Runaway

could tell (but probably she could not tell far enough), squeamish about any personal revelations, endlessly entertaining.
    Two other men had appeared who wanted her as a partner. One of them she had met when he sat down at her sidewalk table. He was a recent widower. She liked him, but his loneliness was so raw and his pursuit of her so desperate that she became alarmed.
    The other man was Christa’s brother, whom she had met several times during Christa’s life. His company suited her—in many ways he was like Christa. His marriage had ended long ago, he was not desperate—she knew, from Christa, that there had been women ready to marry him whom he had avoided. But he was too rational, his choice of her verged on being cold-blooded, there was something humiliating about it.
    But why humiliating? It was not as if she loved him.
    It was while she was still seeing Christa’s brother—his name was Gary Lamb—that she ran into Heather, on a downtown street in Vancouver. Juliet and Gary had just come out of a theater where they had seen an early-evening movie, and they were talking about where to go for dinner. It was a warm night in summer, the light still not gone from the sky.
    A woman detached herself from a group on the sidewalk. She came straight at Juliet. A thin woman, perhaps in her late thirties. Fashionable, with taffy streaks in her dark hair.
    “Mrs. Porteous. Mrs. Porteous.”
    Juliet knew the voice, though she would never have known the face. Heather.
    “This is incredible,” Heather said. “I’m here for three days and I’m leaving tomorrow. My husband’s at a conference. I was thinking that I don’t know anybody here anymore and then I turn around and see you.”
    Juliet asked her where she was living now and she said Connecticut.
    “And just about three weeks ago I was visiting Josh—you remember my brother Josh?—I was visiting my brother Josh and his family in Edmonton and I ran into Penelope. Just like this, on the street. No—actually it was in the mall, that humongous mall they have. She had a couple of her kids with her, she’d brought them down to get uniforms for that school they go to. The boys. We were both flabbergasted. I didn’t know her right away but she recognized me. She’d flown down, of course. From that place way up north. But she says it’s quite civilized, really. And she said you were still living here. But I’m with these people—they’re my husband’s friends—and I really haven’t had time to ring you up—”
    Juliet made some gesture to say that of course there would not be time and she had not expected to be rung up.
    She asked how many children Heather had.
    “Three. They’re all monsters. I hope they grow up in a hurry. But my life’s a picnic compared with Penelope’s. Five.”
    “Yes.”
    “I have to run now, we’re going to see a movie. I don’t even know anything about it, I don’t even like French movies. But it was altogether great meeting you like this. My mother and dad moved to White Rock. They used to see you all the time on TV. They used to brag to their friends that you’d lived in our house. They say you’re not on anymore, did you get sick of it?”
    “Something like that.”
    “I’m coming, I’m coming.” She hugged and kissed Juliet, the way everybody did now, and ran to join her companions.
    So. Penelope did not live in Edmonton—she had
come down
to Edmonton. Flown down. That meant she must live in Whitehorse or in Yellowknife. Where else was there that she could describe as
quite civilized
? Maybe she was being ironical, mocking Heather a bit, when she said that.
    She had five children and two at least were boys. They were being outfitted with school uniforms. That meant a private school. That meant money.
    Heather had not known her at first. Did that mean she had aged? That she was out of shape after five pregnancies, that she had not
taken care of herself
? As Heather had. As Juliet had, to a certain extent. That she was one of those women to whom the whole idea of such a struggle seemed ridiculous, a confession of insecurity? Or just something she had no time for—far outside of her consideration.
    Juliet had thought of Penelope being involved with transcendentalists, of her having become a mystic, spending her life in contemplation. Or else—rather the opposite but still radically simple and spartan—earning her living in a rough and risky way, fishing, perhaps with a husband, perhaps also with some