paying extra for something the artisans
didn’t
do?”
Alex had graciously steered Mike’s sarcasm away from its easy target, and now Amber’s velvet stoner-bubble had expanded to include these
beautiful people
, old friends sharing a meal at the communal table, rediscovering forgotten
life rhythms
.
“What we forget,” she said, “is that before electricity and TV , people gathered in the kitchen to warm themselves by the stove to
talk
about things that mattered—family, community, the land. Wisdom was passed from one generation to the next—stories and family histories.” She looked to Julian for confirmation. “There’s no
apprenticeship
anymore, nothing handed down.”
Her words tugged something loose in Joseph, opening a vein of sympathy.
Apprenticeship
—scenes from a socialist mural rose up: heroically self-sacrificing men and women teaching the young to sole a shoe, weave a blanket, run a mill, and bring in the harvest, channelling the nervous, hopeful energy of youth into meaningful labour. He would have mocked the idea of surrendering his will to a craftsperson when he was fifteen, yet here he was, wishing that a crofter or weaver would help guide Franny through her teens.
Jane’s waitress-holler announcing the next course prevented another Amber homily. Joseph pulled on his beer and took in the faces flushed with heat and alcohol, thegirls lit from behind by the glowing kitchen window. Jane and Liz brought plates heaped with steaming shepherd’s pie and corn to the table, and after the men outdid each other complimenting the cooks, everyone dug in—even Franny, who ate without stopping to do a mental calorie count before every forkful. Joseph washed down the shepherd’s pie with another gulp of beer that almost drained the bottle, and looked up to see Jane squeezing Alex’s hand, wrapped now with fresh gauze. He’d overheard them arguing again in the back office just before dinner, Jane ending her diatribe by telling Alex to “give it a fucking rest, for my sake. I
need
this weekend.”
Alex had more than obeyed Jane’s order—he was practically buoyant, restored to his place as the male half of the Golden Couple, now relocated to a modest country home where friends came to escape their overworked lives and share a meal at his handmade dinner table, venturing beyond the acceptable mealtime topics of real estate, careers, and cable TV shows that were inevitably described as being “as rich as novels.” He asked Liz if she was having better luck this summer with her garden, and for the next half-hour he kept the conversation moving from guest to guest, flattering each of them with his full attention, teasing out their most engaging self. Even the girls were temporarily drawn out when Amber explained the significance of the tattoos lacing her arms, the left representing her “Celtic ancestors,” the other her “Mohawk heritage.”
No surprise really: Alex had always been a great talker, and an even better listener. Tonight it was as if he was using those gifts to bring out the best in his guests and todemonstrate, if only for a couple of hours, how an egalitarian community would function at the daily domestic level. And maybe two hours could be stretched into two days, and days into weeks, and so on, deep into the young century. It made Joseph wonder if the congenial host across the table was a domestic version of the Alex who was radicalizing the locals at his Friday-night meetings, drawing out their inchoate anger and directing it at a series of targets. If Derek was any indicator, results were mixed.
“Julian, I can’t believe you’re here,” Liz said, letting Alex finish his dinner. “What have you been doing for the last, oh, twenty years?”
“I did a little bit of acting,” Julian said. “I played some guitar, tried some things. I even worked for my dad for a year.” He lingered on this early run of hope. “Then I moved out to the Coast. I got involved with the wrong
didn’t
do?”
Alex had graciously steered Mike’s sarcasm away from its easy target, and now Amber’s velvet stoner-bubble had expanded to include these
beautiful people
, old friends sharing a meal at the communal table, rediscovering forgotten
life rhythms
.
“What we forget,” she said, “is that before electricity and TV , people gathered in the kitchen to warm themselves by the stove to
talk
about things that mattered—family, community, the land. Wisdom was passed from one generation to the next—stories and family histories.” She looked to Julian for confirmation. “There’s no
apprenticeship
anymore, nothing handed down.”
Her words tugged something loose in Joseph, opening a vein of sympathy.
Apprenticeship
—scenes from a socialist mural rose up: heroically self-sacrificing men and women teaching the young to sole a shoe, weave a blanket, run a mill, and bring in the harvest, channelling the nervous, hopeful energy of youth into meaningful labour. He would have mocked the idea of surrendering his will to a craftsperson when he was fifteen, yet here he was, wishing that a crofter or weaver would help guide Franny through her teens.
Jane’s waitress-holler announcing the next course prevented another Amber homily. Joseph pulled on his beer and took in the faces flushed with heat and alcohol, thegirls lit from behind by the glowing kitchen window. Jane and Liz brought plates heaped with steaming shepherd’s pie and corn to the table, and after the men outdid each other complimenting the cooks, everyone dug in—even Franny, who ate without stopping to do a mental calorie count before every forkful. Joseph washed down the shepherd’s pie with another gulp of beer that almost drained the bottle, and looked up to see Jane squeezing Alex’s hand, wrapped now with fresh gauze. He’d overheard them arguing again in the back office just before dinner, Jane ending her diatribe by telling Alex to “give it a fucking rest, for my sake. I
need
this weekend.”
Alex had more than obeyed Jane’s order—he was practically buoyant, restored to his place as the male half of the Golden Couple, now relocated to a modest country home where friends came to escape their overworked lives and share a meal at his handmade dinner table, venturing beyond the acceptable mealtime topics of real estate, careers, and cable TV shows that were inevitably described as being “as rich as novels.” He asked Liz if she was having better luck this summer with her garden, and for the next half-hour he kept the conversation moving from guest to guest, flattering each of them with his full attention, teasing out their most engaging self. Even the girls were temporarily drawn out when Amber explained the significance of the tattoos lacing her arms, the left representing her “Celtic ancestors,” the other her “Mohawk heritage.”
No surprise really: Alex had always been a great talker, and an even better listener. Tonight it was as if he was using those gifts to bring out the best in his guests and todemonstrate, if only for a couple of hours, how an egalitarian community would function at the daily domestic level. And maybe two hours could be stretched into two days, and days into weeks, and so on, deep into the young century. It made Joseph wonder if the congenial host across the table was a domestic version of the Alex who was radicalizing the locals at his Friday-night meetings, drawing out their inchoate anger and directing it at a series of targets. If Derek was any indicator, results were mixed.
“Julian, I can’t believe you’re here,” Liz said, letting Alex finish his dinner. “What have you been doing for the last, oh, twenty years?”
“I did a little bit of acting,” Julian said. “I played some guitar, tried some things. I even worked for my dad for a year.” He lingered on this early run of hope. “Then I moved out to the Coast. I got involved with the wrong
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