Garden of Eden by Sharon Butala Page B

were real. They got a surprise!” She and Iris laugh. Luke grunts as if he disapproves, but doesn’t look up from his rapidly diminishing mound of dessert. Iris casts about for something to say, thinking glumly how it’s always this way, she and her in-laws never have much to say to each other. And Luke and Barney always at each other’s throats.
    “Barney’s been calving a while already, eh,” Luke says gruffly. His plate is now empty and he’s gazing across the room instead of looking at her. Iris nods without speaking, a little game she’s started, to see if she can make him look at her. But he doesn’t bother, just pushes his plate away and slowly stands to his full six feet, looking around at all the people chatting away to each other. Without speaking, he walks away. Mary Ann appears not to notice his going. Iris knows he has spotted cronies somewhere in the crowd and won’t be back until he’s ready to go home. It isn’t simple rudeness, she knows, it’s just how tough old ranchers, weaned on blizzards and raging thunderstorms and rangy mustangs and hard, hard times behave; it doesn’t mean anything. Farmers, on the other hand, she thinks, aren’t tough any more now that they farm with machinery instead of horses.
    “You going to try to go back there yourself tonight?” Mary Ann asks. Startled, Iris can’t think what she means — Oh, Barney’s ranch. She’s never told her in-laws she doesn’t go there with Barney, in fact, she’s only been there once, when he was trying to decide whether to buy it or not.
Over my dead body,
she’d said, pretending she was joking, but Barney ignored her, as if he’d suddenly gone deaf, couldn’t hear a word she was saying. Fortunately, she doesn’t see that much of her in-laws, it’s easy to keep secrets from them.
    “Oh, I can’t handle the roads in there right now,” she says. “And Barney’s got the four-wheel drive. I’m staying at the farm for now.”
    When she’d made it clear to him that she would never, never move there of her own free will, all Barney said was, “I have to do this, Iris. I never asked nothing of you, but I’m asking this.” When she asked him, over and over again, “But, why?” he would only turn away, and she couldn’t tell if it was because he knew she wouldn’t understand his reasons, or if it was because he didn’t understand them himself. Mary Ann is giving her a sidelong, speculative glance, but she decidesit’s safer not to add anything to what she’s already said. Mary Ann would say, A wife belongs with her husband. And what would her own mother say? She finds she can’t guess.
    A plate of cake heaped with strawberries, the whipped cream spilling over the edge, appears with a thump on the tablecloth in front of her and she looks up in surprise to see Ramona Norman grinning down at her. Ramona is her lifelong neighbour, they played together as children, in high school they’d been best friends.
    “Gotta keep your strength up,” Ramona says, licking whipped cream from her fingers and pushing her glasses back up her nose with the other hand.
    “Sit, Ramona,” Mary Ann says, indicating Luke’s chair.
    “Can’t. I’m with Mom and Dad and we have to get Dad home. He’s played out already. Only been here fifteen minutes. And we’re calving, gotta get back. See ya.” She’s gone as abruptly as she arrived, turning sideways to make her way between the crowded tables.
    “Thanks for the cake,” Iris calls to her retreating back.
    “We should be going soon, too,” Mary Ann says. She looks around the hall as if she’s going to find Luke and tell him it’s time to go, but of course she doesn’t move. “Your mother okay?” Iris’s mother is in a nursing home.
    “I’m going on to see her as soon as I can get away from here. It was raining so hard on Sunday, and Barney was ho …” — she corrects her remark quickly — “was too tired to drive all that way to Swift Current and back. So I’m