Ethel said that was what he was like: considerate, a gentleman. She cried at the funeral, unlike Tony, and talked to herself during the prayers. Tony thought at first that she was saying Pisspiss but actually it was Pleaseplease. Maybe it always had been. Maybe she wasn’t crying about Griffat all, but about her two dead children. Or life in general. Tony could consider all possibilities, she had an open mind.

Griff’s life insurance was no good, of course. It didn’t cover suicide. But Tony had the money from the house, after the mortgage was paid off, and her mother’s leftover money, which had been willed to her, and whatever else was in the bank. Maybe that’s what her father meant when he said she would be all right.

So that’s it, Tony tells Zenia. And it is, as far as she knows. She doesn’t think about her parents very much. She doesn’t have nightmares about her father appearing with half of his head blown off, still with something to tell; or of her mother, trailing wet skirts and salt water, her hair hanging over her face like seaweed. She thinks maybe she ought to have such nightmares, but she doesn’t. The study of history has steeled her to violent death; she is well armoured.

“You’ve still got the ashes?” says Zenia. “Your mother’s?”

“They’re on my sweater shelf,” says Tony.

“You are a gruesome little creature,” says Zenia, laughing. Tony takes it as a compliment: it’s the same thing Zenia said when Tony showed her the battle notebooks with the scores of the men lost. “What else have you got? The gun?” But then she turns serious. “You should get rid of those ashes right away! They’re bad luck, they’ll ill-wish you:”

This is a new side to Zenia: she’s superstitious. Tony would not have suspected it, and her high estimate of Zenia, slips a notch. “They’re just plain old ashes,” she says.

“You know that’s not true,” says Zenia. “You know it isn’t. Keep those, and she’ll still have a hold on you.”

So the next evening at twilight the two of them take the ferry across to the Island. It’s December and there’s a bitter wind, but no ice on the lake yet, so the ferry is still running. Halfway across Tony tosses the canister with her mother’s ashes off the back of the ferry, into the dark choppy water. It’s not something she’d have done on her own; it’s just to please Zenia.

“Rest in peace,” says Zenia. She doesn’t sound altogether convinced. Worse, the metal cylinder isn’t sinking. It’s floating, bobbing along in the wake of the ferry. Tony realizes she should have opened it and dumped out the contents. If she had a rifle she could put a couple of holes through it. If she could shoot.

~IV

December darkens and darkens, and the streets sprout forth their Christmas tinsel, and the Salvation Army brass band sings hymns and jingles its bells and stirs up its cauldron of money, and loneliness blows in the snowflurries, and the other girls in McClung Hall set off to join their families, in their homes, their warm homey homes, and Tony stays behind. As she has done before; but this time it’s better, this time there’s no cold feeling in the pit of her stomach, because Zenia is there with her heartening sneers. “Christmas is a bitch,” says Zenis. “Screw Christmas, it is so bourgeois,” and then Tony feels all right again and tells Zenia about the controversy over Christ’s birthdate, in the Dark Ages, and how grown men were willing to kill one another over it, over the exact timing of Peace on earth, goodwill towards men, and Zenia laughs. “Your head is a card file,” she says. “Let’s eat, I’ll make us something:” And Tony sits with contentment at Zenia’s kitchen table; watching her measure and blend and stir.

Where is West in all of this? Tony has relinquished him, because how could she ever compete with Zenia? And even if she could compete, she wouldn’t think of it. Such a thing would be dishonourable. Zenia is her friend. Her best friend. Her only friend, come to think of it. Tony has not been in the habit of having friends.

Or it may be otherwise; it may be that there’s no room left for West, between the two of them. They’re too close together. So there’s Zenia and Tony now, and Zenia and West; but no longer any West and Tony.

Sometimes there are the three of them together. Tony goes with Zenia and West to their place, the new one they moved into after painting their. old one black. The new place isn’t new, but dingy and cheap and falling apart, an over-the-store walk-up east on Queen. This apartment has a long living room with one window, its glass rattled by passing streetcars; a big raffish kitchen, with tattered orange wallpaper and a table, a wooden one with cracked blue paint, and four mismatched chairs; and a bedroom, where Zenia and West sleep together on a mattress on the floor.

Zenia makes them scrambled eggs, and strong, amazing coffee and West plays his lute for them: he does have one, after all. He sits on a cushion on the floor, his long legs bent at the knees and sticking up like the back legs of a grasshopper, and fingers deftly, and sings old ballads.

The water is wide, I cannot get over, And neither have I wings to fly, Build me a boat that can carry two, And both shall row, my love and I, he sings. “There’s an Irish version too,” he adds, “with a boatman.

Really he is singing for Zenia, not for Tony at all. He is deeply in love with Zenia; Zenia has told Tony this, and indeed it’s obvious. Zenia must feel the same way about West, because she praises him, she extols him, she strokes him with her eyes. He is such a gentle man, she’s told Tony during their coffee talks; so thoughtful, unlike most men, who are slobbering brutes. He values her for the right reasons. He worships her! She is very fortunate to have found’such a sweet man. Of course he’s great in the sack as well.

The sack? thinks Tony. What is the sack? It takes her a minute. She has never been in the presence, before, of two people who are in love with each other. She feels like a stray child, ragged and cold, with her nose pressed to a lighted window. A toy-store window, a bakery window, with fancy cakes and decorated cookies. Poverty prevents her entrance. These things are for other people; nothing for her.

But Zenia seems to be aware of this, too—of Tony’s singleness, her forlorn wistfulness—and smooths it over. She’s very considerate. She distracts, she acts, She talks gaily of other things. Recipes, shortcuts, wrinkles, and twists: she hasn’t lived from hand to mouth for nothing, she has a full supply of useful knacks. The secret of the scrambled eggs, for instance, is the fresh chervil and chives—she has several pots of herbs growing on the windowsill—and a little water added, and not too high a flame; the secret of the coffee is the coffee grinder, a wooden one with a handle and an enchanting pull-out drawer.

Zenia is full of secrets. She laughs, she throws her secrets casually this way and that, her teeth flashing white; she pulls more secrets out of her sleeves and unfurls them from behind her back, she unrolls them like bolts of rare cloth, displaying them, whirling them like gypsy scarves, flourishing them like banners, heaping them one on top of another in a glittering, prodigal tangle. When she’s in the room, who can look at anything else?

But Tony and West do look—just for a moment—when Zenia has her back turned. They look sadly at each other, a little shamefaced. In thrall, is what they are. They know they can no longer drink beer together calmly in the afternoons. It is Zenia, now, who borrows Tony’s Modern History notes. West gets the benefit of them too, of course, but only secondhand:

Once Tony forgot to sign out of McClung Hall and then stayed at Zenia’s too late. She ended up spending the night on Zenia’s living-room floor, rolled in a blanket, on top of Zenia’s coat and her own coat and West’s. In the morning, very early, West went back with her to McClung Hall and gave her a boost onto the bottom platform of the fire escape, which was too high for her to reach otherwise.