“Fucking Saskatchewan,” I said, looking out the car window at the endless landscape of nothing.
Daddy glanced over at me from driving. I refused to look at him. It was entirely his fault that we were back in this province. I was perfectly happy to leave this place behind after I graduated high school three years ago. I was going to be cranky this entire drive. I knew it and he knew it. At least he had the sense not to try and make things better.
We were already in improv mode. Because of airline delays we didn’t arrive in Regina until 11 last night. Rather than try to drive to Kipling in the dark and arrive after midnight, he decided we’d just get a hotel and head out in the morning.
I would have preferred to go to Kipling in the pitch black. At least I wouldn’t be subjected to the endless fields of grain. It felt like it was closing in on me. I tried telling him it’s not like he had to worry about many twists and turns in the road, but he said the hotel was a better idea, and that was that. I later remembered he didn’t like driving when it was dark anymore and felt a little guilty about that. He was also probably hoping a good night’s sleep might take care of some of yesterday’s crankiness. My current mood and body language were destroying that theory.
The trip was a little less than two hours, which was probably just as well. It’s not like I was in a hurry to get there, but much more than two hours of never-ending fields of grain would likely drive me mad.
I sighed again, took my feet out of my sandals, put them up on the dashboard, and leaned back in the car seat. Staring at the roof of the car was a better option. I had made this trip approximately 10, 000 times in my life. There was nothing new for me to see.
The feet on the dashboard was Daddy’s breaking point. He always had a thing about it, considering it rude. Most guys would be happy with the opportunity to look at my legs, but he does get to see a lot of them already.
“Kitten,” he started.
“Better start calling me Ashley again, Ben,” I said. I caught him wincing out of the corner of my eye. “If you call me Kitten in front of mom she’ll call out the whole town to stage an intervention. If I call you Daddy she’ll probably have the RCMP shoot you.”
“Yes, I know you don’t want to do this. Yes, I know this is going to be… uncomfortable for you,” he said, which was the understatement of the year. “But I think your mom and I should meet at least once. You’re her only child. If nothing else, I’m curious to see what she’s like.”
“We’re nothing alike,” I said. I hoped this would preemptively cut off any attempt at talking about our similarities.
“Yeah, and Beth said that about her mom before I met her, and Meg said the same thing about her mom. Every woman around your age swears they are nothing like their mom except, of course, there are things in common. It would be crazy if there weren’t.”
I could feel myself boiling up again and barely managed to beat it back down. We so rarely fought that we didn’t know the rules of engagement. How far we could push the other before knowing we had gone too far. The instant I felt the urge to snarl something about his mom was when I knew I needed to shut up. It would be unimaginably cruel to do that.
Besides, we were just rehashing arguments that we’ve been having for the last two weeks, ever since he and Susan tricked me into making this trip. Aside from knowing the disaster waiting for me at the end of this highway, I also hated being guilted into doing something. What’s worse, Daddy knew what he was doing and seemed perfectly ok with it, because he knew what was best for me.
He had a 99% accuracy rate on that belief. Most times I found it sexy that he believed that. But this was the 1% time where he was dead wrong.
“You’ll see soon enough, Ben,” I said, just to remove any doubt how pissed off I was. “There’s no way this goes well.”
He looked like he was going to respond, but instead turned back to focus on the road.
****
(Three weeks earlier)
After mom sent me that text back in May, Daddy had been unsubtle in thinking I should attempt to make amends with her. I understood why. Of course I did. His mom was dying, and he thought I should try and grab every moment with mine while I could.
However, I sucked at explaining my mom’s motivations. We’d spent years fighting with each other. Then I had a whole year where she vanished from my life and it was amazing. I’d never tell Daddy, but part of the reason the last year had been so great was not thinking about her. A huge weight went poof.
Still, I wrote back to her and confirmed I was alive and would see what I could do about coming out for a visit, as I was pretty busy with school and work. There were a few other texts back and forth, but I was determined not to commit to going. Besides, I figured working on the tv show would keep me busy well into August. Then Daddy was taking me on vacation, and then it was back to school. Oops, no time for a trip to Saskatchewan. So sorry. I’ll text you a picture of the wedding.
Three weeks ago that plan fell apart. It was late July and the tv show was getting ready to go on an extended break. We’d filmed 12 episodes, which would start airing in September. Depending on how they did, the crew would come back to work on it some more. If not, that was that.