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W hen Chantal came to visit she took one look at Adele and said, "You've got to get out of this apartment. Take a course, any course, but do something. " Aside from going to work, Adele had not ventured further than her living room in weeks. She was familiar with the quiet of books and tea and wood-burning fires. But a silence had grown around her which made her cold. It saturated the air until everything smelled of old medicine and rot. Some days the silence was so thick she could hardly move and her mind felt like it was treading murky water. At twenty-six, she felt ancient. She had no desire to go back to school. But on the rare occasion Chantal made a suggestion, she took her advice. Chantal knew things.

In her teens, when she'd first thought of going to university, her father asked her who she was trying to impress. He was floored when she got a scholarship. "You count on your fingers, for Christsake," he said. "Tom, now he was quick." By the time she smashed her car and got enough insurance money to move out, she no longer had any interest in getting a degree. She studied Italian on her own. She tried to learn Greek. She lurched from one subject to another, in a haphazard way. But two weeks after Chantal's visit she found herself sitting in a classroom, while a short, balding instructor, his pot belly spilling out of his shirt, handed out the syllabus for Plays of Euripides. It seemed fated she should take this class when Adult Education offered it because earlier in the week she'd done a crossword puzzle and the answer to one of the questions had been The Bacchae.

She was determined to give the class a chance. "Euripides was ridiculed and parodied more than any literary man in Athens," the instructor said, "yet the playwright was the most sympathetic of writers with a deep conviction of the worth of every living being. " The instructor said he would show that Euripides was contemporary, and that the ancients were concerned with the same things people care about today: desire, loyalty, loss, ambition. He quoted Euripides: "No one is truly free. Every man is a slave to wealth, fortune, the law or other people restraining him from acting according to his will."

Adele was thinking about this when a man walked into the room, looked around and, despite many vacant chairs, sat in the one beside her. She did not turn her head and glance in his direction but she did notice he was good looking. She was, in fact, startled by how strikingly handsome he was. The fact that she did not turn toward him once, even though they shared the same desk, made her realize, by the end of the evening, how someone could literally be a pain in the neck. When his leg brushed hers he moved away quickly, but she was as horrified as she imagined he was. 'Frump,' was the word she supposed he would use to describe her.

She was a short woman, barely five feet, and heavy. She weighed more, that time in her life, than she ever thought she would. Her fine brown hair was streaked blonde, but it only made her look older. Slashed across the middle of her upper lip, like a thin white snake, ran a scar that she'd gotten when her car had skidded into the telephone pole. She forgot about it until she touched her mouth and felt the slick line. She was convinced, however, that even worse than her deficiency of glamour, was her lack of experience. She'd never slept with anyone. How was it, she wondered, that she'd fallen so far behind? Wasn't this issue supposed to be resolved by the time you were in your mid twenties? But sex was a black hole, exerting its pull, treacherous, forbidding. She resented this man for sitting next to her. She felt humiliated just by his presence.

The instructor continued talking but Adele had stopped listening. Finally the first class came to an end. The one thing that cheered Adele that night were poems on the wall written by third graders who used the room in the day. "I love my cat snuffy. He was fat and ate too much and woke me up at night but still I love him. Even though he's dead I love him," written in large block letters on bristol board and signed Kathleen.

The next day, when another editor at the paper where Adele worked asked her about the class, what came to mind was the cat poem, but she didn't think he'd be interested. She didn't mind her job at the paper. In her early twenties she'd waitressed for a few months but when she'd overheard a customer refer to her as "that dog," (at least she was pretty sure that's what he'd said) she quit. Though people were a kind of torture for her, being on her own for too long unnerved her too.

The following Tuesday, Adele was sitting in her kitchen eating sardines from the can and thought, "Do I really want to make the effort to go to my car?" But when she stayed too long in her apartment, she felt it suffocating her. She squeezed into her pants, put on a large sweater so old and washed out the color was indeterminate, and headed back to Plays of Euripides. In class, the instructor asked students to take a few minutes and write down the answer to the question the chorus in The Bacchae ask, "What is the finest gift the gods can give mortals? "

"I understand now," the man beside her laughed. "This is a psychology class disguised as Greek literature." Then he turned to Adele. "My name is Mac," he said, extending his hand. "And you're ...?"

Adele was not paranoid, she was not cynical, but she didn't want to be seen as pathetic. Why did the man want to know her name? "Adele," she said grudgingly. There, she thought, can we ignore each other now? But Mac? Put a "Big" in front of it and you could take a bite. Attach "truck" and turn your head and he'd mow you down. Or was it short for a variety of apple, juicy, crunchy, sweet?

"So there's something wrong with his name, is there?" Chantal said over the phone next day. Adele could almost see her smile her crooked smile. But really, how many Mac's did she know?

Adele never understood what Chantal was doing with her father. She didn't need his money. She worked at the bank. Just a few years older than Adele, Chantal was pretty with her silky blonde hair cropped short like a boy's. Though she did have one odd feature. One side of her mouth drooped, as if it were paralyzed. Her crooked smile would steal across her face when she told a joke. Adele wondered what Chantal saw in her father. He'd stopped drinking and was less prone to outbursts than when Adele had lived at home, but he was still quick to insult anyone who annoyed him. Yet they'd been together five years. Chantal must have felt sorry for widowers.

The following week, when Adele didn't hear what the teacher had assigned, she turned to her desk mate. He was as handsome as a god himself, she thought, boyish, sweet. She imagined he had a girlfriend who was a med student and who modeled in her spare time. Adele wished the instructor had spoken more clearly so she didn't have to turn to Mac. But he looked at her kindly with his light blue eyes and read the assignment he had written down: " 'A time will come when you will pay attention to the thunderer,' Dionysus says. Describe when, in your life, you were forced to recognize what you had been determined to ignore." He looked unhappy. "That will be hard," he said. But Adele knew what she'd write about - the summer she finally understood how things stood in her family.

It had been a hot July and one morning her father decided to go canoeing with her brother. He got up early to load the canoe and expected Tom to help but Tom had a hangover from the previous night. Shouting to wake him, her father woke Adele too and she went into Tom's room.

"I'll come," she said. She was thirteen, five years younger than Tom and rarely included in their outings.

"Go back to bed," he said but Adele pulled on a t-shirt and some jeans and followed him to the outbuilding. She helped him lift the canoe, and when he got into the truck, he let her stay. They headed off, past fields as the sun rose, large and orange. In the woods near the lake, her father put the truck in reverse on the dirt road that went downhill so the canoe would be closer to the water when they hauled it off. As soon as they got out, the truck continued to roll backward. Trying to climb back in and pull up the emergency brake, her father could not get his footing. As the truck spun downward, the open door knocked him over and the keys flew out of his hands. All Adele could do was watch as the truck slid into the oily water, then sunk in the mud, stopping just as the back end was completely submerged. Only the front poked out.

Adele's father wasn't so much angry about what had happened as he was at Adele for observing it. "Tom should be here," he growled, as if Tom could have prevented it. Adele was wading near the shore searching for the keys and miraculously, the second time she reached in the water, she felt the leather strap and pulled them up. "Look," she cried, but he only nodded and grunted, "Wait here," as he hobbled off.

It seemed ages before he returned with a mechanic. They towed the truck out of the water and hauled the canoe onto it as well. Adele was amazed the truck started. Her father was covered in bruises but, once on the highway, it was Adele who started sobbing.

"You didn't get a scratch," he said. "Why are you bellyaching?"

That summer confirmed her reluctant view: what she had thought of as family didn't exist anymore. She began to spend more and more time on her own. Solitude had its compensations. Alone, she began to notice small everyday occurrences. When she was sitting in the car, waiting while her father did errands, a fiery ball flashed in the rear view mirror startling her until it slipped away and she realized it was the sun setting. When she went walking on her own, the flash of a wave's silvery edge looked as slippery and quick as a shark's tail. The natural world became her greatest comfort. But when she spent too much time isolated, she had an ominous feeling that she would be alone forever. Her mother had been the axis of the family. Without her, the three remaining family members spun off onto their own, even more isolated worlds.

She'd just turned twelve a few months after her mother died and she asked her father for money for shoes. Her mother had always bought her clothes and extras like earrings and lip gloss.

"Adele," he'd said, "listen carefully. If you want money, earn it." These were the most words he'd spoken in weeks.

At the moment the instructor was quoting Euripides: "Of mortals, there is no one who is happy. If wealth flows in upon one, one may perhaps be luckier than his neighbours, but still not happy." Who did she know who was happy? Chantal? Adele wished Chantal had come into her father's life earlier so she wouldn't have had to spend so many years in that house alone with him. Recently, when she'd come for dinner and her father lit into her for living like a recluse, Chantal had told the old man to give it a rest.

A woman in the back asked a question about The Bacchae, but the class was noisy and the instructor couldn't hear. "The good and the wise lead quiet lives," he said, quoting Euripides and quieting two women in the front who were the loudest. The class was full of middle-aged women and two elderly men, while the young women sat together in the first row. Mac was the only young man. He was sketching on a blank page in his notebook. In just a few lines he'd rendered the instructor's face. But rather than make him look foolish, the drawing showed a sad and earnest older man who seemed to be talking as much to himself as to his students.

Tom had been talented too, like Mac, Adele thought. When he wasn't drunk, Tom would have the family laughing at his outrageous stories. That's what Tom did best, talk and drink. And her father would drink and listen. Once he read something, Tom would never forget dates or names or stories. It was fun to be with Tom. No wonder her father compared them.

"Adele, what do you think the crux of this scene is?" the instructor asked, startling her. Though she was only half paying attention, she knew the scene and quoted Euripides: "Fortune always will confer an aura of worth, unworthily; and in this world the lucky person passes for a genius." She didn't think she needed to elaborate. As she spoke, Mac looked at her copy of the play which was in both Greek and English and whistled under his breath. "You can read that?" he asked, surprised. "Barely," she said and got up to leave. Talking made Adele nervous.

Next class, as the instructor concluded the lesson, and Adele was about to go, Mac gave her a quizzical look. "I want to ask you something, Adele," he said. She froze. When a man said her name, it sounded so intimate. What did he want?

"I paint," he said. "I mean, not houses, paintings. Mostly portraits and I was wondering. Would it be alright if I ... painted you?" Adele was silent. "I could make a payment of sorts. You could have a drawing of mine if you liked." "This is ridiculous," Adele thought. She could hardly follow what he was saying but he kept talking. "Next class, I'll bring a notebook of some drawings and you can see my work and make up your mind."

Her heart lurched. "Now I will have a full week to worry about his request," she thought. She decided not to return. That was the simplest solution. But it snowed all week. Aside from work, where she sat in her cubicle, she hadn't said a word to another human being in five days. She started to feel the world tilt and that she was slipping. The night of the course, snow ploughs came and cleared the side roads that led to the school and she got in her car and drove to class. She told herself, If he asks again, I'll just tell him I'm not interested. I can always change seats.

But Mac didn't speak to her at all, except to say hello. After break he returned with two cups of coffee and handed her one. "Can I come by tomorrow? " he asked. "I work tomorrow," she said thanking him for the coffee, which had milk, no sugar, the way she liked. "Saturday?" he asked. "It wouldn't take long to do a preliminary sketch." But she didn't answer. She could feel her face turn red. When the instructor started giving another assignment, she used the opportunity to slip out of the room.

There were two reasons Mac might want to paint her, she thought. One reason had to do with the fact that a painting of a homely woman was a statement in itself. The other reason she didn't even want to think about.

She was making coffee when the phone rang. She wasn't going to answer. She liked to drink coffee in a quiet, sun-filled kitchen while she read. When she did pick up and Mac was on the line, she was dumbfounded. How had he gotten her number? "Yes, I live next to the bakery," she managed to stutter. Ten minutes later he knocked on her door.

As he hunched in front of her on a folding chair, canvas on his lap, sketching , he was backlit by the sun. Every time she exhaled, the air leaving her nostrils sounded to her like a jet liner taking off. When she inhaled she saw Mac notice the rise of her chest, observe one hand sliding over the other. Licking her lips with him watching felt alarmingly intimate. She had never been scrutinized so closely. Mac's breathing was like a small saw working against the grain. She noticed he did not draw her body, but concentrated on her forehead, her hair, her eyes. He stared at her mouth as he drew her bottom lip. Kissing him would not have been more personal. She wanted this to be over. But it was not over. It was as if his eyes were bees buzzing around a flower, but though she expected it, she wasn't stung. He kept looking at her, then quickly down at the page as he moved his pencil. She dared not part her lips. She felt that if she had, he would have been able to see, not just the inside of her mouth, but into the heart of her. The silence was unbearable. She thought of asking if he wanted cake, there was some in the refrigerator, but when they finished eating she'd only have to resume posing.

All of a sudden, out of the blue, she blurted that her brother's hair had been long, like Mac's. It was a relief to talk about Tom, who was never out of her thoughts for long. Once she began, the words tumbled out. How hard hit Tom had been when their mother died. How, after her death, he started drinking even more. He'd stay out all night with his friends and when he was too drunk to come home, he'd sleep on park benches. Her father didn't know what to do. When Tom was finally arrested for vagrancy, her father thought jail might do him some good. But in Tom's mind, the police had no authority over him. He cursed them and uttered death threats, and when they brought him to the police station, he kicked an officer in the groin. He was handcuffed, his legs manacled. Still, he kept insulting the cops.That's when a husky officer hurled him against an elevator door. Only, the door gave way. Her brother fell five flights to his death. Manacled. Handcuffed. He was nineteen years old.

Mac stared at Adele. "I guess your father blames himself," he said.

"Yes. He does."

In class the next week Mac asked Adele if he could take photos of her outside, where the light was good, which is how she came to be sitting next to him in his car a few days later. Van Morrison was on the radio singing, "From the dark end of the street, to the bright side of the road ..." a song so exuberant it was impossible not to feel happy when you heard it. She was singing along in her head when they passed Douglas mountain, more a hill than a mountain, really. She'd driven by it for years on her way to work. Through the trees she'd see a dirt path winding upward. It was a beautiful tree-lined trail that disappeared into heavy growth around the mountain, a lovely and mysterious disappearing. Mac noticed it too. "I wonder where that track leads," he said. "It would be fun to climb."

"I think it goes straight up," she said. "It looks too steep to climb."

"Let's try it," Mac said, excited. "If it's sheer, we won't continue." But Adele told him she wasn't in the mood.

"You weren't in the mood? You love hiking," Chantal said when she called and Adele relayed the conversation. Chantal sighed. "You're just like your father, afraid to take risks."

But Chantal was wrong. A few weeks later, when the snow had cleared and Mac asked again, Adele did go hiking. At first she was worried that the climb would be tricky and, as it turned out, she was right. The path disappeared once they'd turned the bend and there were only rock faces and scrubby trees for them to grip. They had to hoist themselves up. "It might be even more difficult on the way down," Adele said. This worried Mac. "Maybe we should go back and hike along the shore," he said, protectively. But by then Adele was exhilarated by the climb. When the cliff became too steep, she crawled on her knees, pulling herself up by roots sticking out of the ground. Mac was ahead, climbing easily, offering a hand when she got stuck. When they stopped at a clearing Mac stared at her for a few moments and then said, "You know, I've been in jail too. Shoplifting. I lifted quite a few cameras before they caught me." He laughed. "So now you know," he said. "A friend said that when you steal, you steal from yourself. I think it's true."

She wanted to ask him where he stole and how long he was in jail, but she thought she'd wait for another day to bring that up.

It took them another half hour to get to the top of Douglas mountain. There, standing on a large, flat rock, Adele wanted to ask Mac what had been on her mind ever since he'd asked her to pose. Instead she asked, "Why did you take the course on Euripides?" That was as close as she got to asking what she really desired to know.

"I wanted to meet people. And it was the only course given on my free night. I'd just moved here." He smiled shyly.

"Why didn't you sit in the front row?"

"There weren't any vacant seats," he said, laughing, "which was just as well. Really, Adele, did any one of those women say anything interesting?"

From where they stood, surveying the trees below, they could easily see what they'd missed on the way up - a path. Adele had been frightened when they'd begun the hike, that she'd lose her footing and stumble. Now she realized that she'd had nothing to be afraid of. Mac was wearing a cobalt blue jacket, and around Adele's neck was a silk scarf the colour of cornflowers. As they stood close together, Mac gazed at the scarf and then touched it briefly where it crossed her throat. "We match," he said.

Climbing down was much easier than climbing up. But descending the winding path was so slow going that, half way down, Adele suggested they follow what seemed like a shortcut. The side track ended abruptly at the edge of the cliff, however, and they were forced to retrace their steps and continue on the slow but trustworthy trail. "Such is the way," Mac said.

When they got to the bottom they stood looking at the sun through trees. "I had fun with you," Mac said. "That was a great day."

Adele thought, "for me too." She noticed that the water and sky were equally brilliant and a similar shade of blue. As she looked at Mac smiling at her she wanted to quote Euripides: "Life is sweet and sunlight beautiful." But she couldn't quite bring herself to speak.