Strange Fits of Passion Read Online Free PDF Page B

nearly skidded the car into the deep drifts at the side of the road. I hadn't seen that kind of snow since I was a girl. There must already have been several feet, even before the day's storm, and it surprised me that there could be such an accumulation so near the coastline. Pine trees, with their branches overladen, swept gracefully toward the ground.
    I watched for the turn onto Route One that I had been told to look for. Occasionally I could see a pinprick or a glow of light behind or between the pine trees, the only hint at all that the land was inhabited. I almost missed the warmth of the store then, the bright lights overhead, the reassurance of commonplace objects—a newspaper, a cup of coffee, a can of soup—and I understood why it was that the man with the handlebar mustache had lingered by the magazine rack, why the woman in the taupe parka had wanted to read her paper by the counter. I was looking at the pinpoints of light the way a sailor lost in a fog might strain to find the shore.
    At a bend in the road there was the stop sign and the slightly wider road to Machias. I took the right as I had been told to do, and drove for what seemed like too long—perhaps twenty minutes. I was certain that I had made a mistake—that I had missed a turn or had failed to see the motel—and so I reversed direction and retraced my journey. I was impatient; Caroline had begun to cry. I pushed the car back up to twenty-five, then thirty, then thirty-five. I was hunched forward over the steering wheel, as if that posture might help keep the car pinned to the road. But when I reached the village again—the lights surprising me too soon, it seemed—I realized I hadn't made a mistake. I sat for a minute, releasing my hands from the wheel as if they had been sprung, trying to make up my mind whether or not I ought to go back into the store for better directions. I imagined the people in the store looking up at me as I entered, and decided to turn the car around and try again. I glided along the coast road, took the right onto Route One, and looked more closely at all of the buildings I passed, just in case the motel sign hadn't been lit yet. As it happened, the motel was there, a mile or so beyond the point where I had stopped before, the script of the word
Gateway
outlined in lime neon. By the time I angled into the parking lot—it wasn't plowed, and the car fishtailed as I made the turn—Caroline was almost hysterical. I pulled to a stop near the only lighted window.
    The proprietor of the motel was an obese woman who was reading a women's magazine when I walked in. She stubbed out a cigarette and looked up at me. A drop of catsup or tomato sauce had congealed on her pink sweater. Her hair, a brownish gray, was permed into tight curls, with two circles caught at her temples by X's of bobby pins. On the counter in front of her was what was left of a TV dinner. In the distance, I thought I could hear a television set and the sounds of children.
    The woman breathed through her open mouth, as if her nose were stuffed by a cold. She also seemed to be out of breath. "I been waitin' on you," she said. "Everett called, said you were comin'. Nearly an hour ago, it was."
    I was surprised by this. I started to explain why I hadn't arrived sooner, but she interrupted me.
    "All I got is rooms with two single beds," the obese woman said to me. She turned back to her magazine and studied an article as if trying to concentrate all the more intensely because I had interrupted her.
    "Fine," I said. "How much?"
    "Twelve. In advance."
    A key was slapped onto the counter. A ledger with a pen was turned around. The motel owner said the words
name and address
as if from very far away.
    The baby began to squirm, crying fretfully. Bouncing her against my shoulder, I picked up the pen, tried not to hesitate, tried not to give myself away. I knew I must identify myself; I must now choose a name. I put the pen to the paper,