Skinnybones and the Wrinkle Queen by Glen Huser

say, I need to hear. About one percent. Likewhich side street will give me a light onto Stony Plain. But the other ninety-nine percent I could do without. Look out for that street fountain...now be sure and signal...I didn’t see you shoulder check...yadda yadda yadda. She’s yammered on so much that she’s practically dead from exhaustion by the time we get back to the house.
    Still, she has some of her brandy in a little glass that looks like it should be hanging from a chandelier. I let her pour me a taste, too. It’s pretty awful, but I pretend I like it.
    We clink glasses.
    â€œTo Wagner.” The Wrinkle Queen raises her glass. “Dreadful man but the source of the most wonderful music ever written.”
    â€œDreadful?”
    â€œWomanizer. Racist. Egomaniac.” The words sound almost like praise the way she says them.
    â€œTo the journey,” I say, “and may all our expectations be met.”
    â€œRemember, dear.” Miss Barclay drains her glass. “Dickens was being ironic. Maybe, like wearing black dresses, you’re a little too young for irony.”

18
    It seems like I’ve just fallen asleep when I’m awake again. But it is three o’clock, I can see by the relentless red digits of the clock on my bureau. It’s not easy getting out of bed, but I manage — I don’t want to wake Skinnybones. She’ll need her energy for that drive.
    There’s a kind of wonder to the night. Witching hours, I guess. The light of the street lamp shining through the living-room sheers onto the Persian rug. Without even thinking about it, I make a tour of the house. Very slowly. Using this wretched walker contraption. But slow is fine at night.
    Skinnybones is fast asleep in what used to be Raymond’s room, the one I turned into a study with a pull-out couch. Asleep, she looks as if she were twelve instead of nearly sixteen.
    Lord, Jean Barclay! What have you gotten yourself into?
    In the kitchen, I treat myself to a smoke and another bit of brandy — mindful of its sleep-inducing attributes. When I do get back into bed, the clock reminds me, minute by minute, of the slothlike passage of time. 5:17. And then I do drift off.
    Someone touching my hand stirs me. At first it seems like it might be Mama, waking me to go to school. That’s how she’d do it. Even when I was older and going to Normal School. Just tapping my hand.
    â€œTime to get up.”
    â€œMmm. What time is it?” Can that be my voice?
    And it isn’t Mama. It’s someone else.
    â€œSeven o’clock.”
    I see it’s the girl. Skinnybones. Her hair all spiky.
    â€œThere’s coffee on.”
    She’s a bundle of energy. Almost doing a little dance as she gets me into the clothes I had her lay out on my bedroom armchair last night.
    â€œSettle down,” I tell her. “No one’s going to run away with the road. Where are my cigarillos?”
    She’s a terrible driver, I realize, when we get out onto the highway. Poking along ten kilometers below the speed limit, drifting over lane lines, driving half way onto the shoulder at times.
    â€œYou might want to get over and let that dump truck by,” I suggest.
    â€œGod. He’s got other lanes!”
    â€œBut you’re driving in the fast lane and you’re going slower than the rest of the traffic. Now get over.” I haven’t lost it, the voice that could send students hurrying from the classroom into the hall or down to the principal’s office.
    She changes lanes abruptly without a proper shoulder check, and a huge semi blares its horn at her, frightening her so badly that she scoots totally over onto the shoulder and stops. I expect she’s going to cry but instead she just grips the steering wheel and clenches her teeth and utters a couple of choice oaths. It seems like a good time to light a smoke and settle my own nerves.
    Finally she turns and glares at