This All Happened(22)

            Just that it’s something I have to do.

            Well. It’s good that youve managed to reach a decision. She puts an arm, briefly, to my shoulder.

            Lydia says, I’m so sad.

            Maisie: It has been two hurdles. To decide, and then to actually do it. To find a place. To think about getting beds.

            And how is Oliver?

            He doesnt want me to go. Shouldnt he be the one leaving?

            He says he can’t leave.

            Is he having an affair?

            I found condoms.We dont use condoms.

            Oh, Maisie.

            Then he told me about this paralegal woman.

            Are you capable of calling someone if you do need help?

            Yes, Gabriel. Thanks.

            In bed. Me: It made me afraid to be with you.

            What do you mean?

            If it can’t work out between them.

            Baby, does it make you not want to be with me?

            Oliver’s a legal-aid lawyer and Maisie’s a writer and I thought, That’s a good balance.

            Lydia: And Maisie said it so simply, yet their life is so substantial. I wanted to say to her, Have you given this a lot of thought?

            Me: She has given it a lot of thought. Both families, Oliver, everyone is probably saying to her, I hope youve given this a lot of thought. Do you think I was a little too direct?

            I think she appreciated it. I didnt know what to say. I thought you were good.

            I felt strange.

            You like her.

            Yes. But I wish they were together. I like it better that way. Does it make you nervous?

            I guess I was uncomfortable.

            I think she likes you too.

            But we’ve gone out. And she’s that way with everyone. That’s true.

            But we do seem to understand each other well.

            I think she likes you. Dont you?

            I guess so.

            5 I’m sitting with Helmut, reading, when the room is suddenly painted with revolving blue, hungry light. There is the beep of something big going in reverse. Out on the end of Young Street, a cul de sac, a rogue city tractor piles snow against our fence. The attached houses are cast in fluorescence as the cab light spins. The snow is eight feet high stacked against the fence. I open the screen door. Youre nudging the fence, I say. The driver leaning out his door: If I knock it down, call city hall.

            He reverses. Chains on the fat industrial tires smack against the pavement, sending up sparks. Kids are huddled behind a car, watching. They have made igloos out of the snow. I notice other neighbours are at their screen doors, calling in their children. The driver revs and shifts into first. The nose of the tractor rears. Headlights jerkily bear down on the mound. He races into the snow, stretches the tractor’s hydraulic neck up, and the fence buckles. Six steel posts bend. The pickets lean and splinter, buttons on a fat man’s gut. Three pickets burst and shoot off into the trees. The dark fence cracks and a raw new light is exposed from deep in the wood. The driver lifts the shovel and retreats, halts. Then roars towards the pile again. The steel posts groan, nails pulled from a board. The palings snap. A mound of heavy, dirty snow tumbles across the path. He retreats, studies the cul de sac. This time he pivots and heads back to the depot.