This All Happened Part 16

Get away from me.

There are no movies playing, and badminton is over for the summer. It seems like we can't go out tonight, I say. And later. So, darlin, do you want to hang out together or do you want to get on?

Lydia: I want to hang out here and be your baby, baby.

In the park kids wag glowing haloes of rainbows. I ask Lydia and she says theyve been around a couple of years. How do they light? It's fluorescent goop, she says.

9 Eight of us aboard Max's boat in Placentia Bay. I love getting out of town. Sunny, steaming southwest of Long Island. Trying to remember how Lydia's foot looked in a white nylon: the red polish on her toenails showing through. As if her foot were dusted with sugar.

We see eagles in the distance. Some sea stacks that look like ancient pillars of rubble. I've had about five beer with absolutely no effect.

The horseflies are bad.

Discarded scallop sh.e.l.ls s.h.i.+ne along the bottom near the wharf in Harbour Buffett. Their reflected glare allows you to see more of what's on the bottom. Connors dart and coast around the legs of the wharf.

The wharf is the deck of an old oak schooner. All the houses are gone now, resettled to Arnold's Cove in the sixties. This was where Max was born. He has shown us photos of when his father moved the house to Arnold's Cove. They jacked the house and rolled it down to the water on logs. Then a barge s.h.i.+pped it down the length of Placentia Bay. They didnt break one pane of gla.s.s until they got to Arnold's Cove. Max says his father didnt mind the idea of resettlement. It was the speed. In the summer of 1967 there were two hundred people in Buffett. By September there were none.

And then what was left was pirated.

Even five years ago you'd see the sh.e.l.ls of houses, still standing but their spines broken, about to collapse. You could see the size of the communities. But now all that's here are cabins. People are starting to return. The cabins are mushrooms growing on a dead log.

Max, looking at the topo maps, says we can go across to Merasheen, but if the wind is from the south, you just dont know.

Max has fibregla.s.sed the boat eight sheets on the hull, sixteen overlap on the keel. And six sheets cover the house. Fibregla.s.sing saves on maintenance.

We pa.s.s the whaling station on Merasheen. Across from Rose au Rue Island. Abandoned in the forties. A pasture to the south where the whaler's quarters were, now caribou graze there. Rusting boilers, a vat, and the sticks of a wharf. On the ocean floor we see the outline of a sunken whaler, its hull arcing through the green depths.

10 This morning we ate blue mussels a friend of Max's raked from the bottom around the island in Buffett Harbour.

The friend says, Max and I we're the one age.

Big mussels that Lydia boiled in wine and garlic.

We watch two old women tend their drying fish. They stroll over to the chicken wire mesh, where the fish lie split and salted, to turn them over. The coastline is like a polygraph to see if the island's lying.

Off the wharf I catch a few connors with Una. I'm using raisins for bait.

If you can imagine a tarnished beer bottle capable of wriggling, that would describe a connor.

Daphne: We like being near running water. Because we're 90 percent water.

Driving back, in the dark, I almost hit a moose. I have Lydia, Maisie, and Una in the car. The moose is all legs, and then the legs join a torso. I never see its head. But I brake and swerve around him, I see fur against my right headlight. And Lydia says, holding my arm, You did well there.

11 How did I know Craig Regular was going to address me? He asked, Is this just olive oil? He was speaking to Lydia and something lifted in his chin that made me look, something that stopped us gently in our expected progress while he asked in a tone slightly lower to indicate an aside. Yes, it's just oil, I say, and he resumes the soft talk on editing film on computers, dipping his torn baguette in the green pool. I am intimidated by taller men. I'm not used to it.

12 Lydia is supposed to have her period today. I ask in the morning and there's no sign. It's the only thing she's never late for. On our bicycles we see Oliver Squires on his back step, soaked in heat, elbow propped on bare knee, eating a thick wedge of watermelon. Hottest day in thirteen years, he says.

I ask him, What were you doing back then.

He pauses. Thirteen years ago. Walking around the hill. I met Maisie.Yep, that's when it all started.

Oliver says, If you die 366 days after an a.s.sault, the a.s.sault is not considered a homicide.

He says, A woman in Labrador shot out the appliances in her home today, then lightly stabbed her husband.

Lightly?

Oliver believes that in a dream, parts of a house represent parts of your self. He is eating this wedge of watermelon at his back door. On the stoop. Hidden from public view, but still outside. And we catch him wolfing into it, a secret act, an act of private joy that Oliver could not appreciate indoors. His eyes find ours while his teeth are sunk into the meat of the watermelon. Such a hot day.

13 We wake up and I ask, and Lydia says no. I say a gentle prayer. For Lydia's period. I have never had a prayer unanswered, though I'm careful what I pray for. Lydia is calm about it all. She says her b.r.e.a.s.t.s feel sensitive, and bigger.

Lydia believes the world can be split into dreamers and writers. For the dreamer, words are strung together easily, you can fill libraries with their answers. But only a writer can tell you what life has meant. A writer cringes at how easily the dreamer pours out words. Politicians and bad writers are dreamers. Art is made in the kitchen. Whereas dreamers speak in front of the king.

14 Lydia says, I'm pregnant. She says this declaratively. We are going to have a child.

Let's get married, she says.

Okay then, I say.

I love you, she says. And she means it.

I have a rippling ecstasy coursing through my shoulders. I have never permitted myself to plan the future. And now large chunks of clear landscape have risen up.

I have thought so long to make Lydia pregnant. Her belly swollen, cupping a hand to her stomach. I wanted her changed like that. Carrying a baby. Cradling her. What an incredible nine months this will be.

I confess that I'd prayed.

Lydia: That I wouldnt be pregnant?

Me: I was careful. Because of the monkey's paw curse. You prayed I wouldnt have a monkey's paw?

I prayed that you werent pregnant, yet. I wanted to make sure I wasnt praying that we could never get pregnant.

You wanted our baby to come later.

Yes.

Lydia: Maybe I should pray.

Okay. Something positive. That whatever happens will be a good thing.

Yes, that we'll have lots of good times no matter what. That whatever happens it'll have your looks and my brains.

15 We bicycle to QuidiVidi gut. Boyd Coady is fis.h.i.+ng for sea trout. He nods to Lydia. I ask if they will take a fly he is using a spinner. Boyd says he's seen people flyfish, but theyve never caught anything. The fish are too nervous, scared by the line.

A couple of skinhead bikers search for bait under boulders. Now three short-haired boys and a girl, about fifteen years old, are fis.h.i.+ng. She's got a waterproof radio. Sporty waterproof electronics are always yellow.

A tourist couple have walked behind us on the concrete breakwater.

One of the boys catches a sculpin. A friend has joined them: Have you brought me a smoke?

The boy is bas.h.i.+ng the sculpin against the rocks.

Boyd says he had on a German brown that was sixteen inches.

Sitting on the concrete breakwater, poured in 1961. The Atlantic bearing down between the Narrows. My tall ginger bike glinting in the trees, leaning against Lydia's.

16 We sleep in the tent in Daphne's backyard at Brigus. I am making notes about how the rock is tilted into the sea, the grain of rock on an angle, like a giant's handwriting. Daphne in her maternity dress frying blood pudding and pancakes with Max's partridgeberries. Out the window I can see the gentle curve of Brigus. I can see where the sealing s.h.i.+ps would lie at anchor to dry their sails. A second pot of coffee on. Sun and wind. The night wind was strong, slapping the tent fly like a sail. A few dangerous moments of wet winds.h.i.+eld, headlights from other cars refracting on the wet, making it hard to see the road, the median. Reaching for my wipers.

A note from Lydia. I read it as soon as I got the fire going. She had jogged through Brigus with my baby inside of her. She was definitely pregnant. Running and pregnant with my baby. And then she felt her period start.

I feel my own blood sink, a depression that a ritual had begun. I realize that I had wanted her to be pregnant. There was only remorse, no relief, at the news.

17 Lydia sad and sick from her period, doesnt want to play soccer. Oliver Squires, after a bad kick: It's like a Heisenbergian particle, you concentrate on its placement and the velocity is shot to h.e.l.l.

Oliver challenges Max in the Tely Ten road race. Oliver ends up pa.s.sing out from dehydration. Oliver back from a week in Mexico, his face seems to be slowly crumpling, his good looks turning sour. Abundant nostril hair, pushed in eyes.

I watch Max lift to head a ball, but instead he sneaks his fist up to his neck and punches it upfield.

18 I water Iris's flower boxes using the shower nozzle through the bathroom window. I watch a plane descend and, for a blink, the sun goes out. Beyond the fence Boyd Coady is growing snow peas.

Lydia calls and says, Thanks, Gabe.

Youre welcome.

It's beautiful. It's so cute and excellent quality.

What are we talking about?

Your little television.

Lydia.

I found it this afternoon.You know, I thought I didnt want to live with a TV, but Lydia. I didnt get you a TV.

Lydia: There's a television in the living room. Well, perhaps someone else left you the television. What?

I drive down and there it is. A very good, portable TV.

I think we should call the police, she says.

Just think, first, I say.

19 I am fis.h.i.+ng with Max. At one point the outboard motor stalls. I try to remember my childhood knowledge of choke and gas and ignition. I get it going. Like remembering youve memorized a poem and can recite it years later.

We fish for salmon on the last day of the season. Max lands a black fighter, about four pounds. We store him in the cooler and climb to Mount Misery. We scan over two hundred square miles of land. The distant ponds agreeing to the topographical map. I tell Max about Lydia almost pregnant, and he sees I'm sad. He says, But you were both happy about it. That's a terrific sign. And perhaps that's the lesson offered, not failure but a signal that youre ready.

20 Lydia calls from Wilf Jardine's at 1:15. She's too stoned to walk so I suggest getting her.

I stand in the porch but she doesnt see me. She has her hand on Wilf's knee. She's drawing his attention. Someone tells Lydia, Gabe's here.

Sitting on the bathroom sink at home brus.h.i.+ng her teeth she says, I'm really attracted to Wilf. Can you see why?

I describe his rough energy. But that's not it, she says. It's more his armpit.

His armpit?

Lydia: His spirit.

In bed, we're honest. She says I've only ever lied to you once. She says, I wanted you to come over to me and kiss my cheek and say, I'm here for my baby, in my ear.

I thought if I'd done that you'd have been embarra.s.sed at such a public display.

But that's discreet, she says. She says, Why did you walk away from me and Wilf?

I didnt feel a part of it. I dont like seeing you stoned, you laughing at not-very-funny things.

At 5:15 I'm still awake, walk around the house, I ma.s.sage Lydia's feet.

21 In the morning she asks if we made love last night. This too angers me. She could have slept with someone and not known. I ask about the lie. Lydia said it was with a guy who had a girlfriend.

It struck me that I knew who it was.

She says, Youre not upset, are you? It was nearly two years ago, before we were going out.

I say, You have to understand that I had decided on you. You might not have been going out with me, but I was going out with you.

But you knew I wasnt going out with you.

Lydia lingering on Wilf's knee.

She wants me to relax, be comfortable. Get to know her friends more.

22 In the porch doorway we argue. It begins with me following Lydia down, wanting a kiss before she leaves. She says she can't because of the towels: all the towels in her bathroom were gone. And I felt like I couldnt say anything to you because you'd take it the wrong way and write it down in that journal.

You read it.

Yes.

Lydia.

Everything you write about me is rotten.

I write down things that vex me. I dont write down the good things.

Well, why dont you?

Happiness is too hard to write and boring to read.