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exactly, enormous beyond fathoming and framed in the mirror of what would never be forgotten no matter how many day by days he forced himself to convince himself he had smashed and ground it to dust.
    That day of irreducible remember.
    Sunday, September 8, 1985, 1:30 p.m. And he was alone.

    “I hear you have a grief in the family.”
    “What?”
    His childhood friend Aaron’s voice on the phone, from Toronto, no greeting just—
    “Hal … you are home!”
    “Yes, yes, just walked in, the house is empty, nobody’s here—what ‘grief’?”
    “Hal … you just? … nobody’s there?”
    “Yes! Taxi straight from the airport, what are you saying?”
    “Listen Hal,” suddenly frozen calm, “you call Dave, you call him, I’ll hang up right now and you call Dave right now.”
    “What’re you saying!”
    “God help you. Call Dave right now.”
    The phone goes dead and instantly he is pounding Yolanda’s brother’s numbers, his mind frozen, and nothing happens, what—a dial tone!—his crashing hand finally finds a dial tone and he hits the numbers again and Dave speaks at the first ring, like a whisper,
    “Yes?”
    “Dave, I’m home, what’s happened, what?”
    “We couldn’t find you, we were phoning every—”
    “There’s nobody here! Yo—what happened!”
    “The world has collapsed …”
    Something breaks. “Gabriel.”
    “Yes. He’s … gone … at the cabin he …”
    Instantly he knows but he screams it anyway, “What do you mean ‘gone’!”
    “Hal, listen, listen,” Dave’s voice slowly hardens into his rigid strength, “Gabriel … we couldn’t find you yesterday by phone or this morning and they all drove to the airport to meet your plane, don’t move, I’m coming, just stay, stay put, I’ll be right there,” and the phone is dead again.
    Gone. The wall above the phone table is not gone. It is there. It is stopping his forehead, pounding it harder and harder and he feels nothing that is what walls do, be there to pound you, pound, Gabriel spoke to him five days ago, Tuesday, his voice alive in the phone, not this phone, the cream phone in his apartment and Hal on the black one in the Edmonton Airport, they were talking together when Canadian Pacific began calling his Montreal flight and Gabe agreed, sure, okay, they could meet Sunday and there could be something good to talk about when he got back from business in Montreal, this coming Sunday, okay, sure, bye.
    “I love you.”
    “Okay Dad, goodbye then.”
    He said that five days ago. “I love you.” When had he actually said those words to his twenty-four-year-old son? But he had, yes he had. I love … Okay Dad. Goodbye then … On Tuesday.
    He stands in the dining room bay window. Across the empty street the white boards of the community skating rink wait for winter ice. It is only September 8 but snow has fallen to hide the green grass sometime during the days he’s been away, it is melting, dripping off the birch and poplar leaves of their corner trees, the elementary schoolstill hidden behind their patchy gold and white and red flickering. The corner where little Dennis always turns to wave at Yolanda here in this window, every day, before crossing to school. But older Gabriel had never waved, had never looked back walking away.
    I love you.
    Goodbye then.
    All of them had been trying to phone him, they all knew where he should be in Montreal and what he was doing there and who he was with and he had called Yolanda Friday evening from Montreal and she was fine, everything was fine; Gabe had come on Wednesday evening and borrowed the pickup to go shopping Thursday for shoes for Miriam’s wedding, he only had his worn joggers, fine, that was okay, and Yo knew Hal’s return flight on Sunday but oddly Gabriel hadn’t brought back the truck yet and hadn’t answered his phone, not yet, Friday—but now Dave said on Saturday, all day and evening Saturday and all this morning Sunday they had been