Country of Cold (26 page)

When Albert arrived halfway through the meal, a place was found for him across the hall from Cora. A plate of rewarmed food was set before him and even from her seat Cora could hear the apologies. She grinned as she looked at him, willing him to see her, but he was preoccupied with his tablemates, each of whom had noisily made room for him, standing and shifting their chairs and welcoming him to their table with toothless little smiles.

Jim remembered Albert—at last, somebody to prove he wasn’t in the wrong town. He had sat behind Albert
in a Social Studies class and spent a year copying down his answers on exam sheets. It was their only interchange; they had never spoken, so far as Jim could recall. The rest of these people were as much strangers to him now as, he supposed, they must have been twenty years previously. How could that be? He tried to remember who he had expected or hoped to see here, why he had wanted to come. He could come up with no names. The only face he knew was Albert’s, and he knew the back of his head better yet. He was in trouble even then. A pity, he thought, that his state wasn’t more easily recognizable at the outset. Save everyone a lot of grief.

“Hey, isn’t that Albert?” he said to Cora, who was looking that way anyway.

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure,” she said, and looked down at her plate. Lester lifted his eyes up and off his and, peering, spotted Albert.

“So now it’s not just us three, here by ourselves,” he said. “That’s a relief.” Albert looked up and over at the three of them, looking over at him. There was a long puzzled stare, and then a grin broke over his face like a cracked egg. Lester waved demurely. Jim wagged his fingers. Cora just smiled and smiled.

Mitchell Garson was sitting beside his wife at the far end of the hall, and he was discussing the matter of the interprovincial trade barriers with confidence and volume. Beside him were Daphne Hainscotter and Paul Joly.
Garson was dominating the admittedly thin conversation and apparently seemed unaware that he was sitting with physicians. They both pretended to listen and tried to think of a way of relating interprovincial trade barriers to the subject of their professions, but neither of them could come up with anything. Good God, it sounded like the man was thinking of running for parliament.

Garson, always fleshy, was now more so, though not yet so much that he was feeble. He was the sort of man who protests that the height-weight tables just don’t apply to him, care to arm wrestle? In another context, his companions would have told him he was destined for a diabetic and dreadful early demise, but they couldn’t quite seem to find an opening.

Lester spotted Mitchell Garson first. He had not seen him since his right hand had been broken in four places on Albert’s face, ending his major junior hockey prospects. Cora saw him looking and followed his eyes.

There was then a series of speeches and skits that the reunion committee (predictable names and faces, hardly changed in their perky good cheer or their choice of sweaters from two decades ago) had prepared. Fond remembrances of dead teachers and anecdotes of never-before-revealed student council hijinks were shared with all and polite applause rang out. There was a cash bar, and many of the balding and falsely garrulous men ducked and shuffled desperately, cycling between it and their seats. Every time Cora looked over, Albert’s
companions seemed to be sliding another rye and ginger in a plastic glass to him. Paul Joly was doing the same; he and Mitchell Garson were alternating rounds. It seemed to Paul that he was in the officers’ mess in Shilo again, twenty-five and bored to the point of paralysis, vaguely aware of the capacity of stupidity to disseminate itself like a slow virus. Infecting and then inexorably chewing away at people who once showed promise.

Lester and Jim had noticed Cora’s preoccupation with Albert and assumed the matter to be as simple as they imagined it. They encouraged her the way they had once encouraged their friends when they were teenagers. Lester and Jim realized that neither had climbed appreciably in social rank since they had last eaten doughy chicken in this room, and, in consequence, they possessed an optimism regarding improbable desires that had never been much tested by experience. Jim found himself wishing he had known Lester before. He thought that they could have been friends.

Lester was just as drunk as Jim and he felt an affection develop within him for Albert, on Cora’s behalf, that was almost uncomfortable. Albert was looking at his watch frequently, between slides being shown, of the science fair award winners of 1978. He was up there, beside a model for wood-alcohol distillation, seventeen years old and desperate. Everyone in the room just wanted to stand up, talk to the two or three people that they had things to say to, and get out of there. Science fair photographs.

And when they stopped, the applause quietened in a moment and the room began flinging itself into little condensates around the walls, knots of former friends and wary spouses. The men, in the suddenly sharper light, had deteriorated more precipitously—prairie bellies and sunburned pates stuck out all over the room. Albert was by far the best-looking man there, his clothes not native to this particular fashion habitat. Eyes followed him as he moved through the room, but none more brightly than Cora’s. When they embraced she felt heat in her chest rise up in a manner that on any other day she would have likened to gastroesophageal reflux.

Lester and Jim joined them, embracing Albert with all the love lonely pale men could muster. Albert was puzzled by these two, neither of whom he remembered, but his memory was not perfect.

Cora’s story came pouring out in a few minutes right there in front of Jim and Lester, about how she had stayed on in Pigeon River and knew every single person in the community, every single one. And how she lived in the old suicide’s wooden house and she had tried to keep horses for a while but it was too much work and suddenly, about six weeks ago or so, she had gotten a little old. And how very fine it was to see him again. Yes, she had received a few cards from him in medical school, meant to reply, but hadn’t, too busy or something. Sorry. Shaking her head.

Albert looked at her in wonder.

Paul was heading back to the table with another tray of drinks that Daphne had suggested were not entirely necessary when the lights came on. The aisles were suddenly blocked by clots of middle-aged enthusiasms and he found himself shunted over to one wall, peering around for a lead through the pack. He caught sight of Daphne then, listening indulgently to that bore, and for the first time since they had met, he thought he could imagine where she had come from, what she had been through. He imagined her spending years listening patiently to the boy-versions of Mitchell Garson and the girl-versions of his wife, pretending, in that way of hers, that she was elsewhere. He imagined this place in the winter, just as dreadful as Shilo, but with decades to go before she could get out. The smell of Shilo and Sergeant Martin suddenly filling his nose.

Daphne looked frightened sometimes, out of proportion to circumstances and at odds with her usual disposition, and he imagined that he understood a little bit now. He pictured the places she escaped to while living here: the books she had read, the ideas of grace and self-sufficiency that she had cultivated in herself. He thought he grasped her in a way he had never grasped anyone. He was drunk and he knew that. Cora was talking to a man ten years younger than anyone else in the room. She saw him and waved. She looked hammered, herself. A lead opened up through the crowd.

Mitchell Garson, en route to the washroom, came stumbling through the knot of people collected by the doorway. It was crowded and there were pickle-stained paper plates on the floor and it was easy to stumble. When he collided drunkenly with Albert, the jarring knocked both men nearly to their knees. Albert turned around.

“What was that for?” he gasped.

Mitchell Garson said nothing, but only breathed, cattlelike through his broad face, his little pink tongue on his moist lips. Jim and Lester saw this encounter and froze for a moment. Cora blanched like an egg white. Lester took a step forward. Jim advanced as well, lifting his arms above his head. Mitchell Garson turned and stumbled toward the washroom, still breathing heavily. Albert watched him walk away. After twenty feet Mitchell Garson stopped and turned. Both men opened their mouths. “Who is that?” they each asked of the person nearest to them.

Firstly, I thank my editors, Anne Collins at Random House Canada and Nan Talese at Doubleday. They were both implausibly patient with me over this book, and pushed it and me beyond our natural resting points. I could not be more grateful.

The following people have offered their support and friendship in ways that at one point or another made all the difference: Scott Bell, Sheila Thornton, Bruce Martin, Moni Fricke, Bill McCormack, Kevin Zbuk, Sander van Zanten, Mike Kenyon, Tony Turner, Don Hilton, Pam Orr, Ker Wells, Megan Saunders, Ellen Reid, Angela van Amburg, Matthew Welsch, Martinique Stilwell, Steven Beed, Paul Tough, Donna Morrissey, MoJo and the staff at Frog Hollow, Kevin Oneschuk, Meaghan Stothers, Steve Hunt, Brian Daly, John McMillan, Paul Wilson. And thank you, of course, to Molly and Shauna.