Free A History of Forgetting by Caroline Adderson

hours, depending on when Denis was moved to cook—eleven o’clock at night, three o’clock in the morning—but when they sat down to dinner on that night, it was at a perfectly sensible hour, seven o’clock in the evening. Before both of them was a wide-lipped bowl, a slice of French bread fried in butter waiting in it. Denis ladled out the stew. The bread drank it up.
    â€˜Bon appétit,’ he said, lifting his spoon to sip.
    Malcolm swirled his wine glass, staring down at the heady, alcoholic broth in the bowl. This had used to be his favourite dish, but lately it tasted more and more like bile. ‘Oh, I know!’ he said. ‘Would you like to hear a joke?’
    Denis leaned forward to listen.
    â€˜This old Jewish lady is walking down the street when she sees, on the bench at the bus stop, a man she used to know—a Mr. Epstein. “Mr. Epstein!” she cries out in delight. “It’s me, Mabel Goldberg. I haven’t seen you in years!”’
    Denis frowned.
    â€˜â€œMabel,” he tells her. “It’s true. I haven’t been around.” “Where have you been?” “To prison,” says Mr. Epstein. “Prison!” cries Mabel. “What did you do?” “I strangled my wife.” “Strangled your wife? Why Mr. Epstein! I guess you’re single.”’
    Every time, Malcom changed the joke a little, just to amuse himself. But Denis wasn’t laughing. He was looking in his bowl, wearing a disgusted expression, as if he’d finally grown sick of everything: the joke, the matelote d’anguille.
    â€˜What’s the matter?’ asked Malcolm. ‘Don’t you think it’s funny any more?’
    â€˜Non,’ Denis said. ‘I don’t like jokes about Jews.’
    Malcolm was taken aback. ‘A very nice man told me that joke. The son of a client and Jewish himself. He told it in a room probably full of Jews and everyone laughed. No one thought it was offensive in the least.’
    The way Denis pursed his lips, he looked surprisingly ugly for such a beautiful man.
    â€˜What?’ asked Malcolm, defensively. ‘I don’t see anything wrong.’
    Denis said, ‘I don’t care for them. Jews.’

 
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    HOW IT GOES
    IN RATLAND
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    1
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    T he new owner —her name was Amanda—called him at home and invited him in a NutraSweet voice to have lunch with her. Malcolm had already met her before they’d closed up Faye’s. She’d brought with her three minions bearing tape measures and paint samples, and not once did she look at or speak to Malcolm. ‘We have a lot to talk about,’ she said now on the phone.
    She named the restaurant—right there on the avenue, conveniently—and the time. Malcolm came a little early, then had to wait twenty minutes for her. When she arrived, it was calmly, without a hint of hurry or apology. She was a tall woman, ageless in her too-taut skin.
    â€˜Look,’ she told him as soon as she joined him, ‘there are other salons nearby. Five, actually. I took the trouble to count. At any of them you might fit in better.’
    Already Malcolm’s back was up and he had not even opened the menu. ‘Do you include in that number MagiCuts and Wanda’s House of Beauty?’
    â€˜Okay. Four. Wanda’s is okay.’
    â€˜As far as I can tell, her clientele is exclusively Cantonese-speaking.’
    â€˜Okay, three. Those are only the ones within walking distance. There’s a whole city out there, you know.’
    He didn’t. He rarely sallied forth. The closest he came to adventurousness was to trace his finger along the crest of the North Shore Mountains, as he had used to do as a boy, though now it felt as if he were mimicking his own unstable vital signs on a screen.
    The waitress interrupted to take their order. Malcolm didn’t