register is, at least, a reasonable brush-off.
Remy doesn't seem to mind ridiculousness. "Tactful." Her teeth are white and she looks younger when she smiles. "But I can't." Head tilting, a pale peek of neck visible between the loosened loops of her scarf, nametag catching the light. "If you need anything worked on, you can always come back here."
"Same to you." It doesn't occur to Lisa what she's said until it occurs to her to hand over a business card, maybe scrawl her personal email on the back before it passes into Remy's palm. Just in case.
By then, the girl is gone, tire tracks already filling with snow.