Free Order of Good Cheer by Bill Gaston

smiling. While not playing, she would officially initiate conversation. She knew full well what shift he was on.
    â€œDays.” He had to stop himself from standing. Also, he’d figured out his restlessness. Leaving wouldn’t help, he’d be restless anywhere. Leaving wouldn’t make Laura come sooner.
    â€œAnd what are you reading, dear?”
    Andy didn’t have the energy to get into the Canadian history. Plus it was something someone might know about and a discussion might ensue. So he mentioned the Nijinsky biography. He told them what a colourful mess the man was.
    And after the briefest pause, his mother offered, “All are not merry who dance lightly.”
    Her proverbs, maxims, chestnuts. Sometimes he suspected her of having one ready for him every week, but that just couldn’t be, because she typically had one at hand for any topic, as she did today. They were irritating, not because they were appropriate, or wise, as any saying that has stood the test of time tends to be. Her proverb, a month ago, to describe Drew’s latest scrape with the authorities at work —“Mettle is dangerous in a blind horse”— had felt like a new glimpse of his lifelong friend’s brand of stubbornness. It was her delivery that was irritating. Or that she said them at all.
    â€œWell, he more or less invented modern dance,” Andy offered.
    â€œNonsense,” said Mrs. Schultz, tapping her piece along the board, not looking at Andy. “Modern was ‘invented’ by Isadora Duncan.”
    Amazing how Alzheimer’s let a person retain arcane facts, even let them mock an iffy use of the word “invented,” and yet not remember a best friend’s name. Though, having been one of Prince Rupert’s most notorious dance mothers, urging Laura’s career on its way, Mrs. Schultz had soaked up lots about dance, especially modern.
    â€œAhh,” Andy said, nodding as if corrected. In the book, Isadora Duncan had watched Nijinsky dance and it changed her. In fact she approached him right after the performance to insist that they make a baby together. Andy didn’t mind letting Mrs. Schultz’s incorrect fact stand, though he didn’t like being accused of “nonsense.” It was getting harder to sit still.
    Rita won the first game. She laboured out of her chair to the kitchen to make tea. Andy’s mother took her place and the second game started.
    Mrs. Schultz asked, “What?” three times running when it was her turn and Doris nudged her. Twice she was told that thegame was Sorry, and the second time she looked down her nose with the one eye, snorted, and said haughtily, “We should be playing bridge.”
    Andy watched for the other women’s reactions. No one moved or spoke. Laura’s mother looked less sad than angry. She, whose fault it was that bridge had ceased, had just berated them for not playing bridge. Was she claiming she was still able? Or had she forgotten her failing state and was giving them hell for what she saw to be their whim? Or was she in effect apologizing, and giving
life
hell for doing this to them?
    He didn’t like how he felt about her. But was it so unnatural to feel vindicated when life humbled someone as nasty as Mrs. Schultz? Someone whose gaze still fell on him like a sneer, someone who refused to accept that he had been loved by her daughter? You didn’t want anyone to suffer, but he admitted ambivalence at seeing that arrogant stance of hers being contradicted by the growing hunch, by the fester of liver spots climbing her forearms. And there was the pink eye patch which, because it reflected absolutely no light, looked like a neutral hole into a brainless head.
    Mrs. Schultz had almost been his mother-in-law. Resistance to the image lurched through his body, it was actually physical. According to Darwin, and probably also Freud, it was natural for him to want to crush