This All Happened(33)

            Goodbye, Alex.

            She slips another flower in my pocket.

            And Maisie and Max haul me away.

            Max walks me home. He knows which route will save us valuable steps.

            9 Lydia is flipping through her old journals. In a lemon cardigan, polka-dot blue shirt, and dark green tights. I’m drunk in love with her.

            I ask Lydia if she’s ever lied to me. Yes. But only small things.

            I confess kissing Alex and Lydia admits she kissed Craig Regular at about the same time. It’s as if our confessions balance; we’re stunned at the reciprocity, and we both seem renewed. Or a blurring factor, like glaucoma, has been peeled away. We drive out to Goat Cove, where a crowd has convened. A boil-up in a sheltered, stony beach on the Atlantic. I find a purple starfish for Una. She puts him back in a rock pool. It’s cold but sunny. We play frisbee and climb the waterfall and eat roasted bananas. Max boils the kettle. The adults loafing about the fire, keeping warm. Max hasnt said anything about our night. He has brought his rusty Christmas tree to burn in the fire. We listen to the pull and suck of the water’s ebb, remembering our mother’s bellies. The tree sizzles then ignites like a lantern mantle. We are all remembering gentler times as the tide claws at stones. We all want, for a moment, to return to some simpler existence, when we were all together. Or perhaps before we were together.

            10 I’m at Lydia’s sketching when Daphne drops in. Lydia’s not home. Daphne asks if Lydia will ever have a baby. I say, If we get married, that’ll be a sign. Daphne: I can’t imagine being with a man and not having children with him.

            I say, Congratulations.

            I draw Daphne, but I’ve made her mouth haggard. She says, What if I put my hand over my mouth?

            I draw the hand, but you still see the mouth, so I colour it like a red glove.

            Looks like I’m just about to give head, Daphne says.

            She says a client down at emergency declined her service. Said it’d be too hard to work around a woman who’s pregnant.

            Daphne: I’ve been pregnant all of one month and people know.

            11 Lydia spent the afternoon with Craig Regular. He asked her if she’s in love. Craig’s been in Seattle designing software and attending Shambhala conferences. I knew she was with him because there are two Buddhist books on the table.

            He asked: Are you more in love than youve ever been in your life?

            I think: What an asshole. What a shit disturber.

            Lydia: I thought I’d been in love with Earl, but Craig says no one can love Earl. He says he loves the guy, but Earl’s not into growth. Earl has his ego and his research and that’s it. Who can grow with him? He’s not interested.

            Lydia thought this very interesting. But Craig likes you, she says, the feel he gets off you.

            I’m sure the fucker does.

            I ask what she thinks of Buddhism and what he’s doing.

            I wonder about the meditation, of avoiding thoughts that come to you. Perhaps, she says, it’s important to look at those thoughts. Craig believes meditation allows him to understand his own processes, how he does things.

            Me: I need less of that. I’m in the moment so often that I need to become more oblivious of the self. I dont need the meditative encouragement.

            What I do meditate on is their kiss. When I think of their kiss, how it happened by the washrooms at the Grapevine, that Daphne probably saw it, it drives me away from Lydia. It makes me think of leaving this claustrophobic city.

            12 A fresh dump of winter. Moose are caught in snow up to their necks in Bird Cove. Men on snow machines try beating a path out for them, but they have nowhere to go. The moose are bawling.