“What’s that?” Bernice wanted to know, eying the plastic shopping bag dangling from his left hand.
“Just a few contributions for the dinner table,” Buddy answered.
“You shouldn’t have!” she scolded. “Room and board, remember? It’s all inclusive.” She led the way down the hall into the kitchen, inviting him to take a seat at the same table where they’d met that afternoon.
It seemed so long ago, that first meeting.
But, in another way, it seemed to Buddy that the intervening hours, minutes, and seconds had been spliced out and hardly any time had passed at all—that I am, in fact, exactly in the place I’m meant to be.
The table was already laid out: three place settings on bamboo mats; bright cheerful plates, the rims decorated with hand-coloured pears, apples, and what he took to be pomegranates in a loose abstract style; bowls set in the centre of the plates, also brightly coloured but in a more jagged, non-representational style; sturdy stainless steel cutlery: two forks, a spoon, and a knife arranged on either side of each plate.
Buddy reached into his bag and pulled out a small bunch of daffodils in a tubular, cut glass vase, which he’d bought at the local grocery store.
“You shouldn’t have!” Bernice flustered.
“I should,” he insisted, placing the flowers at the far end of the table, where a fourth place setting could have been.
Then he pulled out a medium-priced bottle of red wine, a Cabernet Sauvignon from the Alamos vineyard in Mendoza, Argentina. He slipped the bottle into the crook of his arm, displaying it in his best impersonation of a waiter in a posh dining establishment.
Bernice blushed. “You’re embarrassing me!” she chided.
“And finally, I brought this.” He pulled his framed family photo out of the bag and propped it up on the table in front of the daffodils. “That’s the most recent photo of my family: Leanne, Gloria, and Robbie. I thought I’d invite them to dinner, just this once.”
“Oh my!” Bernice leaned forward, peering into the frame. He sensed her fingers, wanting to reach out toward the glass as if it were a touch screen and the figures inside might come to life if she could only start the video. Her voice trembled, like an excited songbird’s. “You must miss them terribly!”
That was true, of course. But I didn’t realize how true until just now. Bernice was a vessel of spirit, he thought, unable to remember ever having felt that way about anyone before. She’s an elder.
“Your children, they look so handsome, so confident.” She paused, as if she’d encountered something out of place or incongruent in the image. “So happy,” she added, at last.
Buddy didn’t respond. He let her words sink in.
“And your wife, Leanne?”
“Yes?”
“She’s beautiful, and—I hope you don’t mind me saying so—she looks like a very strong woman.”
“She is,” he agreed. “Which makes me a bit of a fool, I suppose, for running off.”
Or was ‘coward’ a better choice of words?
“I don’t believe that for a moment, Mr. Buddy.” Bernice straightened up and faced him, squeezing his arm. “But perhaps you won’t mind telling us over dinner how you and Leanne met? Would that be too hard? You must have a wonderful story to tell, don’t you think? Well, why don’t you go into the living room and say hello to Harry while I finish getting ready? And if you do feel like telling a romantic tale or two over dinner, you will have my rapt attention, I can assure you.”
She nodded encouragingly toward the hallway. He held in his sigh and drifted off in the direction of her gentle urging.
Harry was sitting in an armchair, reading the Globe & Mail with the help of a big, round magnifying glass. “Hello Harry,” Buddy said. Harry glanced up, grunted, then went back to his paper. Buddy continued across the room and settled onto a puffy, pinkish sofa on the opposite side of the hearth.
Don’t push things. Buddy stifled the urge to speak. If he’s going to come around, he’ll do it on his own terms.
We North Americans are uncomfortable with silence—well, we settlers, at least. Yak, yak, yak. Silence threatens. We feel it’s necessary to justify our place and purpose in a room with words.
He and Harry sat there for ten minutes, the silence measured by the ticking metronome of the mantle clock and Bernice’s kitchen clatter. I was aware he was aware of me, Buddy would later recollect. He wasn’t wholly absorbed in the nation’s business. But in Harry’s disdainful presence, Buddy imagined himself a lowly species, a nuisance bug that needed squashing.
“Come on, you two!” Bernice called from the kitchen at last. “It doesn’t sound like there’s much ‘getting to know you’ going on out there. Maybe a sip of wine and a bit of beef in your stomachs will get you into a more convivial mood, eh?” She popped her head around the corner and looked in on them, just as Harry was folding the paper and hoisting himself out of his armchair. He turned toward her, but, losing his balance, lurched and staggered backward. Afraid he was going to fall into the fireplace, Buddy launched himself out of the sofa, but the old man steadied himself and doddered toward the hallway under his own steam.
“I do wish you’d use your walker, dear,” Bernice pleaded.
“More trouble than it’s worth,” he grumbled. “Keep bumping into things and knocking them over.”
She shot Buddy a grateful glance before heading down the hall into the kitchen, where she busied herself once more over dinner preparations, chatting happily, flitting from table to stove to counter and fridge, serving up their meals. She moved with surprising purpose and grace for a centenarian. As the evening progressed, used bowls were whisked away and loaded plates dropped into their places with a flourish.
She’s a dancer, Buddy thought, or someone who has been a dancer.
He hadn’t made up his mind about telling his and Leanne’s story by the time dessert was about to be served. They’d started off dinner with a mushroom soup, then tucked into a traditional British dinner of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding with heaps of mashed potatoes and asparagus, sautéed in garlic in a decidedly un-English manner. Now Bernice was busy getting ready to serve chocolate cake, topped with ice cream and strawberries, accompanied by a hair-raising coffee.
And still, Buddy waffled.
Next: Cherry-O-Cheese Pie