This All Happened Part 23

No, Charles as a young man.

The other woman, keen to a.s.sure me I'm better looking, says, When he's older he'll be far more handsome than the prince.

20 There's a big wooden fence out by Mount Pearl. It's supposed to be a barrier between the houses and the highway. But as you accelerate, the fence begins to blur, the gaps between the pickets link up, and suddenly the fence vanishes. You can see, with no interruption, the houses in behind. But the houses can't see you. If you slipped off the road and hit the fence at the right speed, you'd slip right through it.

21 Max: Let's do some heavy drinking.

Yes, I need a few heavy drinks.

You need a chaser.

I need to be chased.

You will be chased. You have to stop chasing in order to be chased. Youre too exposed and everyone sees the wind blowing through you and they won't touch you while that wind is blowing. No one likes a man with his heart wounded by another.

I need sutures.

We're gonna get you some sutures.

22 I phone Lydia. She says, I'm just reading an old paper. What time did you get up?

Oh, nine-thirty.

Me: I'm just up.

You sound like youre not up. Like youre way under a blanket. You sound horizontal.

Me:You sound half asleep.

Yeah, I'm just noticing that. It was getting up. From the table.

So how are you.

Lydia: I'm good. I'm really good. I went for a run. I'm not feeling too good. Oh my G.o.d, my nose.

What is it?

It's all puffy on one side.

Are you okay?

I feel okay. But the side of my face.

You must have fallen.

I must have. I was with Max until the sun came up. You got home okay?

I was pretty drunk. But I beelined home. I must have hit a lamppost. No, I hit a tree.

23 Helmut will be home for Christmas. They placed first, Iris says. She shows me their web page and the maps of their progress and Boston harbour. They were eight hours ahead of the next boat. Five months of racing and they won by eight hours. There is an article all about the racers, and a photo of Helmut and the team in today's papers. He has long hair, he's thinner. I recognize him by his hands.

24 Alex and I sit on the cold concrete at one in the morning, down in the heart of the town. The river flashing below us. A river takes you out of the human landscape and transports you into a terrain without clocks. A bridge is a place of confession, of consolation. Confessions are anything you know to be true.

Alex: I want to write a song as good as a Wilf song.

Yes, a song.

I want to fall in love. I mean, really fall in love. Don't you, Gabe?

Yes.

Can you imagine it?

It's hard to separate it from the s.e.xual side.

Not for me. I've got a picture of the perfect man.

And what's he like?

He separates what I say and do from who I am. He doesn't criticize me. You know, men do that all the time.

Well. It's hard to know the difference between criticism of acts and criticism of the person.

I know I'm sensitive, she says.

We hold hands. It's meant for comfort. It is like holding your own hand, or patting your own sides to offer encouragement. It is dark, the river rushing under us, the air a little chilly. I have fished this river, and fishing takes the mystery out of a river.

It's true that all rivers connect. The sound of a river belongs in the same folder as all other rivers, and nothing quite compares, and so the memories of what has happened at other rivers is easy to summon. And so rivers are nostalgic and nostalgia means returning home, plus pain.

25 They call out to me as I'm walking up Long's Hill. The night so empty, sound travelling for miles.

Maisie: Let's go for a beer.

Max: One beer.

Maisie: We'll split a beer. Three ways.

Okay, I say. Say, arent you parents?

26 I walk to the art gallery, and pa.s.s through the graveyard. The graveyard on Mayor always puts me in a mood. Boyd Coady is combing his dog there. The dog is tied to a pipe railing with a blue ribbon. There's a number spray-painted on some of the pines above the Farrell graves.

I ask him why.

He says he just needed things. He needed to do his laundry. Did you fix the faucet?

It was not a big problem. A washer, he says.

And that's your TV?

She didnt have a TV. I like to watch TV. It was the TV that did me in.

Me: I thought it might have been the underwear.

And Boyd looks at me as though I'm nuts. It's evident he knows nothing about the underwear.

The sky darkens at 4:30.

At the gallery, the commissionaire is reading a self-image book. I ask what it's all about. It helps you improve your image. This war vet, sitting at a desk between rooms of Chinese prints and wrought-iron sculpture.

27 I drive Iris to work at the marine lab. Jethro's wipers are broken. Iris says she's cooking supper tonight. She has brown eyes that remind me of a small ceramic deer I had once when I was eight. It came from a box of tea.

I tell her that I saw Boyd, that I talked to him.

I can't believe you didnt hit him. With a stick. If I were Lydia I'd clean everything I own, she says.

28 At St Patrick's Church we watch Max Wareham and Daphne Yarn wed. Their son, Eli, in a pram with a blanket the same colour as Daphne's dress.

I flip through the book of hymns, and learn that the angel's sole purpose is to praise G.o.d.

Lydia reads a pa.s.sage about the good wife. And she changes it. She adds vice versa to all the commands on the wife. She is sitting with Wilf and I hear him say, You changed the Old Testament on a whim? and she whispers, It was s.e.xist.

Also in the hymn book, the word chrism.

Daphne's mother ties a knot at the back of her necklace, to shorten it on her clavicles.

29 Max's house is larger than it looks. One of his knuckles is carefully scarred from a chainsaw and plastic surgery. He has thick wrists. His legs are thin. When he sits he is careful. He has an old man's caution about sitting. His features are young. It's only in the sum of his actions that he becomes his age. I have seen a pained look cross his forehead. This pained look is new.

He once asked Maisie to marry him, and she started chatting to a man at another table. I have told him that he fears success. What? When something good comes by you sabotage it.

He nods slowly at this.

30 Been reading Thucydides. Where he says he's not interested in the applause of the present, but writing for future attention. Here I am, 2,500 years later, reading his words, feeling his person.

The ancients were equal to us in diplomacy and civilization. It might take them an afternoon to bone up on warfare (theatre of the air), and then they'd be a match for anyone. Technology does not outstrip diplomatic methods.

December.

1 Today I polished shoes. I took my old leather coat and st.i.tched the armpit. I soaked my feet in an enamel basin. I threaded new laces. I scoured the bathtub. I drew a sketch of the harbour. I bought the Manchester Guardian. I finished a novel. It takes just as long to read a novel as it did ten years ago. It still takes nine months to have a baby. If a woman walks away from you, it's with the same gait as if it happened in the eighteenth century.

I have stopped eating pasta. I will make pastry and bake a pie. I will ignore the clock. I will wash down the windowsills. I will study the town with binoculars. I will extract the precise quality of love that objects possess.

2 We are learning carols at Oliver's. Max's new baby asleep in Oliver's bedroom. Una sitting by the piano hugging a stuffed cheetah.

Me: I dont think this is what Maisie had in mind. Oliver: I think Maisie can have her mind changed. Think she won't mind?

Oliver: I think she'll look in and say this is something else.

Maisie arrives. She has a box of beer and the carol sheets. A studded leather belt that makes her tough. She's letting her hair grow. She had asked my opinion on this, quietly, and I'd said let it grow. Around the piano she has Daphne and Alex while she plays and they try harmony.

Me: How can you know the next note?

Maisie: It's all written down on the sheets. You dont have to guess.

I look around for Oliver's pregnant student. I've forgotten Oliver is circ.u.mspect.

Being shocked at how badly Alex sings. Knowing she has said she can't sing but never knowing it was that bad. She was reticent about singing and we were all, separately, encouraging her and finally she blurts out a random note and at least her ear understands it's outlandish or maybe she recognizes now the reaction of others to tone-deaf singers but she stops after three notes and retires to the couch.

Oliver leaves on Silent Night because he can't handle singing a song that possesses serious, sentimental conviction. He doesnt have the bone you need to shift the corniness aside, the irony and the slyness to allow the heart room to manoeuvre in the mood of a genuine song. He left to get a beer and I wonder if he is bereft of a clear bone of sincerity.

Then I see he's just gone because he can't handle Maisie back in his house and all of the above is false.

Max and Daphne are leaving with Eli, and Max admits to taking a half-carton of egg nog topped up with my Old Sam. He has it tucked in the tweed pocket of his overcoat. Sorry about this, Max says. Will make it up to you. He opens the mouth of the carton to show me the contents. This is while it's sticking out of the coat pocket. I love the fact that he thinks he can do this. I love the comfort.

3 Maisie says, After Christmas, I want to party hard. I want to go out with Max and Wilf and I want to have a good time. What about work.

I've been working. After Christmas I'm going to devote myself to partying.

I meet Oliver in the bathroom at the Spur. He says, You just missed out. A guy was sharing a line of c.o.ke. Man, it burnt my nostrils. I couldnt tell the guy it had no effect because it was a freebie. But good c.o.ke, Gabe, doesnt burn at all. If it burns, you know it's full of Old Dutch.

Oliver, Maisie says, is a guy who plays both sides. She says this with admiration. He's a lawyer by day and a hound at night. He's up at seven every morning and out till four every night.

4 Two cats in a tree. In the taller branches a brilliant blue jay. With a seed propped in its thin black beak.

Beyond them a barge docked in the rain. A man operates welding gear. Acetylene torches under a blue tarpaulin, flashing in the fog.

The smell of brewery as I jog past Lydia's.

I watch a man operate a Taylor down at the dockyard. He is lifting a blue Ace container off the back of an eighteen-wheeler. He turns (his rear axle turns) and lays the container onto a stack three-high. I know the hoister is called a Taylor because I've called up Oceanex.

What is that loader called?

Theyre called hoisters or tailers, either one.

Which is better?

Depends how much you want to spend. I prefer tailers. How much would one cost?

About $700,000 Canadian. What do you want to lift? Oh, about the same thing youre lifting.

You get them through Materials Handling, Bernie Faloney, he's the man to talk to. He used to play for the Hamilton Ti-Cats. The hoisters are French-made and theyre good, except when they break down, theyre a you-know-what to get parts for.

And who makes tailers?