This All Happened Part 18

9 Oliver Squires is putting on weight and he's letting his ginger hair grow. Oliver Squires and Maisie Pye have officially separated. They have joint custody.

Oliver told me of the day when he knew. A boiled potato had fallen on the floor and he was d.a.m.ned if he was going to pick it up.

Oliver: I was working and Maisie wasnt. She was writing but I was at legal aid from eight till six. I'd ask her to iron a shirt for me. I thought that would be nice, to have a clean shirt. And when I came home something cooked. I know this sounds ridiculous or old-fashioned, but I figure if I'm working this is a little return. But Maisie wants to write, she was writing and one time she did cook this thing but spilled some and we ate with a potato on the floor and we walked around it for three days and I knew then that was it.

When Oliver tells this to me he has a solemnness I rarely see in men. He is deeply sorrowful.

Max too lost Maisie. Once, about eight years ago, I asked Max why he went with Maisie. We were at the Ship Inn and Max was on his way to the washroom. Above the men's is a pistol. He said, How old are you, Gabe? I said twenty-six. He said, When youre twenty-nine you'll see. It all changes when you round thirty.You'll want children.You'll want a house. And you'll need money.

And now Oliver is cut adrift, and Max is marrying Daphne. And I am dispirited at thirty-four.

10 Alex calls. Can you come down? I drive down. She says she asked Craig to marry her. And those words hovered over their weekend. He left for Seattle today and she thought it was time to be rash.

Alex: We were planting bulbs and Max came over and made fun of our domesticity. And by Sunday we were more and more married. And I felt diminished. For the first time I was looking for a way to get away from him. Craig said to me: What's getting in to you? And I told him: The energy we have comes from not being married. Being married would kill it.

Craig: Youve just figured that out? Then he added, Let's leave it. Alex: Craig doesnt like conversations that look like theyre headed for arguments and ground he isnt sure of. And I knew then it was the end.

Me: When youve been alone for a long time, as Craig has been, you become rigid. It's hard to consider someone else. Alex: Men become selfish.

11 I see Boyd Coady talking to a little guy. Boyd has the guy pressed up against Jethro. A van line, he says, kindly moved me from Mount Pearl to Long's Hill.

As I walk past Boyd yells out: And as the saying goes, I'll take you down to Casey Street and beat the face off ya.

I stop. Boyd walks up to me. He recognizes me. He says, Just twenty minutes ago, Gabe, the U.S. military flew over the city leaving a line of smoke this long in the sky.

If I closed one eye I could make a flaming maple come out of Boyd's head. And the man by the car could have a deep green oak. How an orange tree is so much more festive, and summery. Yet the green tree is summer and it stands to the left of the flaming maple. How time shifts to the right, like writing.

Now let me finish, Boyd says. Left a streak in the sky, the U.S. military, over the city. I'll say no more on this.

He pushes his hands into his jeans pockets and walks back to the little guy, who is still leaning backwards over the hood of my car, as if he enjoys it.

12 Max Wareham's father collected stamps. In 1944 a surcharge of two cents was printed over the old stamps. A group of them on Merasheen set out to buy up sheets. You were allowed two sheets at a time. Mothers, kids, everyone had to buy sheets. The cartel lasted a couple of weeks and then they sold them to mainland collectors. Max's father, Noel, made $1,500. He bought a cabin and land, a clothes washer for the wife, a phonograph mahogany, plastic b.u.t.tons. Macpherson, a rich man, bought one. Macpherson heard a second had been sold. To whom? Oh, to Noel Wareham, the fisherman.

The house Max grew up in was moved to Arnold's Cove. He visited it and could smell the same smell.

His parents' bedroom had seemed huge (it was two rooms knocked together) but now it was average, although it had two chandeliers.

Max left Newfoundland to work in a Christian camp in Manitoba. He lived in the bas.e.m.e.nt of a church and worked in factories. He got to know the working cla.s.s.

As he tells me this he loses a contact lens in the car. I find it perched like a dish on his knee.

13 Lydia calls to see if I'll drive her to the airport.

Sometimes, I say, I feel like a humourless curmudgeon. Something very ill at ease about all of this.

Then Lydia kisses me at the automatic doors. And I can tell that it's okay that I'm unhappy. She gives me a key to her house. To check on it. And I'm to take care of Tinker b.u.mbo. The first time I have a key.

14 I drive out to Brigus to meet the man who lives in Rockwell Kent's cottage. He's an odd American. He owns the house but lives there only in the summer. He says the big difference between cities and the wild is you have to make your own happenings in the wild. You have to act if you want one moment to stand out from another.

I tell him I'm writing about this house, about Kent and his time in Brigus. He says the carpenter's name is on all the studs. And it isnt the man noted in the books, but a man named Percy.

There is one weed beside us, and I guess it. Plantain. I had found it in my wildflower book: seaside plantain. And here I am, beside the sea. This is how the world is ordered. The categories were working.

I take a tour of Kent cottage. Named after Kent, England, not Rockwell Kent. The ceilings are low and the hill so steep and close behind the house, I feel tense, that a rock slide could do me in. Things seemed to be 20 percent smaller than they are now.

15 I am sitting in the kitchen while Iris is compiling data on olfactory responses in seals. Tinker b.u.mbo is snoring beside her. She notices my drawn look. She says, confidently, that Lydia will never leave me. And I won't leave her. And you'll have a baby. Trust me, I know these things. My first five senses arent that hot, but my sixth and seventh are superb.

16 I call up Max because it's Friday and no one has called and Lydia is in Seattle with Craig and I'm going mad.

Max: Do you know she's in Seattle?

I say, She's gone to Vancouver, and how far's Seattle?

He says it's important not to give in to conjecture. He says, Why dont you come over and watch a movie?

Theyre in bed with a bowl of popcorn and Daphne is very pregnant. She's due in six weeks. I sit in the bed with them and we sip beers. I brought the beers. I am in their bed, under the sheets, in my clothes, with their new baby just a few inches away inside Daphne. I could not ask for a more direct allusion to a missed life. It's a good French film.

Max and Daphne have painted their bathroom. Daphne: At first, Max had returned with an onion skin and I sent him back for an eggsh.e.l.l.

17 I always sense a panic at the thought of change. And then, before change happens, there's a period of tranquility. It's as if I work out my fury and then accept what I dislike. There is an aversion to any kind of change, good or bad. I was so jealous of Craig, and now that Lydia's spending a weekend with him I am at ease. She'll be home tomorrow and then we'll drive to Corner Brook.

18 Lydia is back from Vancouver. Had I been to Alex's show yet? Yes, I said. You went with Maisie? Yes. You drove her there and you drove her home?Yes.

She says, I wanted to go to Alex's with you.

Well, let's go.

Forget it.

She has spent the weekend with Craig, and she's jealous of my time with Maisie.

She says she did not go down to Seattle. But as it happens, Craig was in Vancouver.

So you saw him.

Lydia: We had coffee.

And then.

And then what? Yes, a bunch of us went out for a drink. And.

Nothing happened, Gabe. He was staying at a friend's apartment and he asked me to come back so he could change. He put on a cream suit. That's all.

We go down to the Ship to celebrate her win (best short film). Wilf, of course, is all over her. It is Wilf who has made Lydia. No one understands Lydia like Wilf. And I see the look of adulation for Wilf in Lydia's eye. I can't stand it. I grip my beer bottle and Max witnesses my behaviour.

Max: You want to go to the boozecan?

That sounds like an idea.

And we stay out all night.

19 My wife has slept with Wilf Jardine and she's also slept with Craig Regular and I bet I bet it happened during those hours in that apartment when he changed into a cream suit through her encouragement, that ended in something that ended for she was too short in the telling too short in telling me everything and what am I to do now that my wife has all but told me she's had an affair and with a New Brunswicker (the only thing lower than coming from Corner Brook). And Wilf. It is early morning and I've walked up from downtown, pounded on her door until she dropped a key from the window and I stagger upstairs to confront her with this. I am bold and say okay what about you and Wilf and she says Gabe youre drunk youre stinking drunk now get into bed no I'm not getting into bed until this is unravelled. I say, Okay this is a secret, but Max said to me Gabe I dont know if I should say this, but she's looking pretty absorbed in that guy, and I looked and there you were staring into Wilf's eyes like you adored him and it made me well it- Look, if youre going to wake me up, accuse me, and want me to say I've slept with Wilf then youre mad and go on home out of it now and I'll call you tomorrow if youre lucky.

You want me to go.

I want to go to sleep. I was asleep. Youre stinking drunk. I'm not drunk.

It's six in the morning and you wake me up and call me your wife when I'm barely your girlfriend and you want me to confess and it's you who should be apologizing for saying that in front of everyone saying, Are you going down to the booze-can with Wilf? when I'm having a night out with Daphne and youve made it clear youre out with Max and I've come over to you to say I'm going down to the boozecan and you ruin it by saying that in front of Daphne and Max, man youre lucky I dont just leave you and then! you go to the boozecan and come here wailing to me that I talked to another guy.

20 She's mad at Max. Why are you mad at Max? Because he said that thing to you.

What thing.

Gabe, I dont know if I should say this, but she's looking pretty absorbed in that guy. That is so rotten.

Oh, Lydia.

Do you see why I'm mad?

He didnt say that.

You said he said it.

I was ... He might have made a joke about it.

What did he say?

He might have said Lydia's got that fella's attention. Pause.

So it was joke.

Yes. I took it badly. It was my jealousy.

So you were an a.r.s.ehole.

I was upset.

Why can't you admit you were an a.r.s.ehole? How I wish you could just say, Lydia, I'm such an a.r.s.ehole.

Can I say a.s.shole?

What?

Can I say a.s.shole. a.r.s.ehole is so hard.

Say whatever you want.

Lydia, I'm such an a.s.shole.

21 We've been invited for supper over at Max's, but I decide to wait. I am standing under a maple for shelter. It's been raining all night, a cold rain. The leaves are outlined in light and they overlap, like hands rubbing. There is Max's house. Windows in red trim. Rain dripping. How I'd prefer to stand here and wait rather than be early and talk. A car pulls up and I recognize the sound of the exhaust. A car door slams, and it's Lydia. But I want to hang on. I havent seen Lydia since yesterday morning and I was sooky on the phone. That I'd have to walk down to see her. I was home and I called her place but there was no message. It seemed like she hadnt tried to get me. So I was feeling sorry for myself. I so hate getting this way. Standing under a tree she would never do this. She is so unlike me. I urinate by the fence, it's dark in this corner.

She'd said, I'm at the Ship with Wilf. I'm not sure what I want to do tonight. I may just go home. She'd said, You can come down if you want.

There is something so uninviting in that. If you want. I wanted her to want me to come down. I didnt want her to shift the want to me. I was home and I'd gone to the early movie so that we could be together later. But here she was calling me and saying this is what she's doing. It's raining and I dont want to walk or drive down there.

I know when I walk in it's going to be uncomfortable. That she caught my sookiness on the phone. Last night, when she phoned to ask me over. But I was, for once, content to stay. But she wanted me. And I liked telling her no. But she gave in so quickly. Okay, she said. And I wanted her to beg more. Like I do. But she resigned herself, didnt yearn. She ends by saying, Sure you dont want to come over? I pause, Should I? She says, No, dont come over, I'll talk to you tomorrow, goodbye.

I keep the receiver to my ear, waiting for her click. But she has paused, waiting too. But I can say nothing and those silences so often between us, our language not folding into conversation but solidifying into isolated fragments. And she hangs up.

All of Max's windows lit up, burning around the edges of curtains and shutters. I bet there is no one else out in this weather by choice, waiting under a tree, obviously in a mood.

22 We pack Jethro for the trip west. It's an eight-hour drive to Corner Brook.

I drive as Lydia sleeps. She is peaceful in sleep. I reach behind for a blanket and as I do this I turn the wheel. Jethro is hurtling quietly down a rough steel grey shoulder full of spruce and ditch, and now a terrific new sound occurs, which wakes up Lydia and startles Tinker, and my arm shoots over to brace her.

The sun dead ahead the light of G.o.ds or inquisitors the gold of speculators.

We plunge sideways down the embankment. A hundred kilometres an hour over a boulder. Just stop now Jethro pleasy please and Lydia wide-eyed as if I have dropped a s...o...b..ll down her neck. We lurch forward in our seat belts and stare at each other.

A rap on my window A young couple who have climbed down to us. I have to push hard to open the door.

Is everyone all right?

He ducks a look in and seems shocked that I've gone off the road in good weather. Embarra.s.sment that I've been reckless. If only there were four more cars in the ditch.

That was some dive you took.

He calls up to a woman, Theyre fine. Then smiles. That's my wife, he says.

They offer us a lift. As we're getting in their car I notice the sign in the rear window: Just Married.

Congratulations. We've been thinking about getting married. Woman: Dont do it.

Then she looks at her husband and laughs.

We'll take you up to Glovertown Irving. You'll get a wrecker from there. Nice dog.

A wrecker. The next step. A ride to the Irving and get a wrecker.

23 We spend the day in Glovertown. We camp out at Kozy Kabins. The wrecker brings Jethro to a buddy of his who fixes Hondas. All he needs is an arm or a rod or something I can't remember but it's steering-related. It involves torque. In the morning we're on the road again.

I had stroked the word LOVE in the Glovertown roadsign. But Lydia might have thought I stroked OVERT.

I tell Mom and Dad about the accident. How Jethro was off the road in a second. Mom interrupts: Did you say death row?

We sleep in the room of my childhood. Feet hanging over the bunkbeds Junior and I grew up in.You grow at night. Best to write in the morning, when youve grown.

24 Lydia watches my father work. He has a mahogany table leg clamped in a vice, its claw foot sticking up, clenching a ball. He cradles a carving tool. If you keep both hands on the handle, he says, you'll never cut yourself.