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T he reading was at eight, but Jane told Eric that it was better to meet Jeffery at the house around seven, in case there was trouble. No one answered when she called Jeffery's father to remind him that this was the night, so she left a message on his mobile, announcing that they were on their way. She half-expected that her grandson had forgotten. Or that he had decided at the last minute that he had something better to do, like the night the month before last when they planned to drive into the city for sushi and he claimed to have a stomach bug, when she knew for a fact - Emma, the teacher told her - that he had been drinking the night before with his friends. It had surprised her, the hurt she felt, a personal kind of betrayal, if only because of how little they'd seen of him and how far he seemed to be pulling away from her over the year.

Still, she knew he was just a teenager. Only a kid - that's what she tried to tell herself. And God only knew it wasn't easy, living in that place without a mother.

This time, when they pulled off the county road and onto the gravel driveway of the trailer park's lonely half-crescent, rounding the first bend, she could see him right away, hunched over the steps of their trailer with buds of his iPod jammed into his ears. His eyes were squeezed shut against the bright lights of the Lexus.

Jane had gotten her hair done earlier that day. "We're here," she whispered to her husband, rubbing his knee before pulling down the visor mirror to check the status of her curls. For the reading she had selected a black pantsuit with a V-cut blazer set off by a white silk blouse and a string of Chinese pearls, an anniversary gift from Eric years ago. As for Eric, she had dressed him very carefully in the cords and beige turtleneck he used to often wear to faculty functions.

"Jeffery," she murmured, stepping out of the car and waving, keeping her smile neutral as her grandson opened his eyes, and slowly seemed to register their arrival. It was hard, these days, to try to judge his mood. She gave another quick wave, with just the tips of her fingers, and tried to be enthusiastic. "Is your father home dear?"

He shouted something inaudible over the music. She could see him shake his head, but he made no further response. Instead he grabbed his sweatshirt and slid down off the steps, moping toward her sullenly. At the car, without kissing her cheek or hugging her, he pulled open the back door and settled into the seat as if Jane was his chauffeur, and his grandfather some kind of dummy or half-mute.

"It's good to see you too," she said, smiling into the rear view mirror, once he had buckled himself in. And then, more sincerely, "We've missed you, Jeffery."

But he didn't say a word. Only grunted, fiddling with his gear and selecting another song from one of his play lists. And then he turned his face away from them to stare out the tinted back window, at the ditches and leafless trees, at the flocks of winter geese circling the old highway, as they made their way together into town.

At the theatre downtown they found their seats near the crowded front without the help of an usher. The theatre was small, built in the early twenties and refurbished in recent years, with a new sprung stage and plusher, wider seats for better viewing. Eric had no wheelchair, he could move around some on his own, but he did require their help to settle in. Jane wrapped his frail left arm over her own shoulder while Jeffery, with his headphones still plugged in, took him from the right. As they shuffled along Jeffery saw some girls he knew from high school. Blood rushed into his cheeks, and he hated himself for this unintentional display of emotion. They were a few of the popular ones, athletic and beautiful girls who would graduate ahead of him in the spring. They wanted, these girls, lives like they saw on TV, lives of glamorous work and uninhibited sex lives, lives of lawyers and publicists and well-paid investment bankers, lives their own small-town mothers could never begin to imagine. They were the type of girls who volunteered at the hospital reading stories to the blind, who played rugby, who sang in the United Church choir, not out of any compassion but because there might be some reward at the end of the day. In the same way they competed among each other to see who would be valedictorian and class president. No boys were in contention for these roles. Jeffery watched as they sat together at the edge of their seats, toying with their phones, consulting their rolled up programs with a kind of pent-up excitement, as if some spectacular, unforeseen event might at any moment begin to unfold, changing their lives forever, leaving some indelible mark upon their souls.

It had been Jeffery's choice to attend this reading of the vaguely famous cartoonist, who had not grown up in the town but who had connections nonetheless, having visited the Island as a child to spend time with his own grandparents, finding adventures in the sandy beaches and their impressive red dunes sloping like dwarf-like mountains into the sea. When she had called him last week Jane was surprised to get her grandson on the phone, and when she asked him what he'd like for his sixteenth birthday he replied after some hesitation, as if revealing a dark secret, that what he wanted more than anything was a ticket to this show.

She didn't ask him if he wanted company. She simply thought to order three tickets and make it a night. She assumed, rather stupidly, that this would be his wish. It had never even occurred to her that he'd want to be alone.

"That was Jeffery," she said, setting down the phone, speaking softly to her husband, who was curled up like a baby on the couch, his hands balled together under his chin and a line of fine spit snaking its way very slowly down his cheek. "He says he'd like an evening out."

Jane and Eric lived on a farm twenty miles out of town, almost to the bridge that spanned the choppy strait like some grand utopian creation, separating their Island fortress from the mainland and the rest of the world. Their daughter, Karen, Jeffery's mother, was raised in the sprawling farmhouse, and rode horses as a girl along the craggy trails that ran the edge of the property. She was an energetic, loving child; a serious and respected teenager. She went to Toronto after high school with high hopes, and came back to the Island a few years later to teach. She managed a class of kindergarten before meeting Jeffery's father. Stu was a mechanic who'd had trouble over the years, mostly with alcohol. He was a good-hearted man, Karen said, too often in his defence. A charmer who she said she loved with all her heart.

Eric, while not rich, owned a hundred acres in total, all of it prime farmland, and he rented most of this now to a farmer from Kinkora. In better days, around the time of Jeffery's birth, Eric raised a modest plot of peas and organic carrots, enjoying his time in the fields as a well-earned respite from the tedium and repetitive politics of university life. After the first stroke he curtailed things, and after the second - around the time of Karen's accident - he was forced by his doctors to give it up altogether. He spent some of his afternoons now, at least in the better weather, curled up on the porch under a blanket, watching the younger men toil, while the cars and giant transport trucks crawled a few miles off over the bridge toward New Brunswick.

"We'll take him for something afterward," Jane said, massaging his arthritic ankles, kneading the seized muscles in his feet. "He'll want something for dinner. A down to earth meal. God knows what Stu's been feeding him.

"We haven't had a visit with him for months," she said. And then, after further thought, "It might be that he's starting to come around."

It surprises Jane how quickly the reading passes. She has not been to a formal reading in many years. After they are seated an electronic announcement comes crackling over the sound system, asking the audience to refrain from using phones. A tall man in his early midlife appears after a time at the podium, in thick, horn-rimmed glasses and a bowler hat, which she supposes is the style, coming back again. This man - this writer - proceeds to chirp incoherently about his work; comics, from what she can gather. He laughs now and then at what seem to be private jokes, pausing for sips of water before returning once again to his jangled narrative. The main event seems to begin when a computer she hadn't seen before beams some of his images onto a screen erected at the back of the stage, made visible when a scrim is peeled away. The images are simple yet stunning, familiar in scope, and revolve around a particular character much like the cartoonist, a lonely and self-deprecating man who muddles ineffectively through his days. "The character's name is Johnson," the cartoonist says, coughing once or twice into his wrist. "Johnson is a pretty normal guy. He's like a friend of mine who tries to do his best. But Johnson's life is lonely."

In the series of a hundred or so slides, Johnson wakes up, shaves, has a breakfast of black coffee and runny eggs, goes for rambling walks through the city and pines for any sort of love or human contact. Many of the slides dwell on Johnson's obsession with death, the fear that while he will be released at last from the perpetual boredom that is this life, he's still not sure, entirely, of what will come after, whether it will be better, or worse - or nothing.

There are no words attached to these images projected up onto the screen, though the writer, the cartoonist, manages to narrate apologetically, as if some kind of translation were in order. Though she finds the man bland and slightly pathetic, she is impressed by the technical details of his drawings, which have a crispness and a vibrancy she remembers from her youth. Her enjoyment of the reading surprises her, for she has never been one for comics. It was her husband who had liked any of that sort of funny fantasy world. The reading makes her feel close to him now. She wishes she were able to talk about it with him later over drinks; to hear the booming baritone voice one more time, and the quiver underneath it as he made a joke or spoke about a subject he believed in, environmental degradation or human rights, atrocities in the Balkans, the plight of Afghan women.

He is sleeping now beside her, nodding his head like a child, leaning at such an awkward angle she is afraid he'll fall into the aisle.

"Eric," she says, gently, giving him a tug, once the reading is over and the applause has died down. "Eric," she says. "Come on now honey. Let's go."

But it takes several long minutes to wake him up.

***

"So did you enjoy yourself Jeffery?"

"It's Jeff Grandma."

Jane sips her Earl Grey tea and smiles across at her grandson. He is slouched down into his seat, body curled forward, but he looks a little more relaxed. They have stopped for drinks at the small café attached to the new part of the theatre. It is one of the few places like it in town, expensive and sleek, built for the summer tourists, with grey slate walls, a vaulted airy ceiling made of glass. In a few weeks it will be closed for the season. Outside the glass a cold rain stirs a flurry of dead leaves around the mostly empty street. She holds her hands soothingly around the heat of the potted cup, while Jeffery picks away at an oversized mocha brownie.

"Well then, Jeff. Did you enjoy yourself?"

"It was okay."

They are the only three people who remain. The rest of the listeners have driven home or headed on to a late supper at McDonald's. Jeffery says he isn't hungry.

"Well I'm glad you enjoyed it. I really am."

She turns her attention toward Eric, who had spilled juice down the front of his turtleneck. She wipes him with a paper napkin, humming while she works. Whatever she is humming, whatever fragment of song, has him giggling like a baby, so the drool comes down again, and she is afraid that he might choke or swallow his tongue.

She straightens up. And checks her watch. "Well," she says, looking down again at her husband. "It looks like this old man's ready for bed. I think we're going to have to bring you home."

"Okay," Jeffrey says, pushing away the plate. For a minute, she catches something in his eye, some horrible sadness perhaps, or guilt.

"Do you need a hand with Grandpa?" he asks.

"Yes Jeffery. Thank you. That would be nice."

They drop their grandson off in front of the small trailer. He turns in the light drizzle and waves into the headlights, a sepulchral figure, already curling away. He hasn't thanked them for the reading but that doesn't matter. All Jane wants is to climb into bed.

"That was a great night, wasn't it?" she says to Eric, patting his leg absently, looking for something soft on the radio as she backs their little car out onto the highway. After they leave, Jeffery makes his way toward the house. The echo of some kind of hip-hop music rattles the dingy siding. His father is inside, drunk and probably stoned. He's with Lorene, his girlfriend, twenty-one and a cashier out in Greenvale. Last week Jeffery went into the bedroom and sat with Lorene for awhile, drinking coffee on the bed while she sat, hung over, in a T-shirt and a pair of baggy shorts. Trying not to stare too long at her chest, he wondered as he sat with her, what would have happened if his mother hadn't died. Would they be friends? Or would they have hated one another for stupid, impossible things?

"You're a good guy," Lorene said, in between drags of her cigarette. She kissed him once, out of nowhere, letting her lips hover over one of his flushed cheeks. He wanted to say he loved her. He wanted to stay with her forever, because of that.

"Be nice to your dad though, okay?"

Jeffery zips his sweatshirt now and pulls the thin hood over his head. Making a decision, he cuts beside the driveway and through his neighbour's yard. He zigzags through the ragged field beside the highway, bending under trees, careful where he walks, because there are shards of broken beer bottles, and strings of rusted barbed wire hidden all along here in the grass.

At the cemetery a few minutes later he pulls down the hood. He can see the rows of stones by the dim light of the streetlamps above the metal gate. The rusted gate creaks when he hauls it open. He shuffles toward the back where the newer headstones are, avoiding the fresher mounds, a lump rising quietly in his throat, the way it always does.

It takes a minute to find her. When he does, he kneels down quickly in the soft damp earth. Tracing the letters carefully, feeling the roughness of the stone, he conjures up an image of her, a pair of grey-blue eyes he remembers from the photos; her dark silky curls. It's been almost ten years. He can't recall much. He remembers though how strange her body felt, lying inside the coffin, when as a boy of seven years old he had been lifted by an uncle and told to kiss her cheek. It was like a ball of Play Dough, moist and overly chilly; and he resisted the urge to bring his tiny hands up to slide her eyelids open, to peel back the greyish lips to see her teeth. It wasn't connected in his head, that body, to the mother he had known, who fed him and loved him, who climbed into bed beside him to read a story, and then fell asleep like a princess on his pillow.

He can hear his watch stutter in the dark and the sense of lost time, a kind of slow cosmic count-down, fills him now with an irrepressible sadness.

Near the cemetery, in the shadowy clump of woods, an owl shouts out, the smoky sound carrying through the forest. In small, gradual increments, he begins to tell her about his day. The rain is much louder now. The drizzle trickles down against his face, flattening the spiky hair against his skull.

Hey mom. Guess what. Guess who I saw tonight?

He kneels. It's the pose of the supplicant, an old-fashioned move, and if he was older he might pray. But he doesn't believe in anything like religion. He doesn't believe in much.

Instead, he waits with her there in the rain, imagining the life they might have had together in some alternate version of the world, until the cold becomes too much for him, and he heads back up to the house.