out at Standing Buffalo are steep, but that never stopped Karen. It seemed like every time my brother and I were supposed to be watching out for her, she’d take off on us. We always knew where to look for her – right at the top of the biggest hill she could find. As soon as she saw Perry and me, she’d start to run to us. We’d yell at her to slow down because we were afraid she’d break her neck, and then we’d catch hell. But she never slowed down. And she never fell.”
For a long time, we were silent. Finally, Alex said, “The only thing that ever scared my sister was thinking about what could happen to Eli. When she died, I promised myself that I’d do everything I could to make sure he had a good life. Damn it, Jo, until yesterday, I thought Eli was going to be okay. What would make a kid take off like that, for no reason?”
I sat up. “He had a reason,” I said.
As I told Alex about the incident at the Rider game, I could see the cords in his neck tighten, but he didn’t say anything until I’d finished. Then, under his breath, he murmured a word I’d never heard him use before, and I could feel the barrier come between us. I went into the bathroom to get ready to go home. After I’d dressed, I looked out the bathroom window. On the balcony of the apartment across the alley, a man and a woman, who looked to be about my age, were having a late supper. There were candles on the table and fresh flowers. As I watched, the man leaned towards the woman and touched her cheek. When she felt his touch, the woman covered his hand with her own. That unknown couple might have had a hundred secret sorrows but, at that moment, I envied them their uncomplicated joy in one another. Moonlight and unspoken intimacies: that was the way love was supposed to be.
Alex walked me down to my car. I slid into the driver’s seat. “Tell Eli the kids and I will come by and visit him tomorrow after school,” I said.
“Considering the circumstances, maybe you’d better wait a while,” Alex said.
“Whenever you think he’s ready,” I said.
I waited as Alex opened the front door of his building and walked inside. He didn’t look back. His apartment was on the third floor at the corner. I knew exactly how long it took to reach it. I watched as the lights went out in his living room, and a few seconds later in his bedroom. Miserable at the thought of Alex sitting alone in the dark, his only protection against the vagaries of the world a plaster owl sitting sentry on a balcony railing, I took a deep breath and turned the key in the ignition.
CHAPTER
4
I slept deeply that night and awoke thinking about Alex Kequahtooway and Martin Heidegger and the question of whether any of us ever truly knows who we are. It was gloomy pondering for 5:00 a.m. on the first workday after a holiday weekend, and I was relieved when the phone rang and I heard my older daughter’s voice. Mieka was twenty-four years old, and she had a great marriage, a career she loved, and a first child due any minute. To my mind, the only problem about Mieka’s life was that it was being lived in Saskatoon, 250 kilometres away from me.
“I knew you’d be up,” she said. “No baby news. I’m just calling to whine.”
“Whine away,” I said.
She took a deep breath. “Well, for starters, I don’t think this baby is ever going to be born. My doctor says if I don’t get cracking by next weekend, they’re going to induce me. Is it just an old wives’ tale that painting the kitchen ceiling gets baby moving along?”
“I don’t know about kitchen ceilings,” I said, “but I do know that going out for Chinese food works. That’s what your dad and I did the night before you were born.”
Mieka laughed. “Tucking into a platter of Peking duck does sound more appealing than clambering up a ladder to slap on a coat of flat white.” She sighed heavily. “Mummy, I’m so discouraged. I haven’t slept through the night in eight months, I haven’t seen my feet since Canada Day, and I’ve got a seductive line of black hair growing from my breastbone to what used to be my