One loves, the other is loved: so Nana taught us. I look at the beautiful bones of her face and speculate about this pronouncement. My grandmother has always been beloved, and so my grandfather, long dead, assumes a peculiar poignancy. Once, in some rapturous, unimaginable youth before she married, Nana was the ardent lover. But no one is alive to tell us about the object of her affection, and she will not disclose his name.
We are sitting in the living room of my mother’s house, waiting for the funeral to begin. Outside, the sky is the eerie pewter I remember from my childhood, lightless even at midday. In this room six years ago, before our mother recovered the furniture yet again, Tam and I were laughing at the weather. Then, too, it was noon when I realized, after her baby’s naming ceremony was over and the last guests had straggled out, that the day would not improve, that, to quote Tam: “This is it.”
I had fled to New York, whose winters are tamed by the city’s determination to outwit the season. Tam not only stayed in Toronto, betraying our pact to leave the minute we could, but chose a profession that forced her to rise most mornings at four in order to be on the air. For her, the half year of darkness is permanent, I think to myself. And then think: Permanent darkness.
Paralyzed, I stare at Nana, imploring her to rescue me, but she is stoic, not emitting whatever...
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