This All Happened (4 page)

Oliver: Show us your tits, Alex.

Alex leans back and flashes her tits at us. Just long enough for her nipples to register on the retina.

Oliver: What a gorgeous girl you are.

Max walks in with two dozen fresh ones. The tips of his ears red. Generous Max.

Max says, Oliver tries to be sophisticated. But I once saw him make instant coffee with hot water from a tap.

Daphne stands behind Max. She will use Max as a shield to get through this night.

Oliver: Those were my years in the wilderness.

Max: Sure, youre only at an oasis. And youre some vain with your ginger hair.

Oliver: At least I have hair.

Max: You seem to have more hair now than you did then. Oliver: Back then. When I was with a Hobbesian woman: nasty, brutish, and short.

Alex, to me: How do you prepare oysters?

The oysters lie fiercely shut on a plate and I take them to the sink and ask Daphne for a strong, small knife.

Alex makes her way over. She is flagrant and I am drawn. She tells me of her short infatuation with Wilf Jardine. Wilf is showing Lydia the chords to his song. They talked on a bird count. Wilf wrote Alex a letter. She found herself watching him play guitar down at the Spur. He sang his one good song. Then, during a break, he sat in front of her and she studied the back of his neck, the grizzled white hair. She bought him a beer. He said, Alex. But in a frozen way. She knew then it was a mistake, but she slept with him. Sleeping with him got him out of her system.

Me: And he was your age when you were born.

Alex: He's just a sexy guy. Or he had a moment of sexiness. I am prying at the crimped, ceramic mouth.

What was the moment when Wilf became human?

When he got irritated, she says. We were driving through town in his old Valiant and I suggested we take a route and he was irritated.

I sever the muscle, wring a lemon. The lemon spurts over my hand. I lick the crevices of my hand. I hand Alex the opened oyster. She lays its ceramic mouth on her bottom lip. She leans back. I watch her white throat swallow. Her nipples, in the periphery, just show through her top. Then she stares straight into my eye. She says, Theyre delicious.

14     We're at an erotic reading in a room above the St John's curling club. Both Maisie and I are reading. When you go to the bar you can watch the curlers sweep down the rink. Wilf Jardine, at one point, leans to me and says, I think she likes you. Meaning Alex Fleming. And then he says, I wouldnt mind finding a blonde here tonight one with a great set of assets.

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 cocks 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 tits. 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 stitching. 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 plexiglass 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 button. 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 sexual tension bullshit.

That was ten years ago.

Doesnt matter. Does it matter to you? I mean, do you have any sexual 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 shell 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 glass to a toast.

23      I wrote a passion 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.