The Progress of Love

call, and the station agent remembers everything. He remembers lies. Miss Kernaghan has already missed the money and promises no forgiveness. Never wants to lay eyes on. A foundling born in a hotel lobby, parents probably not married, taken in and sheltered, ingratitude, bad blood. Let that be a lesson. Disgrace in plenty, even if Callie isn’t a minor.
    Meaning, further, that they all went on living, and many things happened. He himself, even in those first confused and humiliating days in Toronto, got the idea that a place like this, a city, with midday shadows in its deep, narrow downtown streets, its seriously ornamented offices, its constant movement and jangling streetcars, could be the place for him. A place to work and make money. So he stayed on, stayed at the Y.M.C.A., where his crisis—his and Edgar’s and Callie’s—was soon forgotten and something else happened next week. He got a job, and after a few years saw that this wasn’t really the place to make money; the West was the place to make money. So he moved on.
    Edgar and Callie went home to the farm with Edgar’s parents. But they did not stay there long. Miss Kernaghan found she could not manage without them.
    Callie’s store is in a building she and Edgar own. The variety store and a hairdressing place downstairs, their living quarters upstairs.(The hairdressing place is where the grocery used to be—the same grocery where Sam and Edgar used to buy jam tarts. “But who wants to hear about that?,” Callie says. “Who wants to hear about the way things used to be?”)
    Sam’s idea of good taste has been formed by his wife’s grays and whites and blues and straight lines and single vases. Callie’s place upstairs is stunning. Gold brocade draped to suggest a large window where no window is. Gold plushy carpet, rough white plaster ceiling sparkling with stars. One wall is a dull-gold mirror in which Sam sees himself crisscrossed by veins of black and silver. Lights hang from chains, in globes of amber glass.
    In the midst of this sits Edgar, like a polished ornament, seldom moving, Of the three of them, he has kept his looks the best. He had the most to keep. He is tall, frail, beautifully groomed and dressed. Callie shaves him. She washes his hair every day, and it is white and glistening like the angel hair on Christmas trees. He can dress himself, but she puts everything out for him—trousers, socks, and matched tie and pocket handkerchief, soft shirts of deep blue or burgundy, which set off his pink cheeks and his hair.
    “He had a little turn,” says Callie. “Four years ago in May. He didn’t lose his speech or anything, but I took him to the doctor and he said yes, he’s had a little turn. But he’s healthy. He’s good.”
    Callie has given Sam permission to take Edgar for a walk. She spends her days in the store. Edgar is waiting upstairs in front of the television set. He knows Sam, seems glad to see him. He nods readily when Sam says, “Just get your overcoat on. Then we’re off.” Sam brings a new, light-gray overcoat and a gray cap from the closet, then, on second thought, a pair of rubbers to protect Edgar’s shining shoes.
    “Okay?” says Sam, but Edgar makes a gesture, meaning, “Just a moment.” He is watching a handsome young woman interviewing an older woman. The older woman makes dolls. The dolls are made of dough. Though they are of different sizes, they all have the sameexpression, which is, in Sam’s opinion, idiotic. Edgar seems to be quite taken with them. Or perhaps it is the interviewer, with her shaggy gold hair.
    Sam stands until that’s over. Then the weather comes on, and Edgar motions for him to sit down. That makes sense—to see what the weather is going to be before they start walking. Sam means to head up Orange Street—where a senior citizens’ complex has replaced the skating rink and the cherry trees—and go around to the old Kernaghan house and the Canadian Tire lot. After the weather, Sam stays for the news, because there is something about a new tax regulation that interests him. Commercials keep interrupting, of course, but finally the news is over. Some figure skaters come on. After an hour or so has passed, Sam realizes there is no hope of budging Edgar.
    Whenever Sam says anything, Edgar raises his hand, as if to say he’ll have time to listen in a minute. He is never annoyed. He gives everything the same pleased attention. He smiles as he watches the skaters in their