LIFE AND HOW TO LIVE IT

When the armchair tipped over - and this was long before the windows blew out in a storm that barrelled in belligerent as an old drunk, and someone ripped off the side wall like it was a sardine lunch in there, made a stage and a play of the conflict between them - Ian remembered wheeling away as if that had always been the plan, catching the top of his shin on the lip of the woodstove box, then limping half a day and picking at the scab clean through to Thanksgiving. How the argument had started, what had made him jump up rheumy and breathless was less clear, as it always is, looking back over a shoulder that stiffened years ago. Life, he considered, was no better than the switch of willow leaned bent and green against the doorless frame.