“She was not really afraid, anymore, of being found out—though she still could not understand why they hadn’t been. And in a way, it seemed only proper that the antics of her former self should not be connected with her present self—let alone with the real self that she expected would take over once she got out of this town and away from all the people who thought they knew her. It was the whole twist of consequence that dismayed her—it seemed fantastical, but dull. Also insulting, like some sort of joke or inept warning, trying to get its hooks into her.”
The title story as well as the opening story in this collection is about a practical joke verging wildly from intentions. To combat the stultifying boredom that is her life in Ontario, a woman named Edith devises a hoax along with her friend Sabitha. The plan is to forge love letters to a rather plain and uninteresting woman supposedly sent by Sabitha’s widowed father. The letters are received by Johanna with the full expectation that they are genuine and so she saved up her money to visit him. The reference to being found out in this quote concerns Edith’s worries about the lie coming back on her. The reason that she’s not afraid of this anymore is that her little joke has backfired in the most unanticipated way possible. Essentially, she has unwittingly played the role of matchmaker rather than prankster. Although she downplays the impact upon her personally, the final words of the story hint at something different. On a list of things she plans to do with the rest of her life she reminds herself not to ask impertinent questions because one never knows what fate has in store for them.
“`Do you think it would be fun—' Fiona shouted. `Do you think it would be fun if we got married?’
He took her up on it, he shouted yes. He wanted never to be away from her. She had the spark of life.”
These sentences represent the third and fourth paragraph of the story in totality. An extra space separates the last lines of the fourth paragraph from the first line of the fifth. This formatting decision was made by the author in order to emphasize that very last sentence quoted above. This story is an exercise in irony sparked by the last comment about Fiona’s spark of life. This moment essentially represents the beginning of the long marital relationship between Fiona and her husband, Grant. Their story plays out as tragic irony since Fiona loses her memories of her marriage with the onset of dementia. The spark of life that lies at the root of their union goes out. Grant will go on to have an affair with a woman named Jacqui whom he describes as the exact opposite of Fiona. One of these oppositional attributes being Jacqui is “a stranger to irony.” Since by definition this means that Fiona embraced irony the story ends with the unspoken possibility that somewhere deep within the mind that dementia has almost completely stolen from Fiona that spark of life might just be manifesting as an appreciation of the irony of her situation.
“He slipped his arms around her as if there was no question at all about what he was doing and he could take all the time he wanted to do it. He kissed her mouth. It seemed to her that this was the first time ever that she had participated in a kiss that was an event in itself. The whole story, all by itself. A tender prologue, an efficient pressure, a wholehearted probing and receiving, a lingering thanks, and a drawing away satisfied.”
The title of this collection can easily be applied to more than the title story itself. As with the tale of Fiona and Grant, this story is about the unstable intricacies of marriage in the wake of infidelity and sickness. Like Fiona, Jinny in this story is suddenly betrayed by her own body. Instead of dementia it is cancer. Unlike Fiona, however, Jinny receive a reprieve when she learns that her condition has actually improved. A series of interrelated events in the narrative conspire to create a sense of jealousy toward a young woman in which her husband is showing more attention than necessary while ultimately Jinny finds herself alone with an equally younger man. This quote is the point at which that time with the younger man reaches its climax. The kiss is clearly transcendent for both participants. What makes the kiss such an event in itself is that for the first time Jinny has been given the power enjoyed only by her unfaithful husband. She has secrets to either keep or reveal and in the aftermath she is overcome by a sort of satisfaction she has never known and which she may or may not have time enough ahead of her to enjoy again.
