She paused for a moment. “Now here’s something I remember with a good deal of clarity. Shortly after we arrived in Canada, Lew saw a magazine ad in which a man was measuring his wife’s height so he could buy her a new ironing board. The wife in the ad, wearing a dress and frilly apron, was looking all perky and delighted. After seeing the illustration, Lew picked up a tape measure one evening and recorded my height. I had no idea what this was about; I’d not seen the ad, and Lew told me he needed the measurement for a surprise. He arrived home from work the next day with an ironing board over his shoulder. I needed the ironing board but was not pleased when he showed me the ad. He might have thought he was giving me a ticket to a land called happiness. Let’s just say it was decided then and there that he would iron his clothes and I mine.

“I only hope young women today have some idea of what went on in my generation. Even soap ads told you how to behave. Oh, yes, you might win your man, but how were you going to keep him? You had to use a special brand of soap, that’s how! Well, never mind the soap or the ironing board. Things worked out. I did miss my parents after we left England, and I persuaded them to visit us in Canada—twice. But I’ve never regretted moving to this country. Now my parents are long gone. As is Lew,” she added, and realized that his name spoken aloud was a sinker at the end of a line, its weight dropping through a deep dark pool, but undeniably attached.

Talking heads, Chiyo was thinking. My Dinner with André. We need a court jester to prance into the room. Someone who can juggle or perform a balancing act. Maybe this is part of a parallel world we’re experiencing. This being the group around the table. Maybe the entire meeting is taking place in the future, or we’re on some sort of timeline and the meeting took place in the past. Maybe we’ve all met before. Maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about.

“I remember those ads of the day,” said Tom. “My Ida didn’t have much use for them. She always tried to carve her own path.”

Hazzley poured a glass of Pellegrino and listened to small talk around her while the others sipped at their drinks. She thought of the empty bottles again; she had to get them out of her basement. Why had Lew become addicted during his last years? Was he so very desperate after his retirement from the museum? She’d asked herself the question many times. She could have asked him directly, but she hadn’t. Why? Because he’d created an atmosphere of silence around the subject. Because he’d ensured that most of his drinking took place after she went to bed. Because at first he’d tried to hide the evidence of bottles and corks and bottle caps, and those efforts were so childlike, so amateur, they were laughable. But never could he hide the odour of alcohol exhaled all night long into the air of their bedroom.