As it happened, every six or seven months Myhrra would find new friends. And so, caught up with new friends, Myhrra didn’t come to the house very often. Sometimes, feeling obligated, she would drop in, sit down in the chair for a moment, and then she would be out the door after a cup of tea.

One always knows how a family feels toward you by how the children react to your presence. It was invariable that Adele and Milly were now scared stiff that Myhrra would leave once she got there, or that she would stay only a certain amount of time, or that Joe or Rita, who seemed to have no one coming in at all anymore, would do something to make her leave. Adele would always try to tell some jokes to lighten everyone up, and Milly would tell these jokes right after her. Myhrra would sit there listening, in her blue slacks and kerchief, and then, just at the punch line (or so it seemed to Adele), she would get ready to leave. No matter how fast she told her joke, or no matter what style she told it in, or no matter how Rita sat, Myhrra would (it seemed to Adele) be unable to get the punch line.

The whole family felt they had done something wrong. One night Adele saw a group of cars in Myhrra’s yard.

“Go on up, go on up,” Adele said to Rita, excitedly. “I’ll baby-sit, I will I will. Go on up, they’re probably playing auction or something.”

“I’ll behave – I’ll behave,” Milly screeched, running about the house. “I’ll behave –”

Rita got dressed and went out, only to come back a few minutes later. When Adele pestered her she got angry.

“They’re having a bridge party up there,” she said. “I’m not going to intrude on a bunch of ladies sitting down to play a game of bridge. I have a load of ironing to do as it is.”

“Ha, you could beat any of them,” Adele screamed, throwing a sudden tantrum and throwing a dishcloth over Milly’s head, and then kicking a chair.

“I haven’t played bridge in my life,” Rita said.

And then for some reason Adele got doubly angry at this.

Rita, with her loose top and her ponytail and her scuffed shoes, smiled and asked Adele and Milly to help her make divinity fudge, but Adele went upstairs instead and played an old Beatles record, while Milly stood at her door begging her to come out.

It was a tradition for Myhrra to take Adele for a drive on Tuesday afternoons. On one particular day Myhrra was quieter than usual, and Adele, sitting on the passenger side of the car and staring out the window at the river, past houses and fields, tried desperately to think of something nice to say, but every time Myhrra glanced at her she would promptly look at her boots.

Myhrra stopped on a lane and looked at the field with some apple trees in it She got out of the car and stayed outside for a long time, leaning against the hood and staring, smoking one cigarette after another. It was the field that she and Mike, her ex-husband, had at one time owned, and which they sold during their divorce.

“Do you want me to come outside, My?” Adele said, rolling down the window half an inch. “What are you thinking about?”

“H’m?”

“What are you thinking?”

“Nothing so much.”

“I have to pee, My.”

“Pardon me?”

“I have to real bad. My back teeth are floating about, the school bus has already gone down river.”

“I know, I know, Delly dear. Just a moment, I have to pee too.”

Another few minutes went by and Myhrra stayed exactly where she was, with the red kerchief she wore blowing up in a gust of autumn wind, and the smell of pebbles.

“I was invited to your house for supper tonight, Delly hon, but I can’t go. Tell your mom I’ll see her tomorrow.”

Adele looked at the big rabbit paw on the mirror and stroked it for good luck.

Myhrra didn’t visit them for some time, spending more time with her friends from across the river. One night just after Rita had closed the drapes, they heard Myhrra’s car turn in their yard, and blow the horn, but no one this time went to the window.

Myhrra still made it to the hospital every Wednesday. One day a voice called out to her as she passed a room.

“Hey!” he said. The voice belonged to Allain Garret. He was an old man from down river who worked in the woods. He had seven daughters and five sons, worked cutting pulp, and had a huge television in the centre of his living room, with one family chair. The floor was brown tiled and a thousand hockey games were watched from this chair. During the 1972 series with Russia, he had taken off the front door so his friends could sit in the porch and watch it. But because so many people stopped in at the house to watch it, he was himself pushed to the background, and ended up watching it, leaning through one of the porch windows, while people half stood and half crouched in front of him, and his nieces and nephews sat on the stairs. One of his little nieces, Gidget, who was eight at the time with big brown eyes, leaned on his shoulder and went to sleep in the sun. When Canada scored the winning goal, he happened to be staring at a potted plant that his wife had left on the sill, and he was thinking of its green stem, and how that reminded him of the sea. It was only a momentary reflection, but he missed the goal.

Myhrra went in, and there was a smell to the large room of white sheets and the faint scent of blood. There were six beds in the room but only three patients. Allain Garret had cut his stomach open falling against a stake, and now happily showed her the wound. Myhrra looked at it unpleasantly, and tied her kerchief tighter. His skin was brown, and scarred, his fingers were bent in all different directions. Joe Walsh was sitting in the corner talking to him.

“Here’s Myhrra –” Allain said, smiling, and trying to reach some candy on the bedside table to give to her.

There is always something frightening in the human body when it is incapacitated. His hands were rough and his elbows looked thin, as if he was now losing his strength. Myhrra at this moment stood very still and could not bring herself to look at Joe. Myhrra very quietly asked to see his wound again – for some reason she thought she should do this. She kept staring straight ahead.

“Well, you should take care of yourself,” she said, suddenly, in an unnatural voice.

Allain then offered her some more candy, which she hadn’t taken the first time. Then she tried to think of the names of his sons and daughters to ask him about. Unfortunately she forgot that Claude was in prison, and this was the only name she could think of.

“Where is Claude now?” Myhrra asked, in a loud, somewhat angry voice.

“Claude’s fine,” Allain said. “Still in jail.” He smiled, and then suddenly made fun of himself and his injury. Then he made fun of Joe not drinking any more, which was done in a totally harmless way, but Myhrra stared straight ahead, blinking, as if there was nothing in Joe they could possibly find funny.

Allain again turned on Joe and said that he shouldn’t be so foolish. And then he commented on the time Myhrra had pulled her dress up over her head, one evening in the summer long ago, to show the flowers on her brassiere, when she was thirteen. Then at this moment Joe felt that he should not laugh at this. So old Allain did not know what to do, except look about here and there and comment on things, and ask no one in particular if it was snowing outside.

Finally he looked embarrassed because the visit had become as painful to him as to everyone else.