This All Happened Part 9

She's working late, I say.

I s.h.i.+ft from first to second and accidentally touch her knee. Alex's knee doesnt flinch.

21 I tell Lydia of Alex's idea. Of taking pictures of men, concentrating, as they play pool. As part of the pa.s.sion exhibit.

I'm speaking into the pillow. I've decided I have to tell her this.

You crop the photo so you dont know theyre shooting pool. Youre left with the concentration.

Lydia: Concentration brings a peculiar look to the face.

Me: A lot of my memories of my father are in acts of concentration.

It's like lovemaking.

Well. That's not what I think of when I think of my father. I think Alex telling you this is a bit like lovemaking.

It's intimate. But it's art.

22 I rent Raging Bull. I'm walking along Gower Street at 10 p.m. Three kids, fifteen years old, start yelling.

Beat the f.u.c.king s.h.i.+t out of ya!

A dirty s...o...b..ll hits a light pole ahead of me. I cross the street, pa.s.s them. Another s...o...b..ll whizzes by my head. I stop and stick the video in my jeans. Turn. I point to one of them.

He says, Are you giving me the finger?

They wonder if I speak English, because I havent spoken. One walks close, yelling like a mongrel, and I grab him at the collar, take him down and feel like smacking him. I have a knee to his chest. I'm surprised I've managed to catch him, like swatting a fly with one hand. The other two scream. Four more boys run up, bigger shapes. Some as tall as me. I back off and I see they have hockey sticks. But theyre in silhouette. I decide to boot it out of there. And they, of course, run after me. Running is a bad idea, I realize. Running obliges them to catch me. I turn to see about three eighteen-year-old boys with the younger pack behind them. They doggedly run after me along Gower. I run past Lydia's (they'll just beat out the windows) and jog up Garrison Hill. They are shouting for me to hold up. I continue west along Harvey Road. And make a stand under a streetlight by the Big R. If I'm going to be beaten up it will be in the light, the police station just across the road. They surround me, catching their breath, bent over, hands on knees.

We just want to know, the biggest boy says, what happened.

I tell them, my throat burning for air: Throwing s...o...b..a.l.l.s, verbal threats, I live in the neighbourhood. I took one down. Big boy: That's okay. We'll take care of things.

I say, Youre a good feller.

They walk back. My throat raw from the run, exhausted. I can barely laugh at my own panic. The adrenaline still hot in my skin. I walk down Long's Hill, past Gower Street United, and wait in the shadows. The boys are slow returning, as if changing their minds. They pick at potholes with the hockey sticks. I walk briskly to Lydia's, but her door's locked. I dont have a G.o.dd.a.m.n key. She's on the phone. She stretches the phone cord into the porch to open the door, and I rush past her. I drink water in the bathroom and try to tell her what happened. She says, You should have pounded them.

But they were fifteen years old.

So what?

They'd have me up on charges.

What would a judge say if they did?

Lydia.

What?

23 When she says, Goodnight, Gabe, I say, Goodnight, babe. I say, You hardly ever call me Gabriel. She says you hardly ever call me Lydia.

That's not true.

It is true.Youre always calling me babe.

On the phone I call you Lydia.

Once. I remember hearing it on the answering machine when I got home. My name and it struck me how you hardly ever say it.

I think about this argument. That I dont like to sway opinion. When something sounds untrue but Lydia believes it, I find it hard to convince her otherwise. I would be a bad lawyer. I regret that she feels it, and I will usually try only once to describe my side of things. If she still holds to her opinion, I'm loathe to object.

24 I nose the green lobster into the boiling water. His tail flexes, full of bewilderment. A claw taps the side of the pot. It takes about ninety seconds for him to resign himself, for his sh.e.l.l to turn orange.

A dip made of melted b.u.t.ter, lemon, garlic, and parsley. I spread the leaves of a newspaper over Lydia's dinner table. Lydia wonders which of her boyfriends hammered the claws. Was it Earl? He'd go to the tool chest and get a hammer.

At this very table.

Corn, I say, is the lobster of the vegetable family.

Lydia: Now that sort of statement. That's where you lose me.

I think about this. Why did I make that p.r.o.nouncement, which feels true to me. Theyre both large, I say. A solid colour. You boil them alive and theyre seasonal. You eat only a select part of the whole body. And pepper's important.

Lydia accepts this. She reads me a quote from Salinger, about images and how G.o.d will understand if there's confusion or misuse of images. Youre better off not getting wrapped up in the small stuff of right and wrong.

25 In the morning I tell Lydia it's time to get up. No, not yet, she says. Then the doorbell. She has forgotten that Maisie and Daphne are coming for yoga. Stay in bed, she says.

I wake again and there's no sound. And I get up. Downstairs this note. Gabe, dont leave.

It's nearly io a.m. when Lydia returns. And sits with me. Sometimes when she's alone she thinks of her past lives and starts to feel sad. She tells me how Earl never cried. Nothing in life is tender, Earl would tell Lydia when she was crying. He didnt see the point in crying.

We lie down for a few minutes. She's made me a little sad, but I've cheered her up by consoling her. Then the phone. And Lydia has to go. She'll call me when she's through. I'm glad you cry, she says.

As I walk home I spot a wry cat leaping to my fence. He's after a grosbeak. He's as orange as a kipper.

26 Max says he was driving in from Arnold's Cove, where his father lives. Just past Whitbourne something hard landed on his truck hood. Then a leg smashed through his winds.h.i.+eld.

You hit a moose?

Max: No. It fell out of the sky.

He found the head by the side of the road. There was a full quarter torn from the hip that landed in the back of the truck. He drove back to Monty's Restaurant and called the cops. The cops told him what happened. A transport truck heading west hit the moose. The moose flew off its spoiler, twirled in the air, torn to bits, and landed on Max's truck heading east.

Max is dressing the quarter of moose that landed in the truck bed. Nothing wrong with a bit of tenderized spring moose.

27 Upstairs reading a fas.h.i.+on magazine. Lydia licking her finger to turn the pages, commenting on the looks of the stars.

Me: You often pick out women who look like you and say theyre gorgeous.

Lydia is silent. She's taken offence to that because it's egotistical. She starts listing women in town whom she has said are beautiful but who look nothing like her. She wants me, I think, to retract. And all I want is to move on why can't I have an unsupported opinion? Why can't she just see it as funny? She thinks that I look upon it critically, that I won't go out on a limb, ever, and won't admit or see that I am acting critically.

She gets up for yoga and I rise when I hear her playing Mozart and Beethoven on the piano. I say, That's beautiful. She says, That's because my parents paid for music lessons.

28 Craig Regular, Lydia says, has spent three years in retreat. Now he's in Seattle. He rents his house in the Battery. His tenant moved out, so he decided to come home for a visit.

Lydia says my handwriting reminds her of Earl's. Earl Quigley and Craig Regular were best friends. Lydia is good at particular explanations. Reasoning why. She says that our vowels and consonants take up the same amount of s.p.a.ce, that they remind her of rows of teeth. That it's not confined, but a loose script.

29 Ten p.m. at Max's, playing poker. Lydia and Wilf Jardine have left the table to sing and have a laugh and I feel tight. They are singing a song I thought was my song with Lydia, but now I see it's a song she has with Wilf. I am unable to loosen up. It's about Lydia's pa.s.sion. I can see a novel of a man whose movements are contemplative and their effect is not immediate.

The novel starts with them contemplating marriage. Gabriel's tension and Lydia's freedom with others. She longs, but she stops herself unconsciously and she loves Gabe's quiet goodness and he loves that she loves this in him and he loves her bigness in the world. But still we wonder about him; we dont see Gabe's worth (because it is an invisible thing), only Lydia's (external, sensuous, obvious, full of acts of will), and Gabriel hampering her and holding her back. She's not free. Then comes Alex Fleming, who sees Gabriel, understands his inner working, and suddenly the reader recognizes why he's great and talented, because Alex brings his treasure to light. Alex complements his thought and his creativity is ignited. They connect and Lydia sees it, Lydia knows again why he's great, the reason she's in love with him. But Lydia understands she can't bring it out in him. She needs Alex to encourage it and by this time he is engulfed by Alex.

All of this arises out of Lydia singing a song with Wilf. Meanwhile the cards are dealt and the best hand I have all night is two pair.

30 I can hear Maisie Pye, Daphne Yarn, and Lydia stretching downstairs on Lydia's area rug. The sun is just up. They must be pressing their faces into a wool rug that smells of Tinker b.u.mbo. That must be a pleasant yogic experience.

May.

1 Daphne Yarn grasps a green bottle of Italian wine from Lydia's fridge. From the grasp I can see the tone in her arms, the flex in her hands. I love athletic arms. Daphne says, It's my favourite rose. I drink it all summer long. It's not like that Portuguese stuff you drink at wiener roasts and picnics.

Then we'll bring it to Max's birthday.

I walk them down to the Y. Daphne and Lydia have begun training for the regatta. They practise on rowing machines. Daphne says she'll be six months pregnant by the time the regatta rolls around.

I notice the buildings that have gone to fire and bankruptcy. Coffee shops have choked out drugstores and bookstores. Whenever they renovate an old building, you can be sure it will succ.u.mb to a mysterious midnight fire.

2 If you rise early enough, you'll see a clear sun lift off the ocean, a bright band of hot light. The land warms faster than the ocean, which creates fog, and the fog consumes the sun.

My chili peppers are sprouting in their flats. Like a rooster's comb.

I see Max, impatient in a bank lineup. He says, You'll be able to take the wait behind this guy off your income tax.

I pay my mortgage and watch Boyd Coady lying flat on the pavement. A grating off a drain. He's bent at the hips into the drain. A boy holds his ankles. Traffic pa.s.ses. Boyd stretches up with a white bucket. He dumps the slurry along the curb. A woman leans on the bank railing and cautions them about the traffic. She's wearing a windbreaker.

Woman: He lost his big gold ring, five hundred dollars. I look in the drain. The water is not moving.

Boyd:You couldnt see that rock ten minutes ago.

You'll get it, I say.

Boyd looks at me with unquestioning faith in his ability. He doesnt need my encouragement. In fact, my words only bring doubt.

3 Maisie and I spoke of money. How Oliver wanted someone to fix the porch. Maisie said they can't afford it. Oliver looked at the bank balance and said there's a thousand dollars in it. Maisie: Several bills havent been paid. Oliver buys services, Maisie fixes things herself. Oliver's argument was that if you spend your time doing what you do best, let specialists mend the rest.

My father never hired anyone, I say. He bought raw materials, not services. Even when pouring the foundation for the kitchen. We mixed the cement by hand. We found the gravel and sand. I envied the cement truck rotating its heavy belly, a load coming down the chute. But now I may do it by hand. I know the proper consistency of cement.

4 Last night I had Lydia listen to the Rosemunde by Schubert. Lydia says she never listens to music without doing something else. Music is always an accompaniment. But we lay on the bed in the dark with only the blue light of the stereo power b.u.t.ton on and listened to it. It's about thirty minutes long. And she saw that it is beautiful. Then she read me an article on how we are living further in the past as we learn more about it. I told her Bartlett listened to Schubert as his s.h.i.+p sank in the ice. He sat in his study, keeping the fire going with wax records, until the deck rail was flush with the ice. The last piece he played was Chopin's Funeral March.

5 I help Max move a rolltop dresser from Duckworth Street, next door to the War Memorial. When we have the dresser roped into the back of his truck, we inspect the memorial. The front bronze by Gilbert Bayes, 1923. Thinking of the past makes Max tell me of fis.h.i.+ng with his father in Placentia Bay for mackerel. How mackerel get stiff soon after theyre caught. He likes mackerel just as much as salmon. I say they are a handsome fish, a blue-grey skin with net pattern. Like herring. Max wants to go diving for sea urchins. The j.a.panese eat their roe. I said I didnt know sea urchins had roe.

Oh, yes, he says, and studies the harbour. I can dive down to twenty feet using scuba gear.

We drive to Max's workshop and unload the dresser. Want a coffee? He has a little coffee maker in a corner. You have to weave around table saws, lathes, and drill presses to get there.

He sprinkles a pinch of salt and dry mustard powder in with the grounds. He says salt always makes bad coffee taste better.

And I have seen Max add salt to a pint of beer. And Lydia has shown me the ingredients of one brand of salt, which includes sugar.

6 There is a phone cord stretched across the bed, across my chest, as Lydia talks to Daphne Yarn. It's Max's birthday and we're late.

Lydia: Have you seen the wine? Daphne's wine? It was in the fridge.

Me: I havent.

Well, we'll have to pick up beer.

Daphne lays out ten pounds of smoked salmon.

That's a pound each, Daphne.

We dont have to eat it all tonight, Gabe.

Yes, Max says, displaying the work ahead of us. Tonight we eat all the salmon.

He is forty and someone tells him forty is the new thirty. He corrects them: Forty is the new nineteen. I can see now that Daphne is pregnant. And I feel convinced that they are happy. Something has turned in Max. Some physical change has occurred since he met Daphne. Some might say he's settling down. But he's just as active. A restlessness has been lifted from him.

I pa.s.s the bathroom door. Poofy woofy, I say.

That was one small c.r.a.p for Max, Max says.

A shadow falls on his head and I can see what Max looked like with a full head of hair.

Maisie in a lemon white sockhop dress. She has baked bread, she's slicing the salmon then notices it's pre-sliced. She is set to slice it when the salmon falls into segments, as if she willed it sliced by lifting a carving knife.

Perf de derf, Daphne says. Testing the salmon.

Daphne, quiet and beautiful; there is a light on her face that shows a deep structure in her eyes and nose and those pigtails as if she has the brakes on because she's going full tilt.

7 Maisie: I wish I had done something radical with money when I was younger. Now I have no money.

Me: You have one of the most chaotic lives, and youre a fine writer.You sway rooms full of people.

What do you mean?