watched his young daughter die, he couldn’t stop himself from framing the scene to use in a novel. He gave that child immortality.”
“Is he your role model, Daddy?” Bryn’s voice was bleak, and Jill drew her close.
Claudia mouthed the favourite obscenity of the frustrated, then tapped her wineglass with her knife. “May I make a modest suggestion?” she asked. “Why don’t we all just shut up and eat.”
It was a small window of opportunity, but I squeezed through. “There’s more of everything,” I said. “But leave room for dessert. It’s my daughter Mieka’s recipe.”
Jill brightened. “The lemon pudding cake with raspberries?”
“You’ve got it,” I said. “The Queen of Comfort Foods.”
Gabe drained his glass. “Bring it on,” he said to no one in particular. “We have become a party sorely in need of comfort.”
Taylor picked up her fork. “And joy,” she said. “Don’t forget the joy.”
As we walked from the parking lot to the MacKenzie Art Gallery for the wedding rehearsal, snowflakes fell on a world silvered by a winter palette. It was a Currier amp; Ives evening, but we were an Alex Colville crowd, our alienation as knife-edged as our emotions. We had paired off idiosyncratically. Angus had deep-sixed his Mr. Bill sweatshirt and cut-offs in favour of pressed slacks, a blue button-down, and a solicitousness towards Bryn that would have been appropriate if he were rescuing her from the gulag, but seemed excessive for a wedding rehearsal in Regina. Claudia, her feet squarely planted in sensible Sorels, had taken on the task of her sister-in- law’s keeper and was frog-marching the skittish, barelegged Tracy towards the warmth of the gallery. Surprisingly, Jill was walking not with her fiance but with Felix Schiff. Heads together, their whispered discussion grew so heated that Felix finally strode ahead to catch up with Claudia and Tracy, and Jill dropped back to join the two other odd couples: Taylor and Evan, and Gabe Leventhal and me.
Taylor was pointing out the snow maze that the gallery employees and the kids who studied art at the MacKenzie had constructed on the east lawn. It was a serious effort with six-foot walls of packed ice-snow and enough branches and forks to give the maze real complexity. Bathed in moonlight, it had an otherworldly glow.
“Straight out of the Ice Planet Hoth,” Gabe said, shaking his head. “You really could get lost in there.”
“You could,” Taylor agreed, “but I know the secret of how not to.”
“A golden thread,” Gabe said.
Taylor wiped her nose on the sleeve of her coat. “That would probably work,” she said. “But I was talking about the right-hand trick. As long as you keep your right hand against the wall, there’s no way you can’t get out.”
“Nice to have at least one guarantee when you’re stepping into an uncertain world,” Jill said.
“Do you consider marriage an uncertain world?” Evan asked.
Jill’s smile was enigmatic. “I don’t know,” she said. “Can you guarantee that if I keep my right hand on the wall, I’ll get out safely?”
Gabe led our small group through the maze. In his ancient coat, toe rubbers, and striped muffler, he seemed an unlikely guide, but when he announced that, grateful as he was for Taylor’s tip, he planned to find the goal by letting go of his conscious self and stretching out his feeling, we cheered. There was a goofiness about his allusion to Star Wars that lightened our spirits and made it seem possible that the Force was with us after all.
We walked single file between walls of ice not much more than three feet apart, along ground that was worn treacherously smooth. Above us stars splattered the sky with an ancient pattern, and as we shuffled along, making mistakes, taking wrong turns, our breath rose in puffs, like incense. Our silence was broken only once, when Evan, who was behind me, asked. “What’s at the end?”
“A surprise,” Taylor said.
“As long as it’s not the Minotaur,” Evan said.
I looked over my shoulder at him. “Closer than you think,” I said.
“Really?”
“Stay tuned.”
We turned a final corner and found ourselves in the square that enclosed the goal. Instinctively, we flattened against the walls to improve our view of the snow sculpture at the centre of the tiny enclosure.
Gabe was the first to speak. “Worth the trip,” he said. “But what the hell is it?”
Taylor took his hand in hers. “You can look closer,” she said. “Have you ever heard of Jacques Lipchitz?”
“One of the great sculptors of the twentieth century? I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck, young woman.”
Taylor rewarded him with a smile. “Our gallery has a bronze sculpture that Jacques Lipchitz made. It’s called Mother and Child II . During the war, Jacques Lipchitz saw a Russian lady with no legs. She was singing so he made this sculpture of her. You can see it two ways: as a mother with her child or as the head of a bull.”
“Love or war,” Gabe said.
“That’s right,” Taylor said approvingly. “Anyway, the sculpture is sort of the trademark of the MacKenzie Gallery, so that’s why we made a snow one for the end of the maze. Neat, eh?”
Gabriel moved closer to the piece. “Yeah,” he said. “It really is neat.”
“I wish Bryn had come out here with us,” Jill said. “Speaking of… we should get back. They must be wondering where we are.”
“I know the way,” Taylor said. She hiked up her swooshy dress and headed back through the maze. Jill and Gabe were not far behind. I started after them, then I realized Evan wasn’t with us. When I turned I saw that he was still gazing at Mother and Child II. His head was slightly bowed and his hands were crossed in front of him, like a man worshipping or paying his respects at a funeral. His face was unguarded, suffused with a look that I could only describe as longing.
When he saw me watching him, he stiffened. “My mother says this is my natural habitat,” he said.
“A maze?” I said.
“No,” he said. “Snow. She calls me the snowman. She says I have a mind of winter. It’s a line from Wallace Stevens. I assume Jill told you my mother is a scholar of sorts.”
“She didn’t mention it,” I said.
Pain flashed across Evan’s face, but the moment was brief, quickly replaced by an ironic smile. “There’s not much about me that Jill believes is worthy of mention.”
My mind was reeling, but I didn’t want the connection between us to break. “What does your mother mean by saying you have ‘a mind of winter’?”
“That I’m detached from humanity, unable to love.”
“Are you?”
Two words, but they were a body blow. Evan slumped. “You’ve seen my life. Judge for yourself.” He reached out a gloved hand and caressed the icy contours of Mother and Child. “Time to go inside,” he said. “The others will be waiting.”
Numbed by this insight into the battles Evan MacLeish was fighting, I followed him out of the maze. As we trudged between the hard-packed walls, my thoughts drifted from Evan to Caroline MacLeish. Evan had described her as a scholar, and I wondered if, in the course of her studies, she’d come upon Philip Larkin’s poem “This Be the Verse” with its astringent opening lines: “They fuck you up, your mum and dad,/They may not mean to, but they do.”
During the rehearsal, Evan was composed. Not surprisingly, his delivery of the familiar words of the marriage ceremony was flawless. The mask had slipped back into place, and I was left trying to imagine what kind of catalyzing trauma could sever a man from his emotions. But if Evan’s mention of his mother raised one question, it answered another. As Jill lifted her face to be kissed, I sensed for the first time why she had been drawn to this painfully detached man. She was a good person who, despite a lifetime of evidence to the contrary, still believed that a human being could be salvaged by love.
And, of course, there was Bryn. As I looked at the wedding party, I realized that with the exception of Gabe Leventhal and me, everyone was shooting anxious glances her way. She didn’t seem in imminent danger. The judge, a silvery-haired, preening gnome of a man who worked his hands together when he spoke, was explaining the ceremony, and Bryn’s face showed nothing. She was a spectacularly self-possessed adolescent, and the
