This All Happened(37)

            What would a judge say if they did?

            Lydia.

            What?

            23 When she says, Goodnight, Gabe, I say, Goodnight, babe. I say, You hardly ever call me Gabriel. She says you hardly ever call me Lydia.

            That’s not true.

            It is true.Youre always calling me babe.

            On the phone I call you Lydia.

            Once. I remember hearing it on the answering machine when I got home. My name and it struck me how you hardly ever say it.

            I think about this argument. That I dont like to sway opinion. When something sounds untrue but Lydia believes it, I find it hard to convince her otherwise. I would be a bad lawyer. I regret that she feels it, and I will usually try only once to describe my side of things. If she still holds to her opinion, I’m loathe to object.

            24 I nose the green lobster into the boiling water. His tail flexes, full of bewilderment. A claw taps the side of the pot. It takes about ninety seconds for him to resign himself, for his shell to turn orange.

            A dip made of melted butter, lemon, garlic, and parsley. I spread the leaves of a newspaper over Lydia’s dinner table. Lydia wonders which of her boyfriends hammered the claws. Was it Earl? He’d go to the tool chest and get a hammer.

            At this very table.

            Corn, I say, is the lobster of the vegetable family.

            Lydia: Now that sort of statement. That’s where you lose me.

            I think about this. Why did I make that pronouncement, which feels true to me. Theyre both large, I say. A solid colour. You boil them alive and theyre seasonal. You eat only a select part of the whole body. And pepper’s important.

            Lydia accepts this. She reads me a quote from Salinger, about images and how God will understand if there’s confusion or misuse of images. Youre better off not getting wrapped up in the small stuff of right and wrong.

            25 In the morning I tell Lydia it’s time to get up. No, not yet, she says. Then the doorbell. She has forgotten that Maisie and Daphne are coming for yoga. Stay in bed, she says.

            I wake again and there’s no sound. And I get up. Downstairs this note. Gabe, dont leave.

            It’s nearly io a.m. when Lydia returns. And sits with me. Sometimes when she’s alone she thinks of her past lives and starts to feel sad. She tells me how Earl never cried. Nothing in life is tender, Earl would tell Lydia when she was crying. He didnt see the point in crying.

            We lie down for a few minutes. She’s made me a little sad, but I’ve cheered her up by consoling her. Then the phone. And Lydia has to go. She’ll call me when she’s through. I’m glad you cry, she says.

            As I walk home I spot a wry cat leaping to my fence. He’s after a grosbeak. He’s as orange as a kipper.

            26 Max says he was driving in from Arnold’s Cove, where his father lives. Just past Whitbourne something hard landed on his truck hood. Then a leg smashed through his windshield.

            You hit a moose?

            Max: No. It fell out of the sky.

            He found the head by the side of the road. There was a full quarter torn from the hip that landed in the back of the truck. He drove back to Monty’s Restaurant and called the cops. The cops told him what happened. A transport truck heading west hit the moose. The moose flew off its spoiler, twirled in the air, torn to bits, and landed on Max’s truck heading east.

            Max is dressing the quarter of moose that landed in the truck bed. Nothing wrong with a bit of tenderized spring moose.