The Birthday Lunch by Joan Clark

stopped in front of the tow truck but, sitting high up like he was, Hal could see right over them and he jumped down and made straight for your mother. Was down on his knees, bent over, saying her name over and over, trying to revive her. A woman handed him a mirror and told him to hold it close to your mother’s nose and he did, he held it steady. He held it and held it but it was no use, the mirror was clear.” Corrie sighs. “It will be terrible for your father when the shock wears off. He was crazy about your mother.”
    Matt knows that Corrie Spears is right, that his father was crazy about his mother, that it will be terrible for him when the shock wears off, that he will never forget the sight of herbody lying on the road. How desperate, how frantic, how helpless his father must have felt. The thought of his father on his knees bent over his mother is too much for Matt and submitting to an ambush of tears he accepts the handful of Kleenex Corrie thrusts his way. He feels a bulky warmth beside him, a swollen hand on his knee “There, there, let it out,” says the fat woman with the generous heart.
    Half an hour later, Matt pulls into the driveway and parks beside a dented Plymouth van. Carrying the wine and rum he picked up on the way home, he goes inside. Partway up the stairs he hears a man’s booming voice.
    Claudia meets him in the hall. “Reverend Harrington, the United Church minister, is here,” she whispers, following her brother into the kitchen.
    “Well, reverend or not, I’m having a drink,” Matt says.
    “Me too, but first you should come and be introduced.”
    In the living room Matt notices the reverend is sitting in the plaid rocker. Matt hasn’t been home for four years but he knows the patchwork rocker is his mother’s chair and he stops himself from insisting that the reverend take another one. After all, the minister didn’t know whose chair it was. “We’ve never met,” Matt says and the two men shake hands.
    At first glance Matt would never have taken Alan Harrington for a church minister. With his ripped blue jeans, dirty polo shirt and Adidas, the man could be sitting cross-legged on a sidewalk, a begging bowl between his feet. The only giveaway is the clerical collar. The minister explains that he returned fromconducting a theatre camp in Fundy Park an hour earlier and came straight here as soon as he heard the news.
    Matt asks the reverend if he would like a drink.
    “I wouldn’t turn down a glass of wine,” Alan says.
    “Claudia?”
    “The same.”
    Matt looks at his father. “Rum and Coke?”
    “You bet,” Hal says. “I’ve got to keep Alan company.” Hal knows there are members of the congregation who would be against Alan accepting a drink. These are the same members who complain about Alan’s insistence that Bible stories be taught to the children through play-acting rather than memorizing scripture. They also complain about sponsoring the boat people, using the missionary fund to buy their food and rent them an apartment on Essex Street. They would certainly not approve of Alan organizing a theatre camp.
    “You will be interested to know, Hal, that we raised enough money to sponsor ten boys who otherwise wouldn’t have been able to attend theatre camp or, for that matter, any kind of camp,” the minister says.
    “Who is ‘we’?” Matt asks. He hands Alan a glass of wine.
    “The congregation.” Alan lifts his glass. “Thanks for your contribution, Hal.”
    Hal does not remember making a contribution but he must have because even with a pile of overdue bills, he never fails to contribute to a good cause.
    “Next summer I hope to organize a camp for girls as well as for boys. My wife has agreed to help with the girls,” Alan says, surveying the room as he does while delivering a sermon.
    “I gather you have worked in the theatre,” Claudia says.
    “I came to the ministry from the theatre.”
    Claudia is thinking that if this man and not boring