| CHAD NORMAN After the women left One day every week the women went to town at different times for appointments with grocers, doctors, hairstylists, or to study the bible and pray in a living room being lit by a late summer sun quietly drying the wash they left on their lines, a late summer sun they comment on in stores pleased to be away from the demands of men. During the few hours Bert knew the house was his to fill a pipe, to brew some tea, to seem well, required nothing other than a clarity he claimed in front of the grandson left unable to question moments easily described as miracles, simply an afternoon when a disease seemed to rest, not to rely on his wife for a box of matches, one match she usually lit to start the pipe, an afternoon when his mind came back and a memory of a trip to family in Coquitlam became the story he shared with wide smiles appearing between puffs he exhaled, he blew in the direction of a picture used to divide the on-going past from a time he stood by a window waiting for his wife to drive in, to allow him to be in need again, arteries hardening. The return of a wife late in the day ends silence her goodbyes coming in the kitchen window after wheels grew loud on dry carport stones, her hellos filled the hallway into where he resumed a kind of partnership with dying, went away from being who she wished to ask out to their swing, cool & still, in a maple’s shadow. The other yesterday Time or fashion or the age had nothing on Gladys. And I believe she knew what she needed to know to be her gender, to be all the women she was, comfortable in a selection of chairs away from and part of the farmhouse she kept and
fortified. . When the day came to drive with other wives able to occupy her choice to be a Christian with the chosen scriptures and popular cookies meant to enhance the weekly prayers for others put forward by a congregation she knew by name. At home Bert pretended to fix an edible snack & tea. The afternoon spent listening to the clock & cattle, a silence in the kitchen helping him to accept routines they must be alone to know, and together to call their own. A few hours apart allowed Gladys another happiness in an era when the church prospered beyond the pew, mothers, sisters, grandmothers, women after years of love, on a road they follow to home, the road back to a fridge, a table, a sink, a meal of leftovers, a holiday apron on a
hook. Summer flies After the July day’s jagged heat became dusk’s prayed-for breeze Gladys, a sly fading grin, almost gave away her amusement, routinely took down the red wire-handled rubber swatter with one hand, and led the shy suburban boy with the other, her visiting daughter’s only son chosen over the other grandsons usually around, loud, shoving to show how to squash a lot with one swat out in the shaded yet stifling favourite glassed-in side porch; Gladys, a low loving snicker, she almost let turn to full laughter, loyally decided the kitchen’s demands would wait a moment or more to cheer silently as the helpful merciless boys ended the hunt, to gladly offer a round of Revellos in order to enjoy one herself, and also a moment to forget how, at dawn, all the filthy little corpses seemed to signal replacements alive & abuzz. | 
