This All Happened(24)

            But he hasnt experienced that. He’s experienced yearning. And break-up.

            That’s what love songs are all about, I say. The before and after.

            But we are both absorbed in the here and now.

            10 A trait in Lydia: to begin feeling guilty, then guilt transforms into resentment and anger. In the morning, when I’m leaving Lydia’s and she doesnt want me to go.

            I say, You want me to go, though. Youve said enough times you want more time alone.

            Yes, Lydia says. I should work.

            But she holds me, doesnt want me to go. I carry her to the couch. Then she’s rigid. I’ve got so much to do, she says.

            Okay.

            I clap my hands and say, All right, let’s get to it. Lydia pauses, then jumps up stiffly.

            Okay, she says.

            Me: What just happened?

            Nothing.

            Why are you being stiff?

            Oh, it just sounds like youre talking to Tinker Bumbo. Come on and get up, clap your hands.

            I’m not talking to you like youre Tinker Bumbo. I dont even talk to him like that.

            Well, it felt like it.

            I’m just trying to get us both started. If you want to work―if youre resenting not having worked yesterday then let’s get at it.

            She says, Are you upset that we’re not hanging out? I say, Not upset, just disappointed.

            It’s a little fuse of anger that Lydia focuses on time spent with me as the thing to cut back on in order to get her work done and I’m trying to cut through the lingering and so she resents it.

            Okay then, I’ll see you.

            And I leave, both of us angry.

            Lydia will often say, What’s wrong, baby? and when I tell her what’s wrong, involving her in blame a little, she’ll accept it for a minute, be sorry, then retaliate. She’ll become defensive. If she could absorb it and leave it, without feeling that she has to defend. That she’s in the right. It’s as if she holds a club behind her back, asks what’s the matter, and when I tell her, agrees, then gives me a quick dash on the head.

            11 It’s a sunny day and I’m thirty-four. When youre sad, events take on symbolic importance. Sadness connotes lacking, a want for something. Lydia brings over a Gabriel doll she’s made for my birthday and I cry laughing. The black leather coat and stuffed body, stitched face. A rose corsage blooming, not that I wear a rose, but it’s indicative of my joy at least what used to be my happiness. And it strikes me that this image is no longer who I am. Somehow, other emotions not my own have crept in. I’m no longer a romantic figure. I have grown wise. The clothesline is frozen in a shaded bank of snow. I have decided to settle my student loan. I phone the loans officer, Fabian Durdle. It’s my birthday. He says, Do you think that’ll impress Ottawa?

            I get a bank draft for nine thousand dollars, and fifteen hundred in cash. I grab an elevator and knock on Fabian Durdle’s office door.

            That’s half what you owe.

            The rest, I say, is outrageous interest.

            He calls Ottawa. Fabian is nodding in a bored way into the phone and then pauses.

            Yes, he says. Gabriel English is here in front of me. With ten-five on the table. He says take it or he’ll go bankrupt. Fabian puts the phone down.

            Sign here.

            Theyre taking it?