Unless. Carol Shields

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      So-oo-oo?” my daughter Norah once asked me—she was about nine years old. “Why exactly is it that you and Daddy aren’t married?”

      I had been waiting for the question for some years, and was prepared. “We really are married,” I told her. “In the real sense of the word, we are married.” She and I were in Orangetown on a Saturday morning, in the only shoe store in town not counting the ones out at the mall, and Norah was trying on new school shoes. “We’re married in that we’re together forever.”

      “But,” she said, “you didn’t have a wedding.”

      “We had a reception,” I told her cheerily. This diversion from wedding to reception had always been part of my plan. “We had a dinner for friends and family at your father’s apartment.”

      “What kind of reception?”

      How easily I managed to lead her sideways. “We had pizza and beer,” I said. “And champagne for toasts.”

      “Was Grandma Winters there?”

      “Well, no. She and Grandpa Winters had another reception for us later. Sort of a tea party.”

      “What did you wear?”

      “You mean at the pizza party?”

      “Yes.”

      “I had a caftan that Emma Allen made out of some African cotton. A blue and black block print. You’ve seen the picture. Only she was Emma McIntosh then.”

      “Was she your bridesmaid?”

      “Sort of. We didn’t use that word in those days.”

      “Why not?”

      “This was back in the seventies. Weddings were out of style back then. People didn’t think they were important, not if two people really loved each other.”

      “I hate these shoes.” She wiggled in the chair.

      “Well, we won’t buy them, then.”

      “What kind of shoes did you have?”

      “When?”

      “At the pizza thing.”

      “I’m not sure I remember. Oh, yes I do. We didn’t have shoes. We were barefoot.”

      “Barefoot? You and Daddy?”

      “It was summertime. A very hot summer day.”

      “That’s nice,”she said.”I wish I’d been there.”

      This was much too easy. “I wish you’d been there too,” I said, meaning it. “That would have made the day perfect.”

      “So, is there anything new?” It was Emma Allen phoning a week ago from Newfoundland. She has been a friend since high-school days in Toronto. There is no need for reference points between Emma and me. Our brains tick over in the same way. She is a writer, a medical journalist, a redhead, tall and lanky, who once lived, briefly, in Orangetown with her husband and kids and was part of the same writers’ workshop. We speak at least once a week on the phone. When she asks if there’s anything new, she is talking about Norah, about Norah living on the street.

      “She’s still there. Every day.”

      “That has to be some comfort,” she said in her measured way. “Though it’s not bloody much.”

      “I worry about the cold.”

      It was October, and we were having a frost almost every night. We’d even had a fall of snow, which had since melted.

      “Thermal underwear?” Emma asked.

      “Good idea.”

      “On the other hand—”

      “Yes?”

      “The cold may bring her home. You know how a good cold snap makes people wake up and look after themselves.”

      “I’ve thought of that.”

      “I thought probably you had.”

      Tom’s father was a family physician in Orangetown, so Tom became a family physician in Orangetown. It’s not really as simple as that, but the fallout is the same. When he was a student he was in rebellion against the established order, way over to the edge of the left. He didn’t attend his own university graduation, because the ceremony involved wearing academic dress. For ten years the only trousers he wore were jeans. He doesn’t own a necktie and doesn’t intend to, not ever—the usual liberal tokens. His instincts are bourgeois, but he fights his instincts. That is, he lives the life of a married man but balks at the idea of a marriage ceremony. Mostly, he is a different kind of doctor than his crusty, sentimental father. Tom is a saint, some people in Orangetown think, so patient, so humane, so quietly authoritative. He works at the Orangetown Clinic with three other doctors, one of whom is an obstetrician who looks after most of the births in the region. Tom misses that, attending births. He sees a lot of sick people and a lot of lonely people. It’s through Tom that I’ve found out about the ubiquity of loneliness. I wouldn’t have believed it otherwise.

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