48.

shirley wong acquires billets The hockey billets were named Craig Buckner and Blair Kravchuk, but everyone called them Steamer and Patch. They moved in on the first Monday of October, just as the crisp leaves and crabapples began to clutter Shirley Wong's backyard. As she gave the boys a tour of their bedrooms in the bas.e.m.e.nt, she attempted to refer to them as Craig and Blair, but they were adamant about being Steamer and Patch.

"Really, Mrs. Wong," said Steamer, the blond Mormon boy from Cardston with big blue eyes. "No one calls us anything else, except our parents."

"I'm Patch," said Patch, the slow-talking giant from Lac La Biche. "I'm just Patch, you know what I'm saying?"

Chopping onions and garlic upstairs, while Patch unpacked and yelled at Steamer about how much he was hating this final year of high school, Shirley wondered if she had done the right thing.

There was so much extra room in the house, and after thirty years of marriage she had found the silence of the last few weeks to be disturbing. Yet Steamer and Patch lacked the rhetorical skill and eager curiosity of her children, whose travels through the house she had really been hoping to replace.

For years, she had watched hockey with three high-school friends. Two had recently moved to acreages and the third had sworn off the game during the NHL strike. So the hockey talk with Steamer and Patch would be sublime. But she couldn't imagine sitting in the living room with Steamer and Patch after dinner, watching Biography on A&E. She couldn't imagine referring to them by their preferred nicknames without feeling like a disc jockey on the cla.s.sic rock station.

Steamer, she had learned, after some embarra.s.sed laughter, was called Steamer for his tendency to take bowel movements in locker rooms just before games. Patch liked to squeal the tires of his truck as he accelerated from a resting position. In Lac La Biche, and apparently elsewhere, this was called "laying a patch."

Neither boy had heard anything about the tragedy at 10 Garneau. It seemed neither boy had ever read a newspaper or watched The National. When she told them what had happened across the street, Patch seemed to be thinking about something else. His truck, for instance.

Steamer had been puzzled. How could someone gamble all his money away? How could a woman just kick her husband out of his own house? Why had the law not intervened earlier? For Steamer, the events at 10 Garneau simply reinforced his feeling that life in the city was altogether wrong.

For their first dinner together, Shirley prepared a large tray of lasagna with Caesar salad and garlic bread. She put a bottle of red wine on the table and tuned the stereo to the modern rock station. Shirley was about to call the boys for dinner when Patch bounded up the stairs in his jean jacket. He smelled of cheap, musky cologne.

"I'm headin' out, Mrs. Wong."

"Ms."

"Huh?"

"Aren't you hungry, Patch? I'm just finishing dinner."

Patch stepped into his cowboy boots. "Me and some of the guys are gonna hit DQ or something later, after a couple beers on Whyte. We're just goin' out for a couple or whatever."

"Is that allowed? You're just seventeen, aren't you?"

Patch ignored the question and walked, in his slightly bow-legged way, out the back door. His heels were so heavy on the sidewalk leading to the parking pad that she could hear him through the closed kitchen window. The engine of his big red truck roared. To her relief, he didn't lay a patch.

At the top of the stairs, Shirley called down to Steamer that dinner was ready.

"Hot dog!" he said, and hurried up in a pair of sweatpants and a red T-shirt with a scary clown on the front. Underneath the clown it said, "Cardston Children's Festival, 1996."

Shirley sat across from Steamer, who quickly prayed and then clasped his hands in antic.i.p.ation. He looked shocked at the food, but Shirley came to understand that on account of his uncommonly large eyes Steamer always looked shocked. The boy filled his plate with lasagna and salad and bread, then turned to the stereo and cringed. "Mrs. Wong?"

"Ms."

"Can we listen to something else?"

Shirley hadn't been paying attention to the music, but it featured squealing guitars and angry vocals. "Sure, Steamer."

"I listen to a lot of that stuff around the team and it's just that..."

"Cla.s.sical?"

"How about country? You got that?"

"Some. We have Willie Nelson, I believe. Hank Williams maybe. Patsy Cline."

Steamer excused himself and hurried out of the dining room and downstairs. He came up with a pile of CDs, and put one in. It was pop country music, with lyrics about Jesus. "My parents don't like me listening to this sort of thing too too much but it doesn't hurt."

"No." Shirley shook her head, lying. "It doesn't hurt."

For the next while, Steamer talked about finding a compromise between living the gospel and playing hockey with boys in a state of total apostasy. He pointed to her gla.s.s of wine. "Like, I don't know how you could drink alcohol. It's totally wrong. But I have to accept that, right?"

"Right, Steamer."

Shirley ate a small piece of lasagna and a few forkfuls of salad. Then she sat back and listened to Steamer talk about his religion. A few times, she tried to engage him in a discussion of the Edmonton Jesterstheir prospects in the AJHLbut it only led him into a discussion of his teammates and their rampant sinning.

The phone rang and Shirley hopped for it. Her new evening helper at the Rabbit Warren was having a bit of trouble with the Interac machine.

"I'll be right there."

"How about I just re-start it. Maybe..."

"I'll be right there!" Shirley hung up the phone. "I'm sorry, Steamer, it's an emergency at my store."

He stood up. "Can I help in any way?"

"No thanks."

"What an awesome dinner. I'll wash up the dishes how about?"

"That would be very good of you, Steamer."

He smiled, raised his eyebrows, and lifted his chin.

In the backyard, unlocking her bike, Shirley began thinking of ways to get rid of Steamer and Patch. Shirley wondered if she had been too hard on Raymond. Maybe they were all twits and beyond judgment. Then she felt like a twit for falling under his spell, for trusting himthemfor so long. Were they capable of any better? Lost in this line of reasoning, Shirley discovered she had forgotten the combination of her bike lock. She tried one last time, but the numbers around the dial meant nothing to her. Thinking she was alone, un.o.bserved, Shirley prepared to break into a good cry.

Just to make sure, she looked back at the house. Standing at the sink, Steamer looked out at her with his permanently shocked eyes. Shirley decided to walk to the Rabbit Warren.

49.

a dance with mr. goober In front of the mirror in her tiny bathroom, Madison practised her French. Je voudrais manger des caillettes provencales ou un boeuf bourguignon. Yet she reserved a small percentage of emotional distance. No one could deny this was their first night out together without Jonas or her parents or Garith or the lunatic professor, but Rajinder had not used the word date.

Yet.

Madison didn't want to get her hopes up in case Rajinder, whose social skills bordered on performance art, just wanted to be friends. After all, this was an early dinner on a Monday, a pre-soaps event instead of a romantic Friday night. Then there was the boring weirdo factor: maybe Rajinder was a boring weirdo.

Even so, she drank some non-alcoholic Saskatoon berry wine from the farmers' market, lit sandalwood candles, and filled the bas.e.m.e.nt suite with her most powerful pre-date CD: The Cure's "Mixed Up." Of course, she also wore her number-one pair of panties, the blue-and-white ones with the mosquito on the front.

The tiny bathroom mirror was not full-length so Madison had to stand on a milk crate to check herself out in profile. Her jean jacket and best scarf added a French flair to her ensemble, and helped hide the belly.

Did wanting to go to Paris make her a proper francophile? Was it a coincidence, un heureux concours de circonstances, that they both loved France? It didn't matter, really. What mattered was that for the first time in over two years, Madison was genuinely interested in a male of the species who wasn't a sixteenth-century j.a.panese poet.

Finished in the bathroom, and with another ten minutes to waste, Madison danced around the bas.e.m.e.nt suite with Mr. Goober, the plush monkey her father had won at a Calaway Park balloon-popping kiosk in 1987.

As Madison danced to The Cure, she told Mr. Goober, in French, that she loved him. She had always loved him. It had been a secret before but now Madison didn't care if the whole world knew. "Monsieur Goober," she said, with a tender kiss, "je vous aime."

There was a knock on the door, seven minutes early. Madison shrieked and threw the monkey. Mr. Goober crashed into a stone G.o.ddess statue on the television, a gift from her mother. Madison shrieked again, this time in stealth. The windows leading into her bas.e.m.e.nt suite were not large, but she was stricken with the certainty that Rajinder had just seen her slow-dancing and smooching with Mr. Goober. She ran into the tiny bathroom to both check her makeup and register her mortification. Then she turned off the stereo, blew out the candles, took a deep and restorative breath, and started up the stairs.

Rajinder stood a few feet from the door in a grey suit and a white shirt opened at the neck. He held a bouquet of freesia. "Jonas told me they were your favourite."

"They are my favourite." Madison took the flowers and smelled them, peeking up to scan his face for a clue. No, he hadn't seen the je vous aime bit. "Thanks, Rajinder."

"It is probably unwise to carry them with us. Would you like me to wait here for a few minutes while you put them in a vase?"

Madison knew if she went inside she would have to invite him in, but her bas.e.m.e.nt suite was so small and her parents' cast-off furniture was twenty years old and smelled like stale hamburger buns. "Um," she said.

"I have several vases."

"Do you? Because mine are all dirty."

Madison led the way. Loud heavy-metal music seemed to be coming from 11 Garneau, Shirley's house, but Madison a.s.sumed it was the Doppler effectuniversity students a block or two away, destroying their inner ears. The music was annoying but not so loud that it mitigated the silence between her and Rajinder. And since she was not the sort of woman who tolerated silences of this sort, Madison said, to her own amazement, "What do you think about the new conductor of the symphony?"

"He is very dynamic."

"Yes, dynamic."

"Are you a fan of the symphony?"

Madison started up Rajinder's walk. In past relationships, all of them somewhere between unsatisfying and disastrous, she had been something of a liar. If she had felt a lie would make her seem more sophisticated or attractive, she told it. Every time. She was almost thirty, though, and rocketing into single motherhood.

On the porch Madison smelled the freesia again. "Oh sure. But I have to admit I've never really been in the Winspear. It's kind of expensive and, well, I'm poor. A couple of years ago Jonas and I hung around in Hawrelak Park during Symphony Under the Sky and it sure sounded...pretty."

Rajinder opened his front door. "Please, leave your shoes on."

"Are you sure?"

"I insist."

Rajinder took the flowers and cut the stems over the sink. He pointed up to a collection of seven vases on a shelf, and asked Madison to choose. She chose a white one, with lime-green polka dots.

"I have spoken to the marketing department about attracting young people to the symphony."

"I am so prepared to be attracted."

"Competing against Hollywood and reality television and sports and video games has proven difficult. With the generation below us, it could be impossible. I am afraid we will witness the near-total erosion of both local art and high art in our lifetimes."

Madison was feeling dense, so instead of responding verbally she produced a thoughtful hum. Rajinder dropped the flowers into the vase and pointed out his kitchen window at the backyard of 11 Garneau. Five hulking young men sat around a fire pit with a case of Pilsner and a ghetto blaster. Madison stepped forward and stood close enough to Rajinder that their hands touched. "I thought I heard music next door."

"Ms. Wong has guests."

"Who are they?"

"I had never seen them before yesterday evening. The large man drives a loud red truck."

"Raymond and Shirley's kids were way too fastidious to have friends like that."

Rajinder checked his watch. "Our reservation is in half an hour. Perhaps we can explore this mystery another time."

It was, Madison felt, her gravest misfortune that as he looked up from his watch, Rajinder's gaze lingered on her belly.

50.

universal health care The beige leather seats in Rajinder's Mercedes were cracked and peeling, and there were several large rock chips in the wind-shield. At first, Madison wanted to ask why he hadn't bought something newer, given his financial freedom, but by the time they reached the strip mall that housed Jack's Grill she had developed tender feelings for the old car; Madison wouldn't have known what to think if he drove a Hummer.

"Strip malls," she said, as they walked across the parking lot to the entrance. "The future of world cuisine."

Rajinder didn't respond to her sarcasm, and she felt slightly shamed.

At the restaurant door, he paused for a moment and they looked at one another. It was a windy fall night. Leaves blew across the parking lot in short gusts and the light of the setting sun went metallic. There was nothing to say and Madison summoned every ounce of her strength to let the quiet to be the quiet. She pushed a stray lock of hair from her face and smiled. A white piece of fluff had attached itself to the lapel of Rajinder's suit so she pulled it off and allowed it to join the progress of the leaves.

The moment became a minute. Madison relaxed and breathed, and focused. She was standing outside the door of a restaurant she could not afford, on a windy but not cold evening, staring at a handsome man who had never made an ironic comment in her company. She looked past the brown of his eyes into the tiny pyramids of colour and shine around his pupils, the biological factness of Rajinder Chana. Who remembers on a dateif this was a datethat we're all just animals making romance out of eating, reproducing, and sleeping?

Madison prepared to be kissed.

Just then, the door flew open and the giant vertical handle whacked Rajinder in the forehead. He stumbled backwards but didn't fall as a couple in mid-conversation barged out. Both the man and woman stood in front of Rajinder, apparently as stunned as Madison. The man apologized and put his arm around Rajinder for a moment. Rajinder a.s.sured them he was perfectly fine and the couple started away, both of them cringing.

"That door really nailed him," the man said, loud enough for Madison to hear.

Rajinder stood up straight and dusted himself off, even though he hadn't come in contact with any dust. He cleared his throat and wobbled slightly, like a drunk man acting sober. "Are you ready?"

"Let's make sure you're okay first. That was loud."

"Oh I am most definitely okay, Madison. Most definitely." And with that, Rajinder stepped forward, careened to the left, and fell to the pavement.

The man who had opened the door sprinted back across the parking lot to help Rajinder to his feet. Madison wanted to take him to the University Hospital in the Mercedes but the man guided Rajinder straight to his pickup truck.