Circle of Stones by Suzanne Alyssa Andrew Page A

anxious, you’re supposed to list your anxieties. Like this:
Driving, traffic, high-speed collisions, multi-car pile-ups.
My mother’s rapid decline.
Running into my sister in Ottawa.
Having to talk to my sister.
    Bugs splatter the windshield, sacrificing sentence-fragment lives. Everything is progressing to an end. The apex of guilt is the exact moment you realize your time — for excuses and forgiveness — has run out.
    Traffic begins to thin somewhere past Belleville. I’ll spend the rest of the drive to Ottawa passing cavalcades of trucks, watching bright autumn trees scream by. I try to keep my eyes on the road as I shove my hand into the glove compartment. I grab a CD, struggle to open the case. My book-on-disc version of Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano reverberates. I sigh like an eruption.
    Four hours later I pull up to ARC The.Hotel, where I like to stay in Ottawa despite the absurd punctuation liberties marketers have taken with its name. It’s downtown on Slater Street. Close to everything enjoyable and nowhere near my sister’s house in Kanata. I hand the valet the keys to my Toyota. It’s a relief to feel my feet on solid sidewalk. I shoulder my laptop bag while my carry-on-sized suitcase is whisked into the foyer ahead of me. Check-in is a credit card flash and signature for an expressionless youth in a navy suit. I take the shiny, mirrored elevator up to my floor and fumble with my key card in the dimly lit hallway. The door clicks open to reveal a room so compact the bed seems enormous. A single green apple rests on a heaping pile of fat white pillows.
    Mom can wait a few more minutes, I think. It’s only mid­afternoon and visiting hours run until early evening. Besides, Sondra might still be there. I set my bags down, kick my shoes off, and sit on the spongy bed, my laptop balanced on my knees. I fiddle and click until I figure out the hotel’s Wi-Fi. I think about how my mother goes to sleep early. I type the URL for the National Arts Centre website and am surprised to see the evening’s performance by a Montreal modern dance company is not yet sold out. Filling in the ticket purchase form feels like a daring form of procrastination. The apple topples from the pillow and rolls down the surface of the white comforter. I grab it, recline on the pillows, take a few bites, and fall asleep.
    I wake up confused to strange lights twinkling through the window. I stand and look for clues. The lights are from a cluster of criminally austere concrete office towers. Double buses roar past. Ottawa at night. It’s too late to go see Mom now. I turn away from the uninspiring view and lift my suitcase onto the dark wood dresser.
    Mother can wait until tomorrow. I pull out the dark brown wool suit I’d packed for our visit. She doesn’t know I’m here anyway. Still, I avoid making eye contact with myself in the mirror.
    The NAC is only a few blocks from the hotel. I walk, my wool pants draping comfortably, even in the city’s continuous wind. A man in a wrinkled white shirt and tie, obviously worn all day at the office, holds the door open for me. I mill around the lobby among the small crowd of conservatively dressed middle-aged bureaucrats and unkempt students. Ottawa is a two-university town. Being back makes me feel plain and less expressive. Tired. I imagine who I’d be had I stayed. An NAC subscriber. A professor at Carleton, the more liberal of the two campuses. I would have malingered over publishable papers and research grant applications. I left because I needed to be bigger than my hometown. I was ambitious. My father understood. My mother kept asking when I was going to get married and have children, like perfect Sondra, as though that would cure me of my career.
    The lights dim and I hurry to find my seat. I’m a dozen rows back from stage left. I squeeze past an elderly couple and sit down next to a large bald man in dark jeans and