An Ordinary Violence by Adriana Chartrand EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Adriana Chartrand
- Language: English
- Genre: Magical Realism
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
The drive home takes Dawn three days. West, then north, down undulating
highways, jockeying for space with the massive semis that burn past,
rattling her small car and making her white-knuckle the wheel and swear
under her breath. The landscape flattens by increments as she speeds along.
Her calf cramps terribly, because she doesn’t trust cruise control, because
she doesn’t drink enough water. She calls and books roadside motels for the
night while she eats what passes for lunch at fluorescent-lit gas stations.
The highway at night is a strange, in-between space, a place that is no
place. She’s contained and suspended in her car, a pinprick of existence
travelling outside of time. The numbing sameness of the road allows her to
make an uneasy peace with her thoughts that she needs right now. Still, her
body is betraying her, cramping and hurting. Her stomach doing bigger flips
the closer she gets.
There’s a train at the crossing, so she throws the car in park and chews on
her bottom lip. She’s twenty minutes out from the city. The train rolls by
slowly, its cars brown-brown-brown, then every colour, big looping graffiti
covering every third or fourth car. They blur together, and she looks at the
empty, open fields around her and realizes her lip is bleeding.
The train’s last car rolls past. She drums her fingers on the steering
wheel. The asphalt in the distance gleams with what looks like glistening
water that constantly recedes as she approaches. She ignores her churning
stomach and follows the vanishing water.
Everything looks the fucking same, Dawn thinks as she pulls onto the
loose gravel driveway of her childhood home.
It’s a bungalow with a grey slate roof. The A-frame roof hangs low,
reaching for the grass on either side of the house, shrouding the windows
and front door like a creature peering out from the underbrush. Dawn cuts
the engine and sits behind the wheel, one leg jiggling restlessly up and
down. The car is already heating up and beads of sweat roll from her
hairline down her back, following a preordained route to the crack of her
ass.
It’s August, a month of long, oppressive days on the prairies. The sky is
an imposing dome, clouds scudding low over the fields. Dawn shifts
uncomfortably. August, with everything beginning to teeter in its full
ripeness toward decay, always turns her thoughts toward autumn. Then
toward the coming winter.
In her father’s driveway, she gets out of the car, dragging her overstuffed
bag of belongings behind her. The bag is bulging and heavy, awkward to
carry, but still holds a pretty pitiful collection. Everything she owns at
twenty-nine years old, stuffed into a pink and black Reebok gym bag that
scratches her arm with its rough Velcro strap. It’s safe to say that her life in
Toronto didn’t turn out as planned. But she hadn’t planned, had she? She
doesn’t want to think about that right now. She doesn’t need to think, she
just needs to do. Get through this rough patch, and then make a plan, a real
one
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