This All Happened Part 4

Wilf leans back and straightens his grey wool jacket lapels. Sometimes his face relaxes and you see that he is fifty-two. He has large eyes and a broad face. One of those faces that has got thicker over the years. He stares at the helium balloons framing the room-wide window that looks down on six lanes of curlers casting rocks. The tray of desserts being wheeled out, like a sweet patient.

Wilf: I like this set-up because you know you won't be talking to a load of drunks.

Lydia: Unlike last night.

It's hard to feel anything erotic as the poets whisper up their attempts at arousal. When it's my turn I realize the problem: eroticism rests on intimacy, and a roomful of people destroys this intimacy.

We eat dessert. We plough into the sweet patient.

The speaker system is accidentally attached to the downstairs intercom, so the curlers hear every word.

Wilf says, The problem with the word erotic is that it has the word rot in the middle of it.

15 There is no colour in the hills now. Whatever quality affords colour in colour film is no longer in those hills. Below the hills in dry dock is the trawler Wilfred Templeman. It looks like a part of the sentinel fishery. Hauled up alongside the Beothuk park, deep in the shipyard.

You must listen to your heart of hearts. You must know there is a cable of love that connects, that carries an undertow, that tugs and anchors you during the white storm. When I look into Lydia's blue eye I want to see that cable. The storm can shave away all bindings, but the silver cable persists.

The roofs are white. But the roads have melted to black. All the windows are black or a very dark green. Windows allow light but offer darkness. If you are attracted to windows you probably like looking out through them. Otherwise, you like looking at yourself in them, as darkness allows a reflection.

Iris says there's a new prison in the mountains of Germany. Helmut was telling her. And the only windows are slits, like a glowing envelope on edge. And Helmut wonders if you can see an entire mountain through a slit. This is the project we all undertake, she says. Isnt it. To accept everything if you love a piece of everything.

16 Lydia tries on clothes at the Value Village. A green wool suit made in Dublin. It fits her like stretched fabric over wood. Her thin chest and full thighs. She c.o.c.ks her hips, pulls up a shoulder.

What do you think?

I think youve rescued it.

Then it's a wine V-neck sweater that hugs her little t.i.ts. I am in the change booth with her. I run a hand over her pubic hair. I can't help it. What about this, she says. A black number with white st.i.tching. I am learning to choose clothing for her. At first it seemed anything would look good on her. I was astonished at how small a top could be. The size of children's clothing.

She says, Youre some chummy with Alex.

Me: Youre one to talk.

17 Forty laps in a thirty-metre pool. I love swimming in winter. But I'm winded after ten laps. The water playing off plexigla.s.s like starfish made from sunlight. Moving a plate of light around the room off your watch.

Lane one, a man, about forty-two, with a bald spot and a small pot and tufts of hair at his nipples and belly b.u.t.ton. A young guy with him learning to shallow dive, tattoos on his shoulders, something meek. I practise the crawl, blowing under water, sucking under my arm. I take it easy. Lane three, a sleek woman ploughing through lengths like she's churning cream.

Some people you care for, some you dont, just from their look.

That man and the younger man could be lovers, except I see that it's my neighbour, Boyd Coady.

I drive home and there's a message on the machine: Lydia's out for a run and she's going to come over. Then I see her walking down the path. She is carrying a bouquet of carnations.

How did you run with flowers?

I held them behind my back.

When I hug her, her body is hot and steamy.

18 Maisie Pye and I get drunk. We havent been drunk together in ages. It's so good, she says, to get drunk with you.

She pulls on a lock of her brown hair and nibbles it.

She says she can be direct with me. She can utter anything and it won't be misconstrued. She says, The fact that we've slept together avoids all that s.e.xual tension bulls.h.i.t.

That was ten years ago.

Doesnt matter. Does it matter to you? I mean, do you have any s.e.xual feelings for me?

I guess not. But I didnt know it was because we'd slept together.

Well, thanks a lot.

That's not what I meant.

Maisie: With most men I have to watch it. Or they watch it. But with you I'm perfectly comfortable.

So youre saying I'm saying you should watch out for Alex.

We're only ever flirting.

I think she's interested in you.

We leave it at that. She asks how things are with Lydia. Me: We were thinking about getting married.

Maisie nods at this. Maisie got us together in the first place, and now I can see she's having doubts.

Maisie: My flaw is I'm convincing. I can convince people to do things, even if theyre the wrong things to do.

You dont think we should get married.

I'm not saying anything. I'm just worried that the right thing gets done.

Well, how do we look from the outside? From your angle?

You look infatuated. Which beauty can drug you on. You have to work through infatuation.

And how do you know if youre infatuated?

Your work suffers.

Maisie says you have to watch yourself in any relationship, or you'll end up in torment.

I ask how she's doing with Oliver.

Well, she says, I speak of torment. You can't run a relationship solely on flair and conversation and desire for life.

I say: It's warming yourself at a fire. When it dies down youre cold.

Maisie: It's like watching a movie of the one you love. What do you mean?

It's like when you enter a movie and youre absorbed. But it's the world of a movie, separate from you. After two hours you'll leave, entertained, but you return to your own world. And the movie knows nothing of your life.

We both silently gauge ourselves by this.

19 Yearning. I want a real love and a woman fully mine and I am fully hers. A deeply entrenched togetherness in some kind of alchemical bond that is inseparable and you change and become a different person because of that woman. You would almost die, yes you probably would die, a sh.e.l.l or a core of you would wither, if that woman left you or you left her. Something else always blooms in the aftermath, but deep chunks would be ripped out and isnt that fear part of a deep love? A thing that we are all desperately craving and searching, smelling, listening for, even when we arent conscious of it. And any other arrangement or agreement is fine for the time but is always susceptible to outside forces that will gnaw on the hawsers and dissolve you like sugar in liquid. I know Lydia has gone through this type of deep love with Earl, a love where she craved him all day long and then came home to him almost lunging and yes she was shocked and hurt by this kind of love and maybe what she has now is a nurtured and careful and indeed beautiful thing and maybe that's good for her, who am I to say. But I want to caution her against this separation of self from me, if that's what she is doing or trying to maintain. Give me a rooted thing that is fierce and dedicated and incredibly powerful in head heart and animal.

20 I'm at Maisie's and she's on the phone, so I'm talking to Una. She says, Dad only recently discovered the drive-you-thru. He didnt know how to talk to the man on the intercom.

She is making a birthday card and puts in nine dollars. Andrea is nine, Una says. It's a makeup party.

The invitation reads Don't Blush! and I ask her if she catches the double meaning.Yes, she says.

When she writes Happy Birthday on the card I ask her if she knows how to excite and jazz up sentences.

Put an exclamation mark, she says.

She says this in a declarative way.

Some kids end a sentence with a raised, doubting tone. And here Una is adding an exclamation mark, sure of herself.

She says, A question mark is like half a heart.

I say, Sometimes questions are asked half-heartedly.

21 I've invited Lydia up for supper. Helmut is back from Boston. Iris and I will team up to cook. We sit in the kitchen and dig up Helmut's life story. How he was adopted and found his sister only last year. As he's telling us, a big man with a cast on his arm walks in with a summons.

Gabriel English?

Lydia, Iris, and Helmut look at me.

You guys, I say, know nothing about deception.

I confess I'm Gabriel English.

Man with cast: You owe the government twenty thousand dollars, and change.

I look at the summons. The Cast says, Youre a hard one to track down. Dont you ever vote?

I vote, but I swear an oath to where I live.

The Cast is puzzled.

I lie, I say, about where I live.

The Cast is very polite, says he has been around a few times but got no answer at the door. He says he can let himself out.

I can see Lydia looking at the summons with disapproval.

I'm going to talk to Oliver. I'll lay ten thousand in cash on the government table. That's what I borrowed from student loans ten years ago. The rest is 12 percent interest. The rest, I say in a righteous tone, is usury. If they accept it, I'll take you to lunch.

Lydia: Last of the big spenders.

They won't turn down ten grand.

Lydia: Not when they see the likes of you.

22 Oliver says it's worth a try. I will do this generous monetary transaction on my birthday. It will clear the slate to begin my thirty-fifth year. I could declare bankruptcy, but that taints the future. Also, integrity tells me to pay what I owe but be stubborn on the interest. Also, bankruptcy is not an attractive trait. I can see Lydia wants me to clear this up without it coming to that.

Mom called. She wants to visit, but she'll come on the bus. She misses me because I dont come back for Christmas. She calls it a pagan holiday. The only ceremonies she celebrates are marriages and Easter. She doesnt even raise her gla.s.s to a toast.

23 I wrote a pa.s.sion poem for Lydia. I left it in her mailbox: Send me an ounce of cinnamon, it said, wrapped in paper and string. Send my love's own grain. An ounce will do, an ounce of cinnamon. For apples, you said. My mouth that eats apples. Tied in paper and string. Eat my mouth in green apples that have been given to him, stapled and pinned. An ounce of cinnamon; send it, given to him who has no cinnamon, save himself. For love's own grain. Send me this in a cloth so fine and wire so hard it will prove our own forgiveness.

I am wired into an insane part of me.

24 Lydia says the poem was appreciated. Her tone implies she didnt, no one could, understand it. I said it was a nonsense poem, just read it for the intent. There's intent behind it.

She wants to paint her study. So I drive down and pick her up and we zoom over to Matchless Paints and choose a colour I call avocado green. Lydia says there are a lot of greens in avocado.

The centre yellow, closest to the pit.

We get the man to add one fraction of green. It's the green of unripe banana.

The man lifts his arms and slips a finger under the tight short sleeves of his shirt, as if his biceps need room.

A fraction is the minimum amount of paint that can drip from the beaker. It's enough paint to cover your fingernail. Enough to change considerably the hue of a gallon of avocado. The power of pigment.

With all the pictures off the walls her study looks relaxed. We've stacked Lydia's paintings and lamps in between the legs of upended chairs in the hall. I expect a caravan to be hauled up outside, a thin horse, ruts in the road from wagon wheels. There is a primitive, European feeling of exodus, of imminent rush and migrant behaviour, hanging around Lydia's stairwell.

25 Stories are all about meeting someone, Maisie says. You have the narrator. Then you are introduced to a character. And how does that person shape the protagonist? That's all a story ever is. Your protagonist meeting someone. That's how my novel begins, I say. Little Leo Percy (Josh) meeting Rockwell Kent (Max) at the train station.

I want to write a kid's book for Una. Have a whale meet a shark and discuss his time on land. How his tail is flat now and he has to return, always, to the surface to breathe. A story about returning home, but how the experience away changes you permanently.

26 I wake up on the couch cushions on the living-room floor. The rain sounds like plastic bubbling off the walls. Mom is directly above in my bed. I picked her up last night at the bus station. I watched her guide her feet down the steep hammered-metal steps.

She had her bags on the chair by the phone. She said, Is that okay?

Yes, I said. We can bring them up to your room later. Oh, there's a limit, she said.

What?

They only go that far for now it's a joke.

She asks about commitment, and I explain that Lydia and I are considering the question. She says, You should give yourself a deadline.

I say, I've never been in love before.

She says, Well, it's good to have your heart broken.