Who Do You Think You Are

amusements; it was too much to think of arriving in Calgary straggle-haired, cranky and constipated, with crayons spilling from the bag and a trailing blanket as well. She had decided not to.
    There were just a few other passengers waiting. A young couple in jeans, looking cold and undernourished. A poor, respectable old woman wearing her winter hat; Indian grandmother with a baby. A man lying on one of the benches looked sick or drunk. Rose hoped he was just in the bus depot getting warm, not waiting for the bus, because he looked as if he might throw up. Or if he was getting on the bus, she hoped he would throw up now, not later. She thought she had better take Anna to the washroom here. However unpleasant it was, it was probably better than what they had on the bus. Anna was wandering around looking at the cigarette machines, candy machines, drink and sandwich machines. Rose wondered if she should buy some sandwiches, some watery hot chocolate. Once into the mountains, she might wish she had.
    Suddenly she thought that she had forgotten to phone Tom, to tell him to meet the bus not the plane. She would do it when they stopped for breakfast.
    Attention all passengers waiting for the bus to Cranbrook, Radium Hot Springs, Golden, Calgary. Your bus has been canceled. Bus due to leave here at twelve-thirty has been canceled.
    Rose went up to the wicket and said what is this, what happened, tell me, is the highway closed? Yawning, the man told her, “It’s closed past Cranbrook. Open from here to Cranbrook but closed past that. And closed west of here to Grand Forks so the bus won’t even get here tonight.”
    Calmly, Rose asked, what were the other buses she could take? “What do you mean, other buses?”
    “Well, isn’t there a bus to Spokane? I could get from there to Calgary.”
    Unwillingly he pulled out his schedules. Then they both remembered that if the highway was closed between here and Grand Forks, that was no good, no bus would be coming through. Rose thought of the train to Spokane, then the bus to Calgary. She could never do it, it would be impossible with Anna. Nevertheless she asked about trains, had he heard anything about the trains?
    “Heard they’re running twelve hours late.”
    She kept standing at the wicket, as if some solution was owing to her, would have to appear.
    “I can’t do anything more for you here, lady.”
    She turned away and saw Anna at the pay phones, fiddling with the coin return boxes. Sometimes she found a dime that way.
    Anna came walking over, not running, but walking quickly, in an unnaturally sedate and agitated way. “Come here,” she said, “come here.” She pulled Rose, numb as she was, over to one of the pay phones. She dipped the coin box towards her. It was full of silver. Full. She began scraping it into her hand. Quarters, nickels, dimes. More and more. She filled her pockets. It looked as if the box was refilling every time she closed it, as it might in a dream or a fairy tale. Finally she did empty it, she picked out the last dime. She looked up at Rose with a pale, tired, blazing face.
    “Don’t say anything,” she commanded.
    Rose told her that they were not going on the bus after all. She phoned for the same taxi, to take them home. Anna accepted the change in plans without interest. Rose noticed that she settled herself very carefully into the taxi, so that the coins would not clink in her pockets.
    In the apartment Rose made herself a drink. Without taking off her boots or her coat Anna started spreading the money out on the kitchen table and separating it into piles to be counted.
    “I can’t believe this,” she said. “I can’t be- lieve it.” She was using a strange adult voice, a voice of true astonishment masked by social astonishment, as if the only way she could control and deal with the event was to dramatize it in this way.
    “It must be from a long distance call,” said Rose. “The money didn’t go through. I suppose it all belongs to the phone company.”
    “But we can’t give it back, can we?” said Anna, guilty and triumphant, and Rose said no.
    “It’s crazy,” Rose said. She meant the idea of the money belonging to the phone company. She was tired and mixed-up but beginning to feel temporarily and absurdly light-hearted. She could see showers of coins coming down on them, or snowstorms; what carelessness there was everywhere, what elegant caprice.
    They tried to count it, but kept getting confused. They played