Me at 60's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

The wooden sign at the edge of town said PERTH in blue letters, and she read it twice from behind the wheel of the rental car. She was sixty. Her hip had been screaming since Ottawa, an hour back on the highway. Two weeks ago she had boarded a flight out of Calgary with two suitcases and left a drunk who lied about everything, and three cats she had fed that morning knowing she would not see them again. She had spent ten years waiting to feel better before living. She had stopped waiting. This was what stopping looked like: a rental car, a strange town, and her daughter's address written on a receipt on the dashboard. She pulled up to a light brown building with three floors, the bottom one sunk halfway into the ground. Her daughter came down the steps with the boyfriend behind her. They hugged on the sidewalk. The blue hard-shell suitcase sat on the curb next to a second bag, both scuffed from the belt in Ottawa. That was everything she owned now. She had budgeted her energy for the drive and the stairs, nothing more. She let them lift the heavier bag. The stairs to the second floor took longer than she wanted. She counted them going up, the way she counted most things these days. Her daughter held the door. The apartment smelled like someone else's cooking and someone else's soap. A folded sheet sat on the couch where she would sleep until they figured out something better. She set the blue suitcase against the wall and did not open it. Her daughter asked if she wanted coffee. She said yes. She sat down slowly, and the hip quieted by a degree, which was as close to relief as the day would offer. The boyfriend carried the last bag in and closed the door behind him. That was the end of the arrival. She was here now, under a roof that was not hers, in a town she had chosen from a list of places her daughter lived near. The quarantine hotel was done. The flight was done. The drive was done. What came next was the part she had not planned: how to build a life in a room that belonged to her child. She drank the coffee her daughter handed her and decided she would start tomorrow. Tonight she would sit, and the sitting would be enough.