This All Happened(21)

            Waitress: We always have them.

            Mom: It’s like having fruit when youre not sick.

            Simple pleasures, and Lydia’s happy to have her out. Mom thoroughly enjoys a meal cooked by someone else.





March


            1 I convinced Mom to fly back to Corner Brook. And she called to say it was terrific, so fast, and Dad sort of enjoyed picking her up at the airport. The only drawback was that she missed having a bowl of soup in Gander.

            No snow Cold, though. Strange but acceptable to have the city so bare. I hate frozen slush. When I was seven I thought Newfoundland was attached to Britain. And with Confederation they floated the island over.

            So often I wake up and the fog, the blizzards, living here is like being on a barge, adrift in the Atlantic. There is no buffer to weather. We’re forced to take the brunt of it. I love it.

            Admission: I love choosing hard times. The not being able to choose is what frightens me. And that’s what scares me most about having kids. It’s true I dont care for surroundings. As long as the roof is solid, the fridge stocked, and you dont see your breath. But wallpaper and matching dinner plates and a brand-new car make my neck tight.

            I have a gut feeling that Newfoundland can float. It’s not inconceivable to haul up anchor and drift into the Gulf Stream. Any thought is possible.

            2 I’ve found only two dots of snow in the crags of southside hills. Old man’s beard, they call it.

            I am incorporating a proposal of marriage into the novel. One of my key tenets: if you know what the next scene is, youve already written it. The novel is full of contemporary events. Lydia says, Be present in the past. But what I’m doing is being present, then infusing this into the past.

            At the Ship the pussy willows, cut three weeks ago for Valentine’s, have begun to bloom in their demi-litre jars. Fresh green shoots, seal fur, in the dark bar. The pussy willows know nothing of winter.

            3 I was about to call Lydia when I pictured her phone and I thought about what she had to say about being present in the past and how impossible it is but instead I’m writing honest moments and people who are themselves and people who make fun of themselves and are silly and childish and unsophisticated and warm and generous and loving and full of toughness too and original and sexy and rough and animalish and playful and have guts and a red red tender heart bursting crying at small wonderful irrational things at moments at hot moments that steam and penetrate our brains and sizzle like a branding iron into the marrow and make us horny and I like trying to put words to these moments give particulars and hand them delicately to people like Lydia and I want them from her too that is my only demand on anyone because that is life that is all life is is moments doesnt she think and I think she does and she does among other things when the moment’s right.

            4 It’s after badminton, on the only day of the year that is a command, march forth. Let’s have a small drinky-poo, Lydia says. Maisie Pye and Max Wareham and Lydia Murphy.

            At the Ship there’s a little whiff of grass.

            Maisie says they are moving to a house on Lemarchant Road.

            Max: When?

            I’ve got the keys now. It’s a little three-bedroom. Yes, I have to move.

            I’m thinking they can’t pay the mortgage. Or maybe they were renting. Maybe Oliver has lost his job. But then we realize it’s only Maisie and Una. No one can speak.

            I say, So what’s going on?

            I’m leaving Oliver. I have to leave.

            Maisie says it with finality. Her hands on the table edge pushing her shoulders back, her eyes closed.

            Me: Do you want to say anything else about it?