Too Much Happiness

schools.
    The job she got was in Rough River. They bought this tumbledown house for almost nothing and settled into to a new phase in their lives. They planted a garden, got to know their neighbors-some of whom were still real hippies, tending small grow operations deep in the bush and making bead necklaces and herb sachets to sell.
    Their neighbors liked Jon. He was still skinny and bright eyed, egotistical but ready to listen. And it was a time when most people were just getting used to computers, which he understood and could patiently explain. Joyce was less popular. Her methods of teaching music were thought to be too formalized.
    Joyce and Jon cooked supper together and drank some of their homemade wine. (Jon’s method of winemaking was strict and successful.) Joyce talked about the frustrations and comedy of her day. Jon did not talk much-he was, for one thing, more involved in the cooking. But when they got around to eating he might tell her about some customer who had come in, or about his apprentice, Edie. They would laugh about something Edie had said. But not in a disparaging way-Edie was like a pet, Joyce sometimes thought. Or like a child. Though if she had been a child, their child, and had been the way she was, they might have been too puzzled and perhaps too concerned to laugh.
    Why? What way? She wasn’t stupid. Jon said she was no genius when it came to woodworking, but she learned and remembered what she was taught. And the important thing was that she wasn’t garrulous. That was what he had been most afraid of when the business of hiring an apprentice had come up. A government program had been started-he was to be paid a certain amount for teaching the person, and whoever it was would be paid enough to live on while learning. At first he hadn’t been willing, but Joyce had talked him into it. She believed they had an obligation to society.
    Edie might not have talked a lot, but when she did talk it was forceful.
    “I abstain from all drugs and alcohol” was what she told them at her first interview. “I belong to AA and I am a recovering alcoholic. We never say we are recovered, because we never are. You never are as long as you live. I have a nine-year-old daughter and she was born without a father so she is my total responsibility and I mean to bring her up right. My ambition is to learn woodworking so I can provide for myself and my child.”
    While delivering this speech she sat staring at them, one after the other, across their kitchen table. She was a short sturdy young woman who did not look old enough or damaged enough to have much of a career of dissipation behind her. Broad shoulders, thick bangs, tight ponytail, no possibility of a smile.
    “And one more thing,” she said. She unbuttoned and removed her long-sleeved blouse. She was wearing an undershirt. Both arms, her upper chest, and-when she turned around-her upper back were decorated with tattoos. It was as if her skin had become a garment, or perhaps a comic book of faces both leering and tender, beset by dragons, whales, flames, too intricate or maybe too horrid to be comprehended.
    The first thing you had to wonder was whether her whole body had been transformed in the same way.
    “How amazing,” said Joyce, as neutrally as possible.
    “Well, I don’t know how amazing it is, but it would have cost a pile of money if I’d had to pay for it,” Edie said. “That’s what I was into at one time. What I’m showing it to you for is that some people would object to it. Like supposing I got hot in the shed and had to work in my shirt.”
    “Not us,” said Joyce, and looked at Jon. He shrugged.
    She asked Edie if she would like a cup of coffee.
    “No, thank you.” Edie was putting her shirt back on. “A lot of people at AA, they just seem like they live on coffee. What I say to them, I say, Why are you changing one bad habit for another?”
    “Extraordinary,” Joyce said later. “You feel that no matter what you said she might give you a lecture. I didn’t dare inquire about the virgin birth.”
    Jon said, “She’s strong. That’s the main thing. I took a look at her arms.”
    When Jon says “strong” he means just what the word used to mean. He means she could carry a beam.
    While Jon works he listens to CBC Radio. Music, but also news, commentaries, phone-ins. He sometimes reports Edie’s opinions on what they have listened to.
    Edie does not believe in evolution.
    (There had been a phone-in program in