Iris and Helmut have gone to look at them. Helmut has never seen a moose. While they are gone Max calls to say there’s a bull moose standing in Bannerman Park. I drive over. The moose is gobbling the pussy willows and frozen ruffage.
Helmut returns disappointed. Iris: The moose got free before we arrived.
I tell them about the moose they missed in the park.
Stories. As soon as I try to write one down, it floats away from me. Trying to get a bit of eggshell out of the mixing bowl. It scoots off and wants to be something else.
13 We wake up to the sound of rain driving back the snow.
For lunch I make cheese-and-asparagus sandwiches. Lydia has made a cake. I ask what kind of cake it is. She says, It was a cake I had on the plane from Halifax. I’ve had it in my mind now for a week.
Youre trying to make an airplane cake?
It was good.
14 I love my binoculars. Watching a rollerblader tack down Signal Hill Road. Then I see that it’s Craig Regular. Cars brake, weave around him, using up a lot of gas on the brake and accelerate. Craig wears an orange traffic vest. He’s zipping, dipsy-doodling, turning down Battery Road. He has no idea I am watching him. I am two miles from him. I would love to see a car smack into him. But he is too swift. He zooms by the last saltbox in St John’s, down past the yellow guardrail, and straight to his door. I hadnt realized I can see his house.
I turn to a coast guard vessel, to read its name on the bow, but can’t steady the binoculars my excited heartbeat is moving them a fraction.
15 I confess to Maisie that I have no imagination, that I have a methodical nature. It’s easier to write down the present than to be present in the past.
She says, If Oliver had told me he’d slept with another woman, it might be different. But the fact is, he hid it.
Even if he’d slept with someone his own age, a peer, with the same interests, she could understand it.
Maisie: I mean, I’m not going to be the only person he could fall in love with.
Maisie says she and Oliver had friends who agreed to have affairs, as long as they didnt last and they didnt have to tell each other, but the husband got involved, long term, and eventually they divorced.
Maisie: It’s the deceit that’s killing me. What ever happens with Lydia, dont pull an Oliver Squires.
And what precisely is an Oliver Squires?
Lining up someone before you leave.
You might be better off telling that to Lydia.
16 Iris’s cactus is blooming pink. Laundry today. Read the National Enquirer. The tabloids are good because often the actorsdont look their best; theyre caught in unflattering poses coming out of limos or washrooms where theyve sneezed or done a line. They look tired, startled, worn.
17 Lydia says Maisie is beautiful. She has light coming out of her face. She agrees with Maisie’s stand.
Lydia: If you ever have an affair and dont tell me, then it’s your burden. I dont want to hear about it two years later.
Maisie is considerate. We dropped in just after she’d eaten, and she wiped down the dinner table. She was alone, Una with Oliver. She offered us apple pie and took the smallest piece. Articulate and well-mannered, she points out your habits in a way that doesn’t cause offence (she made fun of my hand gestures by mimicking them). She takes her cigarette outdoors, in her own rented house.
18 The sun is a barrel down the Crosstown Arterial, lighting the southside hills, Shea Heights, the tank farm, all the way to the mini-marina. And the top floor of the Royal Trust.