The Endless Knot

Isobel ran her fingers through her explosion of black curls. “Glenda Parker’s mother was worse. She was around, but when Glenda tried to tell her mother what was going on in her body, she told Glenda that unless she prayed to be delivered, she was going to Hell.”

“The worst one of all is Kathryn Morrissey,” Taylor said. “Isobel’s mother says she got people to talk about their problems by promising they’d help other people. Then she just used what they told her to sell books.” Taylor’s pretty mouth hardened into a condemning line. “Soul-fire says the worst sin of all is betrayal.”

Isobel’s face relaxed into mischief. “Oh, Soul-fire. I love Soul-fire. He is so wise and so brave and sooooooo cute.”

Taylor reached back, grabbed a pillow, and the discussion ended, as many discussions did with Taylor and her friends, in an old-fashioned pillow fight.

For a while I dodged pillows and shared in the giggles. Then, cognizant of the recreation director’s axiom that it’s best to kill an activity before it dies on you, I called time. “I’ll be the bad guy,” I said. “Hit the showers. Zack has people coming out from the office, and when they get here you shouldn’t be wandering around in your skivvies.”

Isobel shook her head. “Work. Work. Work. Work. Work.” She said, and her intonation was exactly the same as her mother’s.

When I arrived at the cottage where my oldest daughter and her family were staying, the inside door was open. I peered through the screen and saw that Greg was in the living room reading the paper; the little girls were sitting on a blanket in front of him, sharing a bowl of dry Cheerios and watching TV.

I called through the screen, and Greg leapt out of his chair and came to the door. “Caught me,” he said. “Come in, make yourself comfortable, and let me convince you that TV is educational.”

“No need,” I said. “I just came by to score some Cheerios.” I walked over and squatted between my granddaughters. “Hey, ladies, are you sharing?”

Eyes still fixed on the screen, Madeleine picked up the bowl and passed it back to me. “Why, thanks,” I said. I took a handful of cereal, kissed her head and Lena’s, and went back to join my son-in-law.

“So where is everybody?” I asked.

“Mieka and Pete and Charlie decided to squeeze in one last canoe ride,” he said. “You just missed them.”

I looked towards the dock. My children and Charlie were dressed alike in blue jeans and dark hoodies. Outlined against the stark background of lake and hazy white sky, their resemblance to one another was striking. They had put one canoe in the water and were sliding in a second. “They’re a person short,” I said to Greg.

He shook his head. “Those three are never a person short, Jo.” He lowered himself onto the ottoman that faced my chair.

“In a few hours there’ll be 250 kilometres between Charlie and you,” I said.

“True, but Charlie will continue to be a presence in our lives. Did you know that Pete’s moving in with him?”

“Nobody told me,” I said.

“Apparently, they’ve been considering it for a while. Mieka said Charlie and Pete were concerned that sharing a house might put a strain on their friendship. I can’t imagine anything coming between the three of them, but I guess it was a valid concern. Anyway, now that he’s got his clinic, Pete’s short of money, and Charlie never misses a chance to burrow in.” There was a bitterness in Greg’s voice that I hadn’t heard before.

“Greg, the trial will be over in a month. Why don’t you leave the girls with me? You and Mieka could go some place warm and rediscover the magic?”

“What if the magic is gone?”

I smiled at him. “Then you’ll have to find something else to get you through the next forty years.”

The Big Comfy Couch was coming to a close. As she always did, Loonette, the clown, was discovering that in the course of her adventures, she had made a mess.

“Madeleine, here comes our favourite part,” I said.

Madeleine nodded vigorously. “The Ten Second Tidy.”

The four of us watched in silence as Loonette, with the jerky moves of a character in an old-time movie, found a place for everything in the commodious contours of the big comfy couch. When she was done, Loonette and Molly Dolly curled up under their purple silk cover. Harmony had returned to Clown Town.

“Think I could find a couch big enough to swallow Charlie?” Greg said. Then he shook his head in disgust. “Sorry, Jo. I’m becoming a self-pitying asshole.” He walked over, turned off the TV, and scooped up his daughters. As they squealed, he played Falstaff. “All right, my scullions, my rampallions, my fustilarians. Time to get dressed, and if I hear a word of complaint, I’ll tickle your catastrophe.”

Greg and I met the canoeists at the dock. I sent Charlie and Pete up to strip the beds; then Mieka and Greg bundled their daughters into their life jackets and took them for a ride in their favourite red canoe.

I was standing on the dock, watching my daughter and her family vanish around the point, when Taylor and Isobel came down and announced they were going to make certain the Inukshuks they had built this summer were winter-worthy. Each of the Inukshuk had a sight hole in the middle. By peering through it, lost travellers could get their bearings and be guided along the route to the next Inukshuk. As a service to those who would be wandering the shore without a global positioning system in the coming winter, Isobel and Taylor planned to verify the accuracy of the sight holes.

I went with them. There was one particular Inukshuk I needed to visit. As we started around the horseshoe, the wind came up, and the girls and I pulled up the hoods of our jackets and jammed our hands in our pockets. All summer the girls had made it clear that Project Inukshuk was theirs, so that morning I stood aside as they went about their work: packing dirt around a rock that rested on unstable ground; adjusting a flat stone that wasn’t placed correctly; checking the view from a sight hole. When they’d finished their work on the Inukshuk at the tip of the west arm, I stayed behind. Without question or comment, the girls went ahead. They knew I wanted to be alone.