How mean and small of me.
She curls around me. But my lower legs are aching. So I sleep on the couch. So I can massage my legs and move freely without waking her. At seven-thirty I go back to her bed. Get up at 9:20. I make bagels and coffee. Lydia says, Dont be sad. I say, It’s a physical thing. She says,Yeah, I’m gonna take care of that physical thing.
28 I havent had a cup of coffee in a week. The last four days a headache. I hate picturing Lydia toking then passing the toke on. It’s an intimate act.
Lydia was clearing up garbage behind the house and came across the dead baby starling. I pick it up. It’s about two inches long, a big bum, featherless except for a tuft ball on its back, soft, little pink arm, no wings but claws, its yellow beak is not hard, ringed around its mouth like a duck’s. All the promise of summer has left the nest in the soffit above.
29 It’s six in the morning and I’m walking around Quidi Vidi Lake with Maisie Pye. She does this on every morning she doesnt have Una. It’s part of her training, she says, for the regatta. The lake is lined with fishermen.
Why all these fishermen?
Maisie: Someone has released a tagged trout worth ten thousand dollars.
On the water there are teams of rowers practising.
Maisie says the fishermen make her wish to be sixteen and to fish in a pond at Flatrock, where her father fished he couldnt bring her to the best spots because the place he went was too treacherous. She got tired of fishing, though. Getting caught in the trees and her father patiently untying the knotted, tangled line. Parents, dont ever think your acts go unappreciated.
The fishermen are patiently spinning and the rowers are methodically rowing.
30 There are white flowers on the raspberry bushes.
31 I went swimming with Daphne at the university pool,which is much more utilitarian and small and low-ceilinged and choked with industrious swimmers churning out the lengths.
We shared a lane by the tiled cement and I banged my foot several times.
Daphne says, You sure speed along.
She loans me her goggles for a few laps. And I watch her underwater as she passes. Her belly full of baby. She’s four months pregnant. Beautiful to see a pregnant woman swimming. It seems the perfect exercise.
Alex Fleming arrives and she has a tattoo outline of a canna-lily on her shoulder. The one painted by Georgia O’Keefe, she says, except in reverse colours.
June
1 Max and I eat pea soup and rolls.
Pea soup is easy to make, Max says.
He wants us to go down the Exploits River. A four-day trip in July. Three couples in three canoes. He can lend us a canoe.
They are on the couch, Daphne’s legs on Max’s lap. Holes in her tights at the big toe. It’s easy to see theyre in love. They are cocksure. I touch Daphne’s big toe after I bring the soup bowls back to the kitchen. They have a delicate, crenellated hibiscus flowering by the fridge. Max nursing his finger of metaxa. I have a snifter of Jack Daniels. He says we have to get out of town more and explore Newfoundland.
His father has taken a bad turn, is in hospital. Max has realized most of his life has been spent in the city, whereas his father is a rural man.
My feet are sore from dancing in flat boots. Max can dance. Leading, gently pushing Daphne to the end of her arms. They are used to each other and the pregnancy makes their dance more delicate and caring. And on that couch, comfortable. Daphne flexes her bare toe.
Lydia did not want to join us for a nightcap. So I kissed her goodnight at Hallidays meat market.