This All Happened Part 10

You attempt to persuade people on a course of action youve convinced yourself would be good for them.

I like to offer my opinion.

And yet youre insecure.Youre always buying brand-new hardcover fiction to offset some geographic and cultural isolation.

Gabe. That's professional. My one weakness.

I admire it. And your writing is sensual and particular. It's in the active, present tense. Youre funny and strong and surprisingly unsure of your talent.

Are you trying to cheer me up?

Maisie's money is tied up in a mortgage and car payments, the house in Heart's Desire, feeding Una, and for once, she's fearful of finances now that she has left Oliver.

Me: What is radical?

Brazil is radical. What Iris is doing. Anything lavish that is consumed.

Well, why not go to Heart's for a weekend? It's the next best thing.

Okay then, she says.

8 Today was a list of donts and shoulds. Lydia said, Dont use foot-bath powder in a full bath, you should change clothes after badminton, dont sneak up on me ever, dont barge into the bathroom when I'm in there, dont make coffee without measuring the grounds, dont peel carrots in the sink, dont put tomatoes in a salad, you should take my direction when driving otherwise youre being defiant, dont try to do accents youre no good at them, dont put extra oil in anything, dont serve a bowl without a plate under it, dont floss your teeth that way, this is how you make rice, dont use vinegar in a salad dressing, dont leave your coat on a kitchen chair, dont talk to me when I'm falling asleep or speak to me when I'm remembering my dreams or tell me not to swear, dont compare me, dont make the bed that way, dont turn on the overhead light use lamps, dont use the bathroom fan switch it's too noisy, close the bathroom door if I'm in bed.

9 I find a pair of men's underwear in Lydia's dryer and theyre not mine. I lay them on top of the machine. But Lydia does not pick them up. So I ask her and she says theyre not hers.

Lydia: I've never seen them before. Maybe theyre Earl's.

From five years ago? They look recent.

Lydia: I dont know anything about them.

She's convinced they must be mine. I hang them on the box of detergent.

10 In the post office I see Max's father. A few months ago he fell fainted and Max found him. He was in hospital for eight weeks and had prostate surgery.

I had outdoor plumbing for a while, he says.

Mr Wareham's pupils pinp.r.i.c.ks in the blue. He's wearing a pair of white cotton gloves and a tea-coloured coat. This man was born on an island off an island. He says he grows wheat in his backyard in Arnold's Cove. Max takes him on trips to Witless Bay Line to boil the kettle and paint trees leaning over a rough sh.o.r.e. He has a white s.h.a.g of hair. It's funny that he has a head of hair and Max doesnt. Takes after his mother, Max does. Mr Wareham enjoys the company of women in their thirties. He has a small stainless-steel spring of joy in his ankle and a green shoot in his eye and an idea lightbulb burning in his temple.

11 I ride my bike to Motor Vehicle in Mount Pearl to relicense Jethro. First time on my bike this year. It had a flat. I flip the bicycle upside down in the backyard, wrench off the rim, tug out the tube, dunk it in the sink. I realize I'm thinking of that pair of underwear. Who the h.e.l.l owns them?

The hole makes a flute of bubbles. I sandpaper the hole and dab on rubber cement and let it go tacky, apply a patch and wait for the tube to dry, and then, with the heels of three teaspoons hanging off the lip of the rim, it's my childhood days. Been fifteen years since I changed a bicycle tire with teaspoons.

It's a busy road. But a lull in between the two cities. With flat properties and a little farming. Rows of plastic cones over some tender crops. A gentle ascent into Mount Pearl. A girl digging in the soil, her gla.s.ses glinting gold. Or the glint tells me she's wearing gold gla.s.ses. Her father in a row of trees. Cow manure trampled into the edge of pavement. A protest sign against the land freeze. Ballroom dancing at the Old Mill. Brookfield Drive-In. The word Brookfield has theatrical masks for the two o's, reminds me of one of the entries I'd adjudicated a handwritten story and for the word look a fourteen-year-old had dots and eyelashes on the o's.

At Motor Vehicle it is sunny and the skylights reflect all the hills and land around Mount Pearl. One queue is for the photo driver's licences and men are stroking their hair back and one woman walks up to her boyfriend, pats his ear. You sign your name on an electronic pad that collects the signature directly onto the computer screen and to every province, territory, state, and free-trade zone in North America, you can be sure. It was forty-five minutes in the lineup and then two minutes at the wicket.

I say, Do I have to sign on this electronic pad? Couldnt I sign a piece of paper instead?

I wouldnt care, but the licence left off my last letter (I wrote over the edge of the pad) and reduced my signature by So percent. My signature looks tiny and mean.

12 Lydia and I drive to Heart's Desire with Daphne and Max in the back seat. Jethro doesnt mind the weight. Maisie has knocked out a kitchen wall. She has discovered old linoleum. Maisie hands us a bucket of sudsy water to wash down the wallpaper. The walls have fat pink roses from the fifties.

Una asks me to rub down the b.u.t.ter chunks on her toast.

She has a purse, and in it a picture of Oliver when he was little.

I never knew your dad at that age, I say.

That's Daddy, Una says, when he was me.

I walk to the beach with Daphne, Maisie, and Lydia. We pa.s.s Josh and Toby, who are building a fence. Leaves are bursting out of a birch. Toby looks like he doesnt get fed much. Josh nods. They are getting older. Next year they won't even nod to me. They'll be too cool.

Maisie: We bought this house on a whim seven years ago for six thousand. I bought it out of the money I made teaching.

Me: I'm reminded of what you said, Maisie that teaching made you realize what you believe.

Maisie: People used to give up. They would try to be a pianist or a painter, they would get to Paris and be told they werent good enough. They would become electricians. Not now Daphne: That's what happened to Max. Except he told himself.

13 We are driving home from Heart's. A northerly has driven ice close to sh.o.r.e. It pushes Jethro towards the shoulder. Daphne says her grandfather was killed at the seal hunt and brought back in a pickle barrel. They laid him out on his mother's kitchen table and the pickle came running out of him and ruined the cloth.

Daphne can't wait to get back to her greenhouse. She says Craig Regular wrote a letter to the paper. He was complaining that she uses waste of eviscerated animals from the university labs as fertilizer. It's not enough for some, she says, that I'm selling organic produce.

14 On Lydia's desk there is a photo of Lydia dancing with Earl Quigley. They are in Lydia's kitchen on Gower. The same table, same fridge, same bra.s.s chimes hanging in the doorway, same grey-and-red wool placemats, even the fridge magnets, the bulletin board behind the door all the same except Lydia is dancing with Earl Quigley, he's bending her and they smile for a camera and this is five years ago when it would have been his underwear in the dryer and I'm certainly not anywhere near the dance.

I have walked down to Lydia's to make Boston bluefish chowder with clams and shrimp. I have to ring to have her open the door. I notice a block of cheese I bought is gone. Did Lydia eat a whole block of cheese?

Youre the cheese pig, she says.

The photo and the cheese, the underwear still hanging there, and the fact I have no key make me irritable. But I say nothing about it. I am a cheese pig.

Lydia tests the chowder and wonders if something is off. It tastes zingy, she says. Like putting your tongue on a battery.

I decide not to stay, and I can see she's relieved. You can take the chowder, she says. And I walk back up the hill. I pour out the chowder under a tree, where a dog like Tinker b.u.mbo will find it.

15 Lydia:You sure are spending a lot of time with Maisie. We're writers. We're conferring.

I realize I havent been discussing the novel with Lydia. The reason is she's so busy with scripts, with the play, with funding proposals for the film in the summer.

Lydia thinks the novel could make a good film. Scenes of Bob Bartlett in the north, walking over polar ice that is floating south. Of the Karluk sinking, the phonograph playing. Of Rockwell Kent being accused of spying for the Germans. When I describe these images she gets excited, more excited than me. And I realize she's good for egging me on. She's much better at story than I am.

16 Just showered after a run with Lydia. Shaved a minute off Quidi Vidi, and much easier even though I ran feeling a little sore in the s.h.i.+ns. A calm night, the lights of Pleasantville in bright focus. The oil tanks hidden behind a point of land, only the glow of lights on the bank behind them. The whole hill a dull apple-cider glow to protect the tanks from vandals.

Not a soul anywhere.

We stop at Lydia's. When she peels off her running shoes I see she has a pair of Chinese slippers inside. The shoes are too big, she says. I love how her elbows move close to her hips when she jogs. There's something oriental in all that.

We kiss and I continue on up Long's Hill. The greys and blacks. No colour except in blurred pools around streetlights in the distance, showing s.h.i.+ngles on the edges of houses.

I run past Theatre Pharmacy, where we hugged that first Christmas and I had the rolling pin down my pants. Feel that, I'd said.

Oh, my.

I had her, for a moment. When she didnt know my body. Starlings are walking through a gra.s.sy hill, eating insects. Green is the garbage of gardens. They are sloughing off green.

17 At Coleman's grocery store. The distorted women, freakshow faces, warped eyebrows, blotchy complexions about four of them, their tiny husbands pus.h.i.+ng carts. A pregnant woman with groceries. She comes out with the bags and there's a man in the pa.s.senger seat, waiting, staring at the glovebox, defeated, with a nine-year-old in the back, and the pregnant woman, struggling into the door, forces her belly behind the wheel, pained, drives.

Thin legs on the women, big torsos, and their pushed-in, beaten faces, receding chins, thin hair crimped artificially. Then calling taxis, paying with Government of Newfoundland blue cheques that require MCP and SIN and theyre worth $301.50 and theyre buying cases of Pepsi, Spaghettios, tins of vienna sausages, cold pre-fried barbecue wings, I can barely write this as it's all so cliche.

18 It's 3 a.m. and Wilf Jardine will not leave Lydia's party. We have to con him. Trouble is, he is used to this game and is wily, wary of deception. He cranks up the music another decibel. I tell him that he has to go now. That I'll go with him. We can go down to the Spur, I say.

Wilf faces me, drunk and wincing. He is drinking s.h.i.+ne, panty remover, he calls it. There is a yellow stain on his lapel. It makes the tweed in his coat look like sandwich spread. I'll go to the Spur, he says. But not with you.

He turns to Lydia.

Lydia: I'll go with you, Wilf.

That's better, he says. No offence, Gabe.

I call a cab and we wait in the porch. Silent.

We get in the cab and head to the Spur. Halfway down he changes his mind.

Wilf: I want to go home.

He rolls down his window and yells at some Filipino sailors.

Naw, let's keep her rolling.

We end up at the Spur and Alex is there and I sit with Alex while Lydia takes care of Wilf at the bar. I have my hand around Alex. Craig Regular comes over to talk to Wilf and Lydia, and he makes Lydia's head bend back in laughter.

Alex says, Wilf Jardine has written one good song. When you hear that song, you know Wilf is worth it.

Alex believes if you pray for someone and that person doesnt know youre praying for them, the prayer can still work. She reads fantasy novels set in utopian times. All this I find unattractive.

Wilf, she says, wants only visitors who need his help. You ever been in his house? He owns no plants.

Craig Regular is buying Wilf and Lydia a drink.

You want a drink, Alex?

19 Something in me makes me run at night.

I was exhausted, back from a dinner party at Maisie's new place. I walked through the mist and the darkness and the quiet of Sunday night. I like returning home slowly, to end the night with a known destination.

Lydia's right: Maisie looks good since leaving Oliver. She hitchhiked across the island to see her sister. One man who picked her up asked math questions like: Say you have one brick . . . Another kept stopping into museums and said, Oh, I've got a better one of those at home in the garage. There was a tire leak and the first guy tried to figure out an equation that would predict the rate of deflation.

20 I call Mom as it's her birthday. She said, Your dad came in to the kitchen, bent his knees a little, put his hands on my shoulders, and sang Happy Birthday.

I say, Youre now twice my age.

She hadnt realized I was this old.

Whenever I call her she offers me advice. And today she says she's decided never to pretend to a motive that's false. Someone once accused her of stealing money. She denied it. Then she decided to make a joke of it. She said, How else am I supposed to get by on what I make? She says, When you do that, it leaves an impression on the person. That youre capable of stealing. Before the utterance she was beyond reproach.

I think about the underwear. When I mentioned to Lydia they could belong to a lover, she accepted it. This made the idea ridiculous. But now I'm thinking of it again.

21 I asked Max what he thought of being a father. He's excited. I know he hadnt wanted children, but now he's eager. He has all the books.

We dine at the old Victoria Station. Every year it's a new restaurant, but we still call it the Victoria Station, or 290 Duckworth. Tonight it's serving Caribbean and Mediterranean food. I order stifado, a Greek beef in cinnamon broth. Max the Moroccan lamb. But the tapas are best, scallops in the half sh.e.l.l basted in basil, cold marinated halibut in shredded red cabbage, shrimp in red sauce. A litre of red wine.

Max drives to his place and we play chess. And then I walk home. It takes twelve minutes to walk home from Max's, through the basilica grounds. The cold, silent night. I am tired. I wake up with the shock of a cat sniffing my face. Then I remember Iris is taking care of one.

22 On Lydia's deck I can hear a delicate cheep from the neighbour's soffit. I make coffee but decide to abstain. I lean over the rail. I can distinguish three distinct bird voices. A family has begun. A little family of three. I had told Max again how I want to get married, how Lydia is hesitant. Max said the same thing happened with Daphne: She said it was too early. And so I got her pregnant.

What?

A little hole in the condom. Works great.

Are you suggesting I'm suggesting you force her hand. You want to get married, you want to have a kid, that's obvious.

What's so obvious about it?

The way you are with Una.

Two deep cheeps and a little high cheep.

23 Lydia and I walk along the river with Tinker b.u.mbo and Una. We have Una for the afternoon. And Una wants to be with Lydia. Una looks at Lydia with the eye of wonder. Lydia is a woman, a woman not her mother. Mothers dont count. It's sunny but chilly and we look at the houses along Circular Road. We stop in one driveway and speak to a Mrs Chafe. We admire the daphne and the sherbet yellow forsythia, both of which flower before growing leaves.

I wonder, I say, if that means anything about Daphne. Does she bloom before her leaves come out?

Una asks if these are oak trees. The branches are bare, so it's hard to tell. I am studying the bark on the trunks. Mrs Chafe picks up last year's fallen leaf and says no. An oak leaf has a coastline rivulet.

I would never have thought, in spring, to pick up last year's leaf.

24 Alex Fleming's studio overlooks Water Street. I can see the first three letters in the Esso tank farm. She has turned from her computer and drafting table. The screen is sophisticated. She is a woman with a lot of software.

I show her the poems I've written on the seven deadly sins. Her gaze turns professional. For the first time she is looking, in my presence, at something coldly.

Theyre very good, she says. I can work with these.

Her apartment is devoted to small art objects. Bits of rusted metal on the fireplace mantel. The hearth filled with wooden dolls. Images from magazines have been cut out and spliced. I can see a corner of her high bed behind an open door in the hall.

Alex will build seven objects to accompany my text. She says,You and Maisie are the first writers I've mentioned it to. I want to get Max in on it as well. I think it'll be you and me, and Max and Maisie.

Alex wears dark clothes, even at badminton. She smokes. There is a sinister note within her goodness. How she bends over to a serve, and looks me in the eye.

25 We pick up Max and Daphne and drive up the sh.o.r.e to hunt down icebergs. It's twenty-one degrees. I can feel the colour come to my face. The profiles of icebergs. A pair are linked in a green seawater gleam under the surface and I think of Lydia and me standing like that, at a distance but joined surrept.i.tiously. One looks like a Spanish galleon, another the head of a rooster, complete with comb. A third is a lilting ocean liner. We turn shapes into objects. We do it to clouds, to rock formations.