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garrulous. That was what he had been most afraid of when the business of hiring an apprentice had come up. A government program had been started-he was to be paid a certain amount for teaching the person, and whoever it was would be paid enough to live on while learning. At first he hadn’t been willing, but Joyce had talked him into it. She believed they had an obligation to society.
    Edie might not have talked a lot, but when she did talk it was forceful.
    “I abstain from all drugs and alcohol” was what she told them at her first interview. “I belong to AA and I am a recovering alcoholic. We never say we are recovered, because we never are. You never are as long as you live. I have a nine-year-old daughter and she was born without a father so she is my total responsibility and I mean to bring her up right. My ambition is to learn woodworking so I can provide for myself and my child.”
    While delivering this speech she sat staring at them, one after the other, across their kitchen table. She was a short sturdy young woman who did not look old enough or damaged enough to have much of a career of dissipation behind her. Broad shoulders, thick bangs, tight ponytail, no possibility of a smile.
    “And one more thing,” she said. She unbuttoned and removed her long-sleeved blouse. She was wearing an undershirt. Both arms, her upper chest, and-when she turned around-her upper back were decorated with tattoos. It was as if her skin had become a garment, or perhaps a comic book of faces both leering and tender, beset by dragons, whales, flames, too intricate or maybe too horrid to be comprehended.
    The first thing you had to wonder was whether her whole body had been transformed in the same way.
    “How amazing,” said Joyce, as neutrally as possible.
    “Well, I don’t know how amazing it is, but it would have cost a pile of money if I’d had to pay for it,” Edie said. “That’s what I was into at one time. What I’m showing it to you for is that some people would object to it. Like supposing I got hot in the shed and had to work in my shirt.”
    “Not us,” said Joyce, and looked at Jon. He shrugged.
    She asked Edie if she would like a cup of coffee.
    “No, thank you.” Edie was putting her shirt back on. “A lot of people at AA, they just seem like they live on coffee. What I say to them, I say, Why are you changing one bad habit for another?”
    “Extraordinary,” Joyce said later. “You feel that no matter what you said she might give you a lecture. I didn’t dare inquire about the virgin birth.”
    Jon said, “She’s strong. That’s the main thing. I took a look at her arms.”
    When Jon says “strong” he means just what the word used to mean. He means she could carry a beam.
    While Jon works he listens to CBC Radio. Music, but also news, commentaries, phone-ins. He sometimes reports Edie’s opinions on what they have listened to.
    Edie does not believe in evolution.
    (There had been a phone-in program in which some people objected to what was being taught in the schools.)
    Why not?
    “Well, it’s because in those Bible countries,” Jon said, and then he switched into his firm monotonous Edie voice, “in those Bible countries they have a lot of monkeys and the monkeys were always swinging down from the trees and that’s how people got the idea that monkeys just swung down and turned into people.”
    “But in the first place-” said Joyce.
    “Never mind. Don’t even try. Don’t you know the first rule about arguing with Edie? Never mind and shut up.”
    Edie also believed that big medical companies knew the cure for cancer, but they had a bargain with doctors to keep the information quiet because of the money they and the doctors made.
    When “Ode to Joy” was played on the radio she had Jon shut it off because it was so awful, like a funeral.
    Also, she thought Jon and Joyce-well, really Joyce-should not leave wine bottles with wine in them right out in sight on the kitchen