How to Get Along with Women (21 page)

Oh, about Marcus, she says. Sarah takes off the hat and shakes her hair out. It's all right. It's what happened, right? I used to say if it were high school, I'd have broken up with Marcus a thousand times.

Glenna tilts her head a moment.

I look at you and Silas, Sarah says. Do you think I'll ever get my shit together.

Silas gets drunk, Glenna says. It's his fatal flaw. I look across the room and see him dancing sexy with some girl and I just go home.

Why don't you dance, Sarah says. If he wants to.

He only thinks it's what he wants.

Sarah looks down at her sprawling legs. Something about Glenna makes her feel gangly, pubescent, too naked.

I wish I'd left Marcus years ago, she says.

From the other side of the house there's a motor, there are tires on gravel, voices.

You know what I think? Glenna stands up and wraps a towel around her waist. All of us, we all do the things we really want to. I believe that. So all that wishful talk, I wish you'd do this or that, I wish I'd married the kind of girl that will dance with me: it's just a way of excusing our own bad behaviour. It's the same with regret.

Sarah squints up. Glenna bends from the waist, gripping the towel with one hand, picks up her book.

Is that Ruby? Sarah says.

We've got Ruby, Glenna says. You just take care of yourself.

Sarah sits out on the dock a while longer, until the wind comes up and it's too cold to pretend to work anymore, even with her jeans pulled on over top of the bikini. She goes and lies down on the bed and her knees drop open. Unzips. Ruby is safely away.

She gets her hand going. It's not Marcus she thinks of, not anymore, not for a long time, but a kind of faceless stand-in. Blond still, but with a beard. Spare and muscled. A vein running down his forearm.

Whose cunt is it? Yours baby. Whose tits? Yours. Who owns you? You do, baby, you do. It's all for you, now let me come, please...

Through the particle board she can hear Mike and Ilsa, the baby crying.

When's it look like for dinner?

They're aiming at seven.

You can hear the clinking plates and that, so I guess it'll be soon. Smells amazing. We could smell it out on the lake.

Take it, Sarah thinks, take it.

In the evening they take the children fishing: just Sarah and Silas. The rowboat loaded with rods, Ruby and the three boys, Sarah showing Ruby how to bisect a worm with her sharp fingernail and hook just a piece.

They're wiggling! Ruby squeals and pinches her own worm into two halves. All the pieces keep wiggling!

Glenna stays on the dock with her book, the others talking about a bonfire or cards. Glenna's mother with her long white hair twisted up and pinned at the neck, on the shore picking sticks, things to burn in the fire. Honey, she calls out, and the old man answers from the lean-to where he's got Glenna's bicycle up on a rack, fitting a new tube into the tire.

I'm sorry I told that story last night. Silas presses the rod handle, ready-cast, into Ruby's hand. Looks up at Sarah. About New Year's Eve. It wasn't fair.

Glenna?

Wouldn't fuck me because of it. He grins down into the styrofoam bait bucket. The youngest boy's small hand in there, massaging many worms at once.

You made it sound so simple, Sarah says. The way men fight. Easy. With a drink to follow-up.

That's how it seemed at the time.

At the time you were half-dead with bourbon.

Silas casts his own line, the hook sailing out and falling precisely, a tiny anchor. You never seem like someone who needs taking care of.

I wish we had scissors, Sarah says to Ruby, who has lost her bait, possibly on purpose.

Why? Ruby says, pinching.

Sarah turns back to Silas. It always surprised me, you know. Every time. Because we had fights, lots of fights, that stopped with screaming. She forces the worm onto Ruby's hook, throws her wrist and hands the line back: Now pull it in nice and slow. The fish need to see your worm swimming along.

Minding his own business, Ruby says.

He was a strong enough guy for his size, Silas says.

Men are, Sarah says.

It probably would have been much worse if you hadn't fought back.

Well I did, Sarah says. I mean, you stop fighting when you don't care. She straightens her back and leans out. What's that?

What's what?

Here. There's something in the water.

You'll tip the boat.

I won't. You lean the other way. It's a rod. Sarah throws a quick glance over the children. Did we lose a rod? She dips a hand into the water and grabs a blue fishing rod out by the handle. There's a long line on it and she reels in quickly, pulling in a shining, slapping bass, sixteen or seventeen inches.

Mommy! Ruby drops her own rod in her lap. You caught my fish!

Silas pulls his body to one side to steady the boat. Jesus, he says. Only you could accidentally catch a bass. We're losing the light. He pulls a small pipe from his breast pocket. Will you take a hoot?

Sarah lets the bass land against her feet, wet and thrashing. Gestures at the kids.

Right, Silas says. Don't tell Glenna.

I'm more used to close quarters than you are.

So I've heard. You can't even manage a wank. Silas brings the pipe up close with one hand, sparks a lighter with the other. He breathes out and Sarah catches the scent, sweet and charry, but shakes her head.

I manage, she says. But I don't smoke anymore. She picks up the squirming fish and places it in Ruby's lap. He looks just like he's breathing, doesn't he, she says, showing Ruby where the gills are throbbing open. When really he can't breathe at all. Really he's choking.

Silas reaches the pipe toward her and Sarah leaves her hands where they are, on the fish.

The problem is it gives me this intense sense of well-being, she says.

Well, we can't have that.

Really, Sarah says. I can't. It makes it so I can't write.

Because you're not miserable? Silas takes another haul on the pipe, tosses the lighter back in his pocket.

Because I stop asking questions.

What do we do with him now? Ruby says.

We give him a name, Sarah says. And then we throw him back in.

They pull the boat hard up onto shore, Ruby and the boys with wet legs, wading in.

My mommy caught a fish and a new fishing rod! Ruby yells to Glenna's mother. She's been waiting to corral the children. There's a fire going at the other end of the beach, Glenna holding Ilsa's baby and Ilsa beckoning to the waders with marshmallows. Sarah lets go of Ruby's hand, walks up to the house. In the kitchen she pours a scotch and fills the sink.

What are you doing? Silas in the doorway.

No one's touched these, Sarah says, lifting a stack of dirty plates into the water. She doesn't want to say, There's only so much happy family I can take. Squeezes out a measure of dish soap and starts in, cutlery first. Silas picks up her glass and holds it to the light, squinting.

Beckett. I'm so bored. He puts the glass down and leans against the counter.

Then go out to the fire, Sarah says.

You know what I mean.

Sarah rubs at her nose with the sudsy back of her hand, then shakes the soap off into the water. I want to be your friend, she says.

So be my friend. Silas standing there with a green-checked tea towel in his hand. Be my friend, Beckett.

You have everything, Sarah says.

When he leaves she can hear Glenna outside the screen door, pulling him down toward the fire.

Hey, Silas says.

Where the hell are you, Glenna says.

Later Sarah finishes her scotch by the bonfire, and another besides. The men get into the bourbon. She's the last woman standing, all the others in bed or tending babies. Just one shot, Silas begs and she lets him follow her up to the house. He's drunk and holds onto her fingers as they walk inside. He wants to be led by the hand, his fingers curved around hers.

Ruby's hand when I'm walking her to bed, Sarah thinks. When it's dark.

The back of his hand is coarse with short, jutting hairs. Sarah is seized by an urge to squeeze it reassuringly, squeeze until the bones bend and break.

He pours the last of the bourbon into camp mugs.

My wife doesn't like me when you're around, he says.

Sarah picks up her tin mug and twirls, landing unsteadily, one hand on the kitchen counter to stop herself.

Your wife thinks I'm teenager of the year.

Shh, Silas says. You'll wake up the whole house.

Sarah takes herself for a little walk along the counter. I had a house, she says. Remember my house?

It was a great house! Silas lifts his mug in homage to her house.

I know! It was great! We were so great. Everyone thought we were so great. She stops and points a finger at Silas. You think I don't want all this? The finger gyrates, indicating the room, the house. Silas isn't sure. I already did it, Sarah says. She steps forward and lands the finger in the middle of his chest.

I figured we'd be old on a porch, all that garbage, she says. You know how many times I asked him?

To marry you. Silas grabs her mug and takes a sip.

To stop fucking it up.

They drink and Sarah pulls him into the pantry. He's soft, with downy shoulders under his shirt. She doesn't kiss him, but falls to the floor and takes his cock into her mouth and lets the tip slide back against her throat. He tastes the way she expects him to taste: like sweat and sleep and especially urine. When she pulls back he drops down to meet her. She lets him go-to, as though this were his idea, pushing her onto her back, pressing down into her shoulders, one hand pulling at her shorts.

From the floor what she can see is the winter-store: jam and flour, oats, pickles, coffee, rice. Supplies for a reliable place, somewhere to raise children and feed them, fix things that are broken, keep on. The jars and sacks of meal are steady as pictures on the walls, not a permanent record but markers for some future.

Silas presses his mouth on hers. She lets him. It's more or less the same as any other, hard and burnt by alcohol, but when she moves him between her legs he pulls up, giggling, and she can see that he's afraid of her. A sudden memory of another man, also married: when she was eighteen, the sputter of candles in her university residence bedroom. For three months he held her head, wrapped her hand around his cock, but left her clothes on. Told her, I can't be unfaithful. You know how I feel.

She pushes Silas away. The two of them sitting there on the pantry floor and her foot against the bottom of the shelf. A jar falls and lands with a thud. It cracks, rather than sending shards across the room. The sticky insides somehow catch the glass before it has time to smash. Smithereens, Sarah thinks.

She's on her feet, Silas still down on the ground. Beckett, he says. You have pine needles on your bum. This is meant to sound boyish. Threat over. Sarah shoves her shirt into her waistband.

You'd better clean that up, she says, and points to the jam jar. And put your dick away. Your wife is waiting for you.

She walks up to the bunkhouse and he doesn't follow. The beam of the flashlight through the screen. Ruby pulls herself awake. Sarah turns the light off, swishes each foot in the water bucket and opens the door.

There are twenty bears per square kilometre here, Ruby says and closes her eyes again.

Sarah undresses quickly and sits down on the edge of the bed. Their clothes, hers and Ruby's, in a tangle on the floor.

There's a pillow shoved up along the wall that could almost be a body. Sliding into bed with him, faceless him, his blond beard: Sarah thinks of this. The way you can sleep with someone who's been your friend for a long time. The kind of talk, or the quiet fucking reserved for hotel rooms, baby asleep next to you in the collapsible crib.

Well. Sarah thinks. Do you wait. Do we whisper to each other: Hi Honey how was your day. Your hand up inside my shirt, the newspaper falling aside, do we let it turn dirty. Do you wait?

She pulls back the sheets. Her notebook. Switches on the little book-light. Ruby's breath comes soft and even. There's the nearly-full moon, out on the lake, the screaming loons. In the water bucket by the front door, a white moth.

Acknowledgments

There are many people to thank. First, my editor, Stan Dragland, who fixed everything, and Michael Winter, who got me started on stories in the first place. The Banff Centre for the Arts for giving me a place to get started and Pasha Malla for his insight. Kim Jernigan and the whole New Quarterly for being my best friends in the short story game. Sam Haywood for her vote of confidence. My list of indentured readers: Heather Colquhoun, Nancy Jo Cullen, Matthew Henderson, Leigh Nash, Meaghan Strimas, Carey Toane. Jill Wigmore more than any of these. Robbie and Nic and Megan at Invisible for being so damn great. My parents for running backup. George Murray, who came in late, but who probably suffered more than most.

I am grateful to the Ontario Arts Council, whose funding made writing this book possible.

Many of these stories were first published in one form or another in the following magazines:
The New Quarterly, The Fiddlehead, This Magazine
, and
The Puritan
. I'm very lucky.

Niko Tinbergen's essay, “The Bee-Hunters of Hulshorst”, which I found in
The Norton Reader, Sixth Edition
(1965), was very valuable to the writing of my story
Field Work
.

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