1997

The call from my sister, Kay, comes in the evening. Second call in a week.

"He isn't dying, Bin. I want to make that clear. He sits in his chair, facing the door, as if he expects someone to walk through. He asks for you every time I visit. I've driven to B.C. twice in the past six weeks — it's a long drive from here. But he won't budge from his place."

"First Father?" I can't resist, though I'm not proud of saying it like that.

"I wish you wouldn't call him that."

"That's what he is."

"You still have anger." She says this softly, but impatience is there, underneath.

"Don't you?"

"Not about the same things. Anyway, I try not to hold on to it."

I want to snap at her when she talks like this. I want to say, Get angry yourself, why don't you. You deserve to.

"He's old, Bin. Well, getting old. In his eighties, after all. I'd bring him here to Alberta if he'd agree to leave that tiny house of his."

"But he won't," I say. "And since Mother died, he insists on living alone — or so you keep telling me."

"You've never seen his house, because you refuse to visit Kamloops. In summer it's stifling, take my word for it. Another month or so, and it'll be scorching there."

"Why doesn't he go to the coast before the weather changes?"

"He won't. Not even with his own brother, though Uncle Kenji has offered to drive him, countless times. Father just sits there staring at the door, or out the window at dry mountains." She pauses and adds, "He needs to see you."

I choose to ignore this and remain silent for a moment. He made his choices, I'm thinking. More than half a century ago. His needs are not my concern.

I feel Kay bracing herself, ready to argue or persuade.

"As a matter of fact," I tell her suddenly, "I've decided to travel — west — to British Columbia. As far as the Fraser, to the camp. Well, there is no camp, but whatever is there now."

This announcement surprises me as much as it does her. There's a longer pause and I wonder, foolishly, if she has hung up.

"I won't be in your part of the country for several days, of course." I'm making this up, now, as I speak. "I'll be leaving in the morning, but I probably won't reach Edmonton for a week — more or less. I have things to do along the way."

Basil has been listening and pads by in the hall, his nails clattering against hardwood. He tilts his shaggy head at an angle, enough to ensure that his expression of reproach has been noticed. Nose to floor, long ears dragging the dust, he disappears into the kitchen. I'm certain he does this — the ear-dragging part — on purpose.

"What things?" Kay, as usual, has recovered quickly.

"Work things." I've never liked explaining myself, not even to my wife, Lena. "I'll phone when I get close."

"You're driving. All this way. By yourself."

I hear a long sigh and have a sudden image of Kay standing at a picture window in her Alberta home, looking out at a disc of sun hovering over flat, golden plain. No, there will be nothing golden this time of year in Edmonton. Last summer, when she moved from one neighbourhood to another, she wrote to say that her new house is close to the ravine and the University of Alberta — where she has worked as a counsellor for many years. For all I know, she might be staring into the depths of a crevasse, or at rows of houses, or at spring snow melting in a parking lot. After the enforced years in the camp, Kay has always hated the mountains. She feels squeezed between them every time she drives to B.C., says the mountains press in on her lungs until she's short of breath. Maybe now that her children are grown and on their own, she's finally found a place where she can breathe deeply, no dips or peaks to interrupt her view. A place where she can retire in a year or two, in peace. Her husband, Hugh, has already retired, and Kay has told me that he loves having his time to himself now. He has all sorts of projects going, though she's never said what kind of projects these are.

Basil reappears, having circled kitchen, laundry, dining room. His face looks up in innocence, but something is drooping from his jaw. He drags it across the floor and, without stopping, plops it at my feet and carries on. I watch his low-slung body disappear, sixty pounds of Basset Griffon, the Grand version. He's predominantly white, with a mix of grey, black and apricot markings, the apricot showing through from a thick undercoat. He circles again, this time reversing direction. He's been sticking his nose in the dirty laundry again, probably feeling ignored. Loping his way through an existential dog nightmare, perhaps.

"I'll be alone," I say into the phone. And now it's Kay's turn to be silent.

Who else would be with me? Lena has been dead more than five months. Greg returned to his studies on the East Coast and is back to living his own life. He left a week after the funeral, in mid-November. He was home again at Christmas, and we managed to get through muted festivities at Lena's sister's place in Montreal. Greg flew to Ottawa first, and we travelled together by train to Montreal. Neither of us wanted to drive because the roads were hazardous, covered in snow and ice.

Once in Montreal, we did our best to keep well-meaning relatives at bay — or were surrounded. One and the same, perhaps. There were always people around, people in every room. Was that by accident, or was Lena's family orchestrating our grief as well as their own? When I think of those few days, I remember chairs crowded around the kitchen table, lineups for bathrooms in the morning, music turned up a little louder than necessary. I particularly remember the Sanctus of Berlioz's Requiem, only the Sanctus, a solo tenor voice. It was a blend of pain and beauty, and I felt that the tenor, after singing, could only go offstage and weep. As for the answering women's choir, they were intent on bringing solace from afar. The women sang as if something clear and important had to be said. Perhaps that is when something I was holding back fell away. Perhaps that is when I began to allow myself to grieve.

As soon as Kay and I hang up, I phone Greg to tell him about the trip — before I change my mind. It's an hour later on the East Coast but he's up, studying. He, too, is surprised at my sudden announcement.

"Hey," he says, "you're really going back? Through the mountains? All the way?"

"Through the Rockies," I tell him. "As far inland as the camp, but not all the way to the Pacific. Do you want to come? It's been a while since we crossed the country by car."

"I'd love to, Dad, but I have term papers to finish. After exams, I have to prepare my research project."

Greg has a spot in a summer fellowship program in Massachusetts — exactly where he wants to be. He deserves to be excited about this.

"I don't have all the dates figured out yet," he says. "But maybe we can get together in Cape Cod while I'm there. Or even earlier. I'll let you know as soon as everything is confirmed."

During the conversation, while he tells me what he'll be doing at Woods Hole, the Oceanographic Institution, I find myself calling up a memory of a time when he discovered a dolphin skull on the shores of Passamaquoddy Bay. Almost eleven years ago. The Fundy tide was low; we'd been beachcombing. The skull had washed up on brown and slippery rocks, the elongated bones of its distinctive...