The Box Garden Part 9

I nod, remembering the few slices of bread and the half quart of milk in the refrigerator. "Has everyone had breakfast?"

"Everyone but you. Judith thought you'd prefer to get some sleep. Afraid we didn't leave you anything though. She's gone for some more coffee and bread," he looks at his watch, "but she should be back in a few minutes."

In the kitchen my mother stands washing dishes in the sink; Eugene in a well-pressed spring suit stands next to her, drying teacups and valiantly trying to make conversation. Seeing me in the doorway he almost gasps with relief. "Charleen!"

"Well, you had yourself a good sleep," my mother says, not turning around. (Couldn't she even turn around? Does Eugene notice this greeting, this lack of greeting?) "Yes," I say, determined to remain unruffled. "I thought I'd be lazy today."

She turns around then, carefully a.s.sessing me from top to toe, hair, blouse (creased), skirt, stockings, shoes, and says tartly, "Mr. Berceau-Louis I should say-is dropping by this morning to meet you."

"Good," I answer, rather too lightly, "I'm looking forward to meeting him."

"In that case it's too bad you picked this morning to sleep in. Because you haven't had your breakfast and he's coming at ten o'clock. He's always right on time, right on the dot. We all had breakfast at eight o'clock. Toast and coffee. I told Dr. Redding," she nods sharply at Eugene, "that I hoped he wasn't expecting a big breakfast. We never were a bacon and egg house here. I can't eat all that fried food for breakfast anyway. We just have toast and coffee and always have, guests or no guests. But there's no toast for you. We just completely ran out of bread. That's something I never do normally, run out of things. I plan carefully. You remember, Charleen, how I always planned carefully. There's no excuse for waste, I always say. Of course, I didn't know Dr. Redding would be here, you didn't write about him staying here, or I would have bought an extra loaf. Martin always eats at least three pieces of toast. Not that he needs it. I told Judith this morning he should watch his starches. I never have more than one. I've never been a heavy eater, and a good thing with the price of food. Well, we're right out of bread. Martin even ate the heel, not that there's anything wrong with that. Waste not. Then Judith said, never mind, she'd go down to the Red and White. You'd never know the Red and White now. The floor, it's filthy, just filthy, they used to keep it so clean in there; you remember, Charleen, it used to be spotless when the old man was alive. Spotless. And they let people bring their dogs in, and I don't know what. I thought Judith would be back by the time you woke up but she isn't. I don't know what in the world's keeping her. She always was a dawdler, it's only a block away and it shouldn't be crowded at this time of the morning. And here you are up already. Judith thought you'd sleep in until she got back and here you are and there's nothing for breakfast. You should have got up with the rest of us. And here's Dr. Redding wiping dishes, he insisted, and he's in a rush to get downtown. But Judith said the two of you were up half the night talking away. I thought I heard someone up banging around in the kitchen. You and Judith need your sleep, you don't need me to remind you about that, and here you are up to all hours. How do you expect to get your rest when you sit up all night? You've got all day to talk away. The rest of us need our sleep too."

Eugene, rose-stamped teacup in hand, listens stunned. I have to remember that he has come unprepared, that he has never met anyone like my mother, that she has always been like this. Nevertheless I feel an uncontrollable tremour of pity seeing her this morning in her exhausted, chenille dressing gown, white-faced, despairing and horribly aged, her wrists angry red under the lacy suds.

I watch Eugene standing by the sink, slightly stooped, tea towel in hand, looking at once humble and affluent with his well-trimmed, wooly hair and faintly anxious and uncomfortable expression. It isn't difficult for me to imagine the questions taking shape in Eugene's head, questions he would never voice or perhaps even acknowledge as his own. Questions like: Why is Mrs. McNinn angry with Charleen? What has Charleen done? Why don't these two women, mother and daughter, embrace? Why don't they smile at each other? Why doesn't Charleen ask her mother how she's feeling? Why doesn't Mrs. McNinn ask if Charleen slept well?

As I imagine the questions, the answers too spring into being, the answers which Eugene would almost certainly formulate: Mrs. McNinn is angry because she is not in good health; she is possessed of a rather nervous disposition; it is probable that she slept poorly last night. She is, in addition, confused about who I, Eugene Redding, am, and she is somewhat bothered by the fact that she hadn't been expecting an extra guest. She is unused to house guests and is now embarra.s.sed because she has run short of food. But it is nothing serious; it will pa.s.s.

I am able to frame these answers because I know Eugene and trust him to find, as he always does, the most charitable explanation, the most kindly interpretation. Kindness, after all, comes to him naturally; he was hatched in its lucky genre and embraces its attributes effortlessly. Gentleness, generosity and compromise are not for him learned skills; they have always been with him, wound up with the invisible genes which determine the wooliness of his hair and the slightly vacant look in his grey eyes. It may, for all I know, have existed in his family for generations. He is not at the frontier as I am.

For me kindness is an alien quality; and like a difficult French verb I must learn it slowly, painfully, and probably imperfectly. It does not not swim freely in my bloodstream-I have to inject it artificially at the risk of all sorts of unknown factors. It does swim freely in my bloodstream-I have to inject it artificially at the risk of all sorts of unknown factors. It does not not wake with me in the mornings; every day I have to coax it anew into existence, breathe on it to keep it alive, practice it to keep it in good working order. And most difficult of all, I have to exercise it in such a way that it looks spontaneous and genuine; I have to see that it flows without hesitation as it does from its true pract.i.tioners, its lucky heirs who acquire it without laborious seeking, the lucky ones like wake with me in the mornings; every day I have to coax it anew into existence, breathe on it to keep it alive, practice it to keep it in good working order. And most difficult of all, I have to exercise it in such a way that it looks spontaneous and genuine; I have to see that it flows without hesitation as it does from its true pract.i.tioners, its lucky heirs who acquire it without laborious seeking, the lucky ones like Eugene. Eugene.

Louis Berceau arrives precisely at ten o'clock in a small, dark-green Fiat which he parks at the curb in front of the house. When he knocks at the back door, Judith is making fresh coffee, and Eugene has just left by taxi for the dental convention downtown, an extravagance which both shocked and impressed my mother. ("Doesn't he know we have a subway? Well, I know it's pokey, but it's good enough for most people.") Judith has been mistaken about Louis's height; he is considerably shorter than our mother, perhaps as much as six inches. And he is thin-certainly I had not expected that he would be robust-with enormously wrinkled, whitish-yellow skin; his gnarled peanut face-how humble he looks!-and his thickish, wall-like eyelids make him look like a dwarfed, jaundiced Jesus. This man has had three operations, I chant to myself. Three operations.

Judith puts down the coffee pot, and he takes both her hands in his and presses her warmly, a warmth which takes Judith by surprise; they have met only once before. Then he turns to me and I see him hesitate an instant before speaking. He has a choked and gummy voice-did tumors nest in that plugged up throat?-but friendliness leaks through. "So this is Charleen."

For a man, he has a tiny hand, harshly-formed, dry and papery as though the flesh were about to fall away from the gathered bones. His clothes, too, seem curiously dry, an old, blue suit, far too hot for today, with faintly dusty seams and b.u.t.tonholes.

Martin comes into the kitchen to be introduced, and with his hearty "How do you do, Mr. Berceau," we all breathe more easily. My mother, like a minor character in a play, has frozen during these introductions, literally flattening herself against the refrigerator door, nervously observing Louis's presentation of himself to the "family."

"I've just made some coffee," Judith announces.

"Exactly what I need," Louis replies from the top of his strangled, phleghm-plugged throat. "I've been up for hours." And with a rattling sigh he sinks down at the kitchen table.

"We could go into the living room," my mother says with the pinched voice she uses when she wants to be genteel.

"The kitchen is fine, Florence," Louis says, breathing rapidly. Florence! Well, what had I expected?

We sit down at the table while my mother finds cups and saucers in the cupboard. There is a moment's silence which I rush to fill; it seems so extraordinarily painful for Louis Berceau to speak that all I can think of is the necessity of sparing him the effort.

"I'm really very happy to meet you," I rattle away in anely. "At first I thought I wasn't going to be able to come. But I managed to get a week off work, and some friends offered to keep an eye on Seth-my son-and I thought, why not?"

Louis stirs his coffee and lifts his eyes in a disarming, skin-pleated smile. Gasping between s.p.a.ced phrases he manages, "We are so grateful-both of us-your mother and I-that you could come all these-thousands of miles-to be with us-on Friday. We are-we are-" he searches for a word, then with a final burst says, "we are honoured."

Honoured! Honoured? I glance at my mother, take in her tightly shut lips, and look away. Louis is honoured-how touching-but only Louis.

"It was Mr. Berceau's idea," my mother explains sharply, "to have a proper wedding. And invite," she pauses, "the family."

"Well, you see," Louis chokes, "I never ... never had a family."

"Well, now you do," Judith says with firm cheerfulness. (How easily I can picture her performing at faculty receptions.) "The children, my two kids that is, have exams this week, but they'll be coming on the train Friday in time for the wedding."

"I hope," Louis says, his thick lips cracking puckishly, "that I'll get to know them well in time."

He drinks his coffee with a long, pleasurable slurp, leans back in his chair-such tiny shoulders-quite amazingly relaxed. Again he strains to speak, and we lean forward, Martin, Judith and I, to catch what he says. "Do you mind ..." he whispers raspily, "if I smoke?"

He puffs contentedly on a Capstan, using, to my astonishment and horror, the rim of my mother's saucer for an ashtray. The smoke curling from his lips and rather oily nostrils makes him look exceptionally ugly. He has always-I feel certain of this-been ugly; he wears his ugliness with such becoming ease, as though it were a creased oilskin, utilitarian and not at all despised. And as he smokes, he talks, a light and general conversation, faintly paternal with a scattering of questions, the sort of conversation which has rarely filled these rooms. I feel myself grow tense at the obvious exertion of his voice, its separate sounds eased out of the creaking wooden machinery of his throat, dry, high-pitched, harshly monotone, a voice pitted with gasped air as though his windpipe is in some dreadful way shredded and out of his control.

Judith and Martin and I attend scrupulously to his questions, making our replies as lengthy as possible in order to relieve him of the torment of speaking. Turning deferentially to Martin, he inquires about his position at the university, and Martin, not quite blushing but almost, tells Louis that he has recently been appointed chairman of his department.

I am startled. Judith has never mentioned Martin's promotion to me; indeed, at that moment, listening to her husband describe the duties of his new office, Judith fidgets, rises, reheats the coffee, even yawns behind a politely raised hand. She has never pretended to be a standard, right-hand wife, but her nonchalance about Martin's success seems excessive, almost indifferent.

Is Martin himself pleased about his promotion? I wonder. It is difficult to tell because, with his academic compulsion toward truth, he outlines for Louis the enormous liabilities of the position, the toll it takes in terms of time, patience and friendship. Never have I heard Martin so expansive, never so carefully expository, and it occurs to me that he is deliberately prolonging his explanation out of an inclination to break through the aura of surrealism which possesses us, to flatten with his burly, workaday facts the sheer unreality of our being gathered here around this particular kitchen table on this particular late May morning.

Louis turns next to Judith-I am becoming accustomed to his dry-roofed rasp-and asks her whether she has read the biography of Lawrence Welk, a question which disappoints me somewhat by its ba.n.a.lity. (Already I am investing Louis with wizened, cerebral kindli ness.) No, Judith answers, she hasn't read it but she respects those who discover ways, whatever they may be, of uncovering currents of the extraordinary in even the most ordinary personalities. Actually, Judith protests, she doesn't believe there is such a thing as an ordinary person, at least not when examined from the privileged perspective of the biographer. What consumes her now, she tells Louis, is her investigation into the scientific impulse-no, not impulse, she corrects herself; in the case of scientists, impulse becomes compulsion. Louis nods; his twisted muzzle face registers agreement. Judith continues: science, she says, often drowns men with its overwhelming abstractions, snuffing out human variability and hatching the partly true myth of the cold, clinical man of science. Human whim, human dream if you like, become obscured, and for the biographer, Judith admits, not unhappily, the scientific life is the most complex of all to write about.

Louis questions me next-I wonder if he has rehea.r.s.ed the pattern of our discussion-asking me if dreams inspire the poems I write. (It is a morning for speeches, each of us taking a turn, except, that is, our mother who sits in one corner of the table, peevishly sipping her coffee and filling the dips and hollows of our phrases with nervous, trailing "yes's" and "well's"). No, I tell Louis, I never write poems inspired by dreams.

"Why not?" he creaks.

I shrug, thinking of the Pome People who treasure their dreams as though they were rare oriental currency blazoned with symbolic stamping. For me dreams are no more than rag-ends caught in a sort of human lint-trap, psychic fluff, the negligible dust of that more precious material, thought. To value one's dreams is to encourage the most debilitating of diseases, subjectivity. (Watson nearly died of that disease; our marriage almost certainly did.) To pretend that dreams are generated whole out of some vast, informing unconsciousness is to imagine a comic-strip beast (alligator, dragon?) slumbering in one's blood. The inner life? I shrug again. The poet has to report on surfaces, on the flower in the crannied wall, on coffee spoons and peaches, a rusted key discovered in the gra.s.s. Dreams are like-I think a moment-dreams are like mashed potatoes.

Martin awards me a yelp of laughter. Louis smiles a yellow, fish-gleam smile, and Judith, smiling approval, refills my cup. She is flushed with her own impromptu eloquence and proud of mine. And puzzled too. Is it Louis's questions that have stirred us? Or our desire to make him understand exactly how far we have travelled from this cramped kitchen?

After this it is Louis's turn to speak.

"With your permission," he begins hoa.r.s.ely, "I would like to invite each of you-you, Judith and you, Charleen-to have lunch with me." He stops; a coughing fit seizes him, shaking his thin shoulders with wrenching violence. We watch helplessly, tensely, listening to the dry, squeezed convulsions of his heaving chest.

"It's just the asthma," our mother tells us calmly, almost flatly, sipping again at her coffee. "It happens all the time."

Three operations and and asthma! asthma!

At last Louis's coughing stops and he pulls out a handkerchief and blows his nose noisily. Half choking, he begins again, explaining how he hopes to get better acquainted with us by taking us in turn, Judith today and me tomorrow, out for a nice, long lunch. (The order, I can only think, is dictated by our relative ages; Judith being older has priority, and I cannot help smiling at the thoroughness of his planning.) When he has finished his arduous invitation, he sits back again, smashes his cigarette in my mother's saucer, and asks "Well?"

Judith-brave, kind, curious Judith-leaning over the table and placing her hand on Louis's amber-stained fingertips, repeats the word Louis used earlier, a word which has never before, as far as I know, been used in this house and which is now being spoken for the second time in a single morning. "I would be honoured," she p.r.o.nounces.

"In that case," Louis says rising, "I think we should be on our way."

"You mean right now?" Judith stammers.

"I know a nice quiet place," he rasps, "in the country. It'll be after twelve o'clock before we get there."

Turning to me he says, "Tomorrow then, Charleen? We can ..." he coughs his parched, tenor cough, "we can talk some more about poetry."

Judith, a little bewildered, picks up a sweater and her handbag and they leave by the back door, walking together around the lilac tree at the side of the house. My mother rises at once to place the cups in the sink. Martin returns to his newspaper and I, following him into the living room, watch the two of them move toward the car; Judith is a full head taller than Louis; she seems to lope by his side.

It is very strange watching Louis walk to his car. Louis, sitting in the kitchen and puffing his cigarette, seemed dwarfed and bleached and freakish, like an aged, yellowed monkey, but Louis walking to the car is close to nimbleness; with his lightsome step, his short, little arms swinging cheerfully, and his head tossing as though he were searching out the best possible breath of air, he appears, from the back and from a distance, like a man in his prime.

We have scrambled eggs on toast for lunch, Martin, my mother and I.

In this household, guests have never been frequent: occasionally when we were children my Aunt Liddy, my mother's older sister who lived in the country, would come to spend a day with us. And there was a second cousin of our father, Cousin Hugo, who owned a hardware store, a large, fat man with wiry black hair and curving crusts of dirt beneath his fingernails. And once a neighbour whose wife was in the hospital with pneumonia had been invited for Sunday lunch, an extraordinary gesture which remained for years in my mother's mind as the "time we put ourselves out to help Mr. Eggleston." Always on these occasions when guests were present she would serve scrambled eggs on toast.

Doubtless she considered it a dish both light and elegant. She may have read somewhere that it was the Queen Mother's favourite luncheon dish (she is always reading about the Royal Family). Certainly she is convinced of the superiority of her own scrambled eggs and the manner in which she arranges the triangles of toast (side by side like the sails of a tiny boat), for she always compares, at length, the correctness of her method with the slipshod scrambled eggs she has encountered elsewhere.

"Liddy doesn't put enough milk in hers and I always tell her that makes them rubbery. If you want nice, soft scrambled eggs you have to add a tablespoon of milk for every egg, just a tablespoon, no more, no less. And use an egg beater, not a fork the way most people do. Most people just don't want to bother getting out an egg beater, they're too lazy to wash something extra. They think, who'll notice anyway, what's the difference, but an egg beater makes all the difference, all the difference in the world. Otherwise the yolk and white don't mix the way they should. Liddy always leaves big hunks of white in her scrambled eggs. And she doesn't cut the crusts off her toast. She thinks it's hoity-toity and a waste of bread, but I always save the crusts and dry them in the oven to make bread crumbs out of them afterwards so there's no waste, not a bit; you know I never waste good food; you'll have to admit I never waste anything. Most people won't bother, they won't go to the trouble; they're too lazy; they don't know any better. And I always add the salt before cooking, that makes them hold their shape, not get hard like Liddy's but just, you know, firm. But not pepper, never pepper, never add pepper when you're cooking, let people add their own pepper at the table if that's what they want. Me, I never liked spicy food like what the Italians and French like. And Greeks. Garlic and onions and grease, and I don't know what, just reeking of it on the subway these days, reeking of it; I don't dare turn my head sideways when I go downtown. Toronto isn't the same; not the way it used to be, not the way it was way back."

We eat lunch in the kitchen. Martin is quiet. So am I. Our forks clicking on the plates chill me into a further silence.

"Hmm, delicious," Martin says politely.

"Yes." I agree, forcing my voice into short plumes of enthusiasm, "Really good. So tender."

Afterwards she washes the dishes and I dry. Always take a clean tea towel for each meal. It may be a little bit extra in the wash but when you think of the filthy tea towels some people use .... Always take a clean tea towel for each meal. It may be a little bit extra in the wash but when you think of the filthy tea towels some people use ....

I yearn desperately to talk to her; to say that, despite my foreboding, I have been rather taken with Louis Berceau, that I am immeasurably pleased that he and she have found each other and she will no longer have to endure the loneliness of the ticking clock, the sound of the furnace switching on and off, the daily paper thudding against the door, the calendar weeks wasting, the reminders of time slipping by which must be unbearable for those who are alone. But the words dry in my throat; if only I knew how to begin, if only I could speak to her without shyness, without fear of hurting her. Instead I poke with my tea towel into the spokes of the egg beater.

"Don't bother drying that," she turns to me, taking it out of my hands. "Here," she says, "I always put it in the oven for a little, the pilot light dries it out; the gears are so old, I've had it since just after the war, it was hard to get egg beaters then. Cousin Hugo got it for me from the store. I don't want the gears to rust, they would if I didn't get it good and dry. I've had it so long and it will have to last me until-"

Until what? Until death? Until the end? That is what she means; the words she couldn't say but which she must have recognized or why did she stop so suddenly? I have never thought of the way in which my mother thinks of her own death. No doubt, though, she has a plan; she will do it more neatly, more thoroughly than her sister Liddy, better than the neighbours, more gen teely than Cousin Hugo, more timely than our father; no one will laugh at her, no one will look down on her.

Still, it may be that she is a little uncertain: the way she plunges into vigorous silence beside the scoured sink hints at uneasiness, an acknowledgement at least of life's thinned reversal, of the finite nature of husbands and egg beaters and even of one's self.

After lunch Martin carries a kitchen chair out into the backyard (my mother has never owned. a piece of lawn furniture) and there in the sunshine he reads a book of critical essays, a recent paperback edition which he opens with a sigh. He is, I suspect, a somewhat reluctant academic, preferring perhaps to while away his time with the small change of newspapers and magazines. Nevertheless he enjoys the warmth and the serious Sis ley sky, finely marbled, gilt-veined, surprisingly large even when viewed from the postage stamp of our tiny, fenced yard.

One-thirty. My mother goes about the house closing the curtains, first the living room and then the three bedrooms. (Much of her life has gone into a struggle against the fading of furniture and curtains and rugs.) Then she goes into the spare bedroom where she slept last night and closes the door. She is going to lie down, she is going to have her rest. She has always, since Judith and I were babies, had a "rest" after lunch. Never a nap, never a sleep, never, oh never, a doze, but a rest. She will remove her laced shoes and her dress, she will b.u.t.ton a loosely knit grey and blue cardigan over her slip and she will turn back the bedspread into a neat fan; then she will get into bed, and there she will remain for between an hour and an hour and a half. Sometimes she falls asleep, sometimes she just "rests." "A rest is as good as a sleep," she has said at least a hundred times. A thousand times?

Quietly I carry the Metropolitan Toronto and Vicinity Metropolitan Toronto and Vicinity telephone book from the hall into the kitchen and settle myself down at the table. I turn to the P's, running my finger down a column, looking for The Priory, Priory, the. For some reason my heart is beating wildly. But there is nothing listed. I look under the The's where I find quite a few listings: The Boutique, The Factory, The Place, The Shop, The Wiggery. But not The Priory. I even look under the B's for Brother Adam. There is no Brother Adam, (nor any other Brothers) then I try Adam, Brother. Nothing. telephone book from the hall into the kitchen and settle myself down at the table. I turn to the P's, running my finger down a column, looking for The Priory, Priory, the. For some reason my heart is beating wildly. But there is nothing listed. I look under the The's where I find quite a few listings: The Boutique, The Factory, The Place, The Shop, The Wiggery. But not The Priory. I even look under the B's for Brother Adam. There is no Brother Adam, (nor any other Brothers) then I try Adam, Brother. Nothing.

Perhaps the Priory is listed under Religious Houses or under Churches, but my mother has no Yellow Pages. I decide to phone Information.

It is necessary to whisper into the phone because my mother is resting a few yards away behind a closed door; she may even be sleeping. The operator is enraged by my m.u.f.fled voice and my lack of specificity-"Did you say it was a church?"

"No."

"Well, is it or isn't it?"

"I'm not sure. I think it is but I'm not-"

"Is Adam the first name or last name?"

"His first. I think."

"I have to have a last name."

"I've got the address. It's on Beachview."

"Sorry. I need the last name."

"But I don't have it."

Actually, I reflect hanging up, it was absurd of me to think that a contemplative man like Brother Adam would have a telephone. Hadn't he implied in his many letters his ascetic obsession, his distrust of cramped, urban industrial society? A man like Brother Adam would never put himself in bondage to Bell Telephone; a man like Brother Adam would no sooner have a telephone than he would own a car. (He does, however, have a typewriter-all his letters were typewritten-but it is undoubtedly a manual model.) I carry the phone book back to its place. I am not going to be able to phone Brother Adam after all. And it's too late now to drop him a note. I should have written from Vancouver as I had planned. What's the matter with me that I can't even make the simplest of social arrangements? I'll have to go to The Priory, there's no other solution. If I want to see him at all I will have to turn up at his door unannounced.

But I can't go today; my mother wouldn't like it if I disappeared on an unexplained errand, and besides Eugene is going to phone me from downtown at three o'clock. And tomorrow? Wednesday? Tomorrow is my day to have lunch with Louis Berceau. Friday?-the wedding is on Friday, and Friday night we're flying back to Vancouver.

Thursday-if I go at all I'll have to go on Thursday. Yes, I will definitely go to see Brother Adam on Thursday. He is in the city, he is within a few miles of me, looking out of his window perhaps, sitting in the sun on his fire escape perhaps, and who knows, maybe he is writing a letter, perhaps even a letter to me, a letter beginning Dear Charleen, the sky is benignly blue today, the sun falls like a blessing across this page ...

Martin is restless. He has brought his chair inside; the sky has clouded over with alarming suddenness, and a few drops of heavy rain have already fallen onto the pages of his book. He is brooding mysteriously by the living room window.

I can never quite believe in the otherness of people's lives. That is, I cannot conceive of their functioning out of my sight. A psychologist friend once told me this att.i.tude was symptomatic of a raging ego, but perhaps it is only a perceptual failure. My mother: every day she lives in this house; it is not all magically whisked away when I leave; the walls and furniture persist and so do the hours which she somehow fills. When Seth was five and started school I came home the first day after taking him and grieved, not out of nostalgia for his infancy or anxiety for his future, but for the newly revealed fact that he had entered into that otherness, that unseeable s.p.a.ce which he must occupy forever and where not even my imagination could follow. It is the same with Martin who, year after unseen year, pursues objectives, lives through unaccountable weeks and months. Martin by the window, shut up in his thoughts, might be standing on the tip of the moon.

When my mother wakes up she goes into the kitchen and begins browning a small pot roast on the back of the stove. "Nothing fancy," she explains. "I'm not going to fuss even for company, not at today's prices, not that there's anything wrong with a good honest pot roast and they don't give those away nowadays. Maybe it takes a few hours, you have to brown it really well, each side and the ends too, most people don't want to bother, they'd just as soon take a steak out of the freezer, never mind the cost, and call that a meal."

Because I make my mother nervous in the kitchen I go into the living room and stand beside Martin. He glances at his watch and says, "They should be home soon."

Is it a question or a statement? "You mean Judith?" I ask.

He nods.

"It's quite a distance," I remind him. "Remember? Out in the country somewhere."

"He's over seventy," Martin says grimly.

"Seventy-two," I nod.

"These old coots really shouldn't be on the road," Martin says with surprising ferocity.

The word "coots" shocks me; it seems a remarkably uncivilized word for Martin to use. What is the matter with him?

I spring to Louis's defence. "He seems alert enough for a man of his age. I'm sure he wouldn't drive if he felt he wasn't capable."

Martin looks again at his watch, and I can see by the involuntary snap of his wrist that he's seriously worried.

"I'm sure he's a careful driver," I insist again.

"But how do you know?" know?"

I shrug. "He certainly didn't strike me as the reckless type."

"Didn't strike you," he says sourly, mockingly. But then he asks seriously, "How did did he strike you, Charleen?" he strike you, Charleen?"

"Why are you so worried, Martin?"