This All Happened Part 19

We watch him carve around the filigree in the knee. I realize that my father is a handsome man. That I probably won't be as handsome when I'm his age. For some reason I'd thought the human race was evolving into better looks, but it's not the case.

He understands the physical world: electricity, plumbing, capillary action. He has built all the furniture in the house, and the copper ornaments contain his planishing. He has opinion and decisive comment whereas I am hampered by the acceptance of multiple views. I have learned no trail through the world. If I could show him batts of insulation.

25 Dad asks where Long's Hill is and Lydia says, It's the very bitter end of the Trans-Canada, Mr English. You never put on your indicator. The Trans-Canada turns into Kenmount Road and Kenmount turns into Freshwater and Freshwater turns into Long's Hill and Long's Hill is where Gabriel lives.

We visit Junior at his shed in the woods. He's studying stories of Labrador. He wants to move there. He wants to be the Member for the region. He asks me how difficult that might be. He says it's only an idea.

The shed is a garage on the first floor and a living quarters above it. Two snowmobiles lie under tarps flanking six cord of wood. He has a sky-blue Ford Fairlane standing on a sheet of plastic. When I ask, he says,You ever hear of the wick effect? Moisture coming out of the ground, it will attach to the metal of your car and rot it. A sheet of plastic acts as a vapour barrier.

He keeps one window open a crack to avoid condensation.

Inside he has a hole cut in the floor and a plastic bag full of milk, eggs, and bacon. It's cooler down in the garage, he says. I got no electricity yet. I've got no running water either. I'm living on potatoes and moose.

26 We drive to the cabin. We paddle up to Boot Brook at sunset. It takes twenty-five minutes to get to the point. Windy. It's almost ten oclock before we start fishing. I tell Lydia to fish in the calm water of the brook. Past the white stump that has sat in the current and, in low-water times, been fully exposed. I used to believe that Boot Brook produced calm water. That calm water poured from the brook, and at dusk, this still water spread over the lake and made it smooth.

We catch a few fighters.

We paddle back in the dark. The lake is vast and quiet under the stars. First the Big Dipper and this leads us to Polaris, and from that we get Ca.s.siopeia. About two miles down the lake we see the lights of a car on the bridge to Howley. The lights cross the water and wink out.

The caribou have pulled carrots out of the ground to munch the green fern, but a two-legged animal has been at the spuds.

Lydia puts in a fire and we drink beer and play crib. We decide to leave the generator off and just light the oil lamps. There's no one else on the lake. You can hear the water lap against the big rock.

In the morning Lydia cooks the trout with bacon and squeezes lemon over the fish and packs on the pepper. We eat a loaf of bread by tearing it.

27 On our way out to the highway a moose stops us on the road. I get out. I approach the moose. It's a nervous calf. He backs up. I hear Lydia, out her window: Gabe. Behind you.

I turn to see a cow moose ploughing through the ditch, her head low. She starts up the grade. I put the car between us. The moose is determined. She clambers up Lydia's door, kicks herself onto the roof. I watch her teeter up there, turn around, metal popping and kinking like a pop can. The moose stands on Jethro's roof and stares at me, some ma.s.sive hood ornament. Then she scrabbles down my side, feints my way, and veers left to her calf. She pushes her calf and they trundle off into the scrub.

Lydia stares at me through my window. She gets out. The roof is covered in stretched craters, like the punches superheroes put in metal.

We drive back to St John's and shower and head out to a party at Max's.

Max says to me, Youve got to loosen up. There's nothing going on with Lydia. She loves you. She's crazy about you. Okay, so you guys fight. Who doesnt fight? Youve got to be a big man.

Me: I know it. Thing is, I'm battling exhaustion.

Max reflects on this. Youve got to stop looking and listen with your heart. Your heart will know. Is your heart getting fed?

I go to the kitchen because Wilf is there. I lean up against the counter beside him. Alex comes in, barefoot. Wilf puts out a hand.

Dont come in here, Alex, cause I broke a gla.s.s.

This is clearly a lie.

But it forces Alex to sit at the table.

Have you tried the soup?

The soup is delicious, I say.

And Wilf turns and sees me for the first time.

Alex says, Would you mind getting me a bowl?

I ladle her up a bowl. I can't find a spoon so I give her the ladle.

Wilf turns to the chicken wings. I join him. I say, How did the show go?

What?

The show at the Hall. You were the special guest.

What?

I'm thinking maybe he forgot about the show. I dont want to be the one to remind him.

Youre talking about the show next week, he says.

Oh, that's it.

Yeah, that show. It went well.

And he gives me a little grin.

Went really well.

Lydia walks in and Wilf says, It's time for you to have some kids.

Alex:You dont need kids.

Wilf: Sure you do. He nods to me. And you dont have to worry about the donor.

We walk home to Lydia's, exhausted.

Lydia: What do you think of what Wilf said?

Me: I think he's pretty brazen.

Lydia: He's funny, though. Can't you see how he's funny?

28 I sit in on one of Earl Quigley's lectures. Earl is talking about the physics of decay. He describes a coffin birth. A pregnant woman dies in childbirth. She is buried, and the soft tissues degenerate. The fetus slips out of the womb into the coffin.

I look at Lydia in the mirror of her study. How I can see her face ageing, and what her face will be like. As if the mirror distorts her or she is not Lydia. So I can see her face as skin and bone and not an ident.i.ty attached to it.

It's like holding a drawing up to a mirror to see if it's balanced.

Lydia picks out a green-and-yellow striped dress her mother wore, when she was younger than Lydia. She tucks it under her chin, swaying the hem. The carved edges of cheeks and chin. I realize I am holding some professional distance from her.

29 Maisie, on the phone: Did you get mail?

I havent checked. Have you?

It came. There was none.

Want me to check?

Okay.

Want to come with me?

Okay!

I'll get the portable phone.

Pause.

Me: You hear me?

Yep.

Okay, I'm going out the screen door, hear the creak? There's oregano still, I'll just rub some between my fingers, smell that? The dogberries are deep cl.u.s.ters of Gabe, I got the picture.

Okay. Oh, my G.o.d, it's in there.

What's in there?

A letter from the C B C.

What? What's it say, Gabe.

It's definitely about the contest.

How come I didnt get anything?

It's a thin envelope.

I can't believe it. Youre putting me on.

It's true. I'm gonna open it. Hang on. This is it.

Oh, man, why didnt I get one?

s.h.i.t.

What is it?

It's a rejection.

Gabe.

Yeah.

I didnt get anything, Gabe.

30 Eight city workers stand over the big pits carved by the back hoe on Tuesday. There's a broken sewer pipe and theyve watched water and toilet tissue slip through it. The pipe belongs to Number 6 Young Street. So now theyre shovelling by hand to remove the length of pipe.

A wasp crawls over my bare foot as I'm on the phone. It's a yellowjacket. They are licking up the aphids off my chilli-pepper plants. I watch one bite chunks out of the flesh on a cantaloupe rind in the compost heap. Black currants are still ripe on bushes.

I'm surprised when good weather lingers into fall and bad weather remains into spring. I've never gauged correctly the true nature of the seasons.

October.

1 I drive out to Conception Bay. I'm on my way to teach creative writing to high-school students. Jethro's studded tires rumble on the sunlit pavement. I feel tough. I let go of the wheel and the steering stays true for three hundred metres.

Two students have signed up, the librarian says. Youre in the bas.e.m.e.nt.

Two?

I follow her downstairs. There are small plywood and metal tables. The shelves are full of Robert Ludlum.

Glenda is sixteen, wearing an off-white raglan with a poppy. Her bleached bangs cover her dark eyebrows. She speaks to me with confidence, with erect posture. When she gesticulates, she bends her arms at the elbows and sways her arms. Her elbows she plants on her hip bones.

Hedley arrives, with his mother. His mother is not much older than me. Hedley is fifteen, smaller than Glenda. They shake hands and introduce themselves in a social and comfortable way. His mother says, So it's until four oclock? And that's all she wants to know. She's a pretty but harried woman.

I start by saying that this chair is a chair. And if you wrote your impressions of the chair, what you wrote would become the chair. The writing is not about the chair, it is the chair.

The way Hedley and Glenda exchange a look tells me we're going to have a good time.

2 I am picking up Lydia from the LSPU Hall. Wilf is smoking in the bar, clutching a beer with thick fingers. He has a perfect physique yet he lives on chocolate bars and cigarettes. Ragged white hair. He's been a songwriter and an actor for thirty years. He once moved to Toronto, to do merch, he says. Sell merchandise for a folk band.

Terrific show, Wilf.

Dostoevsky says the human being is an animal that can get used to anything. And that describes Wilf.

I've come to like Wilf. He would be surprised to hear me think that I suspected anything. He thinks highly of me. His love for Lydia he puts down as unrequited.

Lydia, he warns, is one f.u.c.king talented woman.

3 I run and circle back to Lydia's. She wants me to go for a walk. I say I am beat. She steps back to admire the curtain rod she has for her kitchen and stands on my finger, then my bare foot she's wearing big clogs. I yell in pain. She says, Well, you were in my way. And I say the obvious (It was you standing on my foot), to which she leaves the room. For a half-hour she's on the phone and so I lace up my sneakers, wave goodbye, and run home. I call up Max and go to the Grapevine for a beer. From there I call Lydia no answer. I walk back up the hill at nine and she's not there. At ten I call and she answers. She's mad at me for leaving without telling her, after she'd invited me out for a walk. So we go through it, and she thinks I should apologize for yelling at her, and so I do. I ask if I can come down, and she says, I want to be alone tonight. She says she stood on my hand because I'd moved a chair to the wrong place, and so she had to stand on my hand. And I say, Why can't you admit you stood on my hand because you werent looking?

In the morning I walk down and she lets me in, but she's serious. I see she's been cleaning the kitchen and living room. She has thrown my things (a pair of socks, sneakers, three books, a sweater) into a corner heap. It's so offensive. She commences to talk on the phone. So I tell her I'm off to the library. It maddens me. It makes me want to never return to her place. I'm not welcome.