This All Happened(39)

            My chili peppers are sprouting in their flats. Like a rooster’s comb.

            I see Max, impatient in a bank lineup. He says, You’ll be able to take the wait behind this guy off your income tax.

            I pay my mortgage and watch Boyd Coady lying flat on the pavement. A grating off a drain. He’s bent at the hips into the drain. A boy holds his ankles. Traffic passes. Boyd stretches up with a white bucket. He dumps the slurry along the curb. A woman leans on the bank railing and cautions them about the traffic. She’s wearing a windbreaker.

            Woman: He lost his big gold ring, five hundred dollars. I look in the drain. The water is not moving.

            Boyd:You couldnt see that rock ten minutes ago.

            You’ll get it, I say.

            Boyd looks at me with unquestioning faith in his ability. He doesnt need my encouragement. In fact, my words only bring doubt.

            3 Maisie and I spoke of money. How Oliver wanted someone to fix the porch. Maisie said they can’t afford it. Oliver looked at the bank balance and said there’s a thousand dollars in it. Maisie: Several bills havent been paid. Oliver buys services, Maisie fixes things herself. Oliver’s argument was that if you spend your time doing what you do best, let specialists mend the rest.

            My father never hired anyone, I say. He bought raw materials, not services. Even when pouring the foundation for the kitchen. We mixed the cement by hand. We found the gravel and sand. I envied the cement truck rotating its heavy belly, a load coming down the chute. But now I may do it by hand. I know the proper consistency of cement.

            4 Last night I had Lydia listen to the Rosemunde by Schubert. Lydia says she never listens to music without doing something else. Music is always an accompaniment. But we lay on the bed in the dark with only the blue light of the stereo power button on and listened to it. It’s about thirty minutes long. And she saw that it is beautiful. Then she read me an article on how we are living further in the past as we learn more about it. I told her Bartlett listened to Schubert as his ship sank in the ice. He sat in his study, keeping the fire going with wax records, until the deck rail was flush with the ice. The last piece he played was Chopin’s Funeral March.

            5 I help Max move a rolltop dresser from Duckworth Street, next door to the War Memorial. When we have the dresser roped into the back of his truck, we inspect the memorial. The front bronze by Gilbert Bayes, 1923. Thinking of the past makes Max tell me of fishing with his father in Placentia Bay for mackerel. How mackerel get stiff soon after theyre caught. He likes mackerel just as much as salmon. I say they are a handsome fish, a blue-grey skin with net pattern. Like herring. Max wants to go diving for sea urchins. The Japanese eat their roe. I said I didnt know sea urchins had roe.

            Oh, yes, he says, and studies the harbour. I can dive down to twenty feet using scuba gear.

            We drive to Max’s workshop and unload the dresser. Want a coffee? He has a little coffee maker in a corner. You have to weave around table saws, lathes, and drill presses to get there.

            He sprinkles a pinch of salt and dry mustard powder in with the grounds. He says salt always makes bad coffee taste better.

            And I have seen Max add salt to a pint of beer. And Lydia has shown me the ingredients of one brand of salt, which includes sugar.

            6 There is a phone cord stretched across the bed, across my chest, as Lydia talks to Daphne Yarn. It’s Max’s birthday and we’re late.

            Lydia: Have you seen the wine? Daphne’s wine? It was in the fridge.

            Me: I havent.

            Well, we’ll have to pick up beer.

            Daphne lays out ten pounds of smoked salmon.

            That’s a pound each, Daphne.