Her name was Clara. She was seventeen, leaving the small town of Carstairs for the first time, bound for a typing course in the city. Her mother had packed her a egg salad sandwich wrapped in wax paper and a stern warning about men who offered to buy her a soda. Her father had given her a five-dollar bill and a handshake, as if she were already a stranger.
The train swayed. The afternoon sun cut through the window, striping the seats in gold and shadow. Clara felt her face grow warm. She looked down at her hands—chapped knuckles, bitten nails, a girl’s hands. alice munro wild swans
He went on, quiet, as if telling her a secret. “When they land, they fold their wings at the last possible second. They commit to the water. They can’t change their minds.” Her name was Clara
They did not go to the lake. That is the truth of it. They went to a diner, and he bought her coffee and a slice of apple pie. He told her about his wife, who had arthritis and rarely left the house. He told her about his daughter, who had moved to Calgary and never wrote. He talked and talked, and Clara listened, and somewhere between the pie and the second cup of coffee, the wild swans became something else—a code for loneliness, for the desperate need to witness something beautiful before the dark closed in. Her father had given her a five-dollar bill
Clara thought of her mother’s sandwich, now eaten. She thought of the five-dollar bill, folded in her shoe. She thought of the typing class that started tomorrow morning, in a beige room full of other girls learning to be secretaries.
He smiled. It was a small, almost sad smile. “There’s a late bus. We’d be back by morning.”
