Lydia will definitely want to go, I say.
2 Iris: How would you feel if your roommate kept something from you?
Depends, I say. Did the roommate get married?
Yep.
In Madeira. Helmut was wearing shorts. A man named Junko was the sole witness. Under a full moon, on the beach. A Moravian minister performed the ceremony, for the money. They had thought about getting married here, but Iris wanted it to happen outside and it was cold in Newfoundland.
Lydia can understand Iris doing this, to avoid the palaver of a big wedding. It’s one of the main reasons she doesnt want to get married.
3 Distance isnt a consideration for who I love or spend time with. Lydia gets absorbed with what’s around her and neglects the rest. She hardly ever makes plans but follows suggestions. She is the kind to put down the phone and go, whereas plans tend to inject the event with obligation. Such as attending weddings.
I have been to twelve weddings in my life.
And this weekend there’s another Murphy cousin getting married.
A wedding, or the promise to commit, is a good place to begin a novel. It starts with our protagonists deciding if they should marry. And they dont. In the ensuing months, friends around them break up and marry other people. While they stay constant.
Lydia hates clutter. She hates it when the ice trays are empty. She says she can’t find her copy of Sculpting in Time.
No no no, I say. I did not touch it. I’ve never even seen it. Youre not very supportive, she says.
If I said I had it, would that be supportive?
4 We are on a boat trip out of Bay Bulls, to see whales and puffins. I watch Craig Regular look down at Lydia in the back of the boat, and Lydia returns his look. How can I live with that look? She jogs on the spot on the flydeck in full view of him. Lydia dances for him in her new runners. She climbed down the aluminum stairs and went over to him and danced on the spot. Seeking some acceptance, some approval. As if to say I am attractive, and you can have me.
Lydia says to me, I can’t understand why you look at it that way.
Duration has little to do with whether an act is remembered. It is the passion that is evinced from the moment. And something passed between Craig and Lydia in that moment of idle jogging. Something as strong as if she’d taken him into a corner and sucked him off, or spent three weeks with him. My life will be a constant reckoning with this kind of emotional argument. In the boat I heard Daphne ask where is Lydia. And Craig Regular said, She’s lying down.
Craig Regular should not know that she is lying down. He should not be the one to answer that question. Already the external world is preparing for a change.
All this is jealousy. All this I must absorb or slough off. I cannot allow it to stay on my skin. It makes me too melancholic.
5 Lydia called last night and asked, Are you mad because I’ve phoned so late?
Yes.
Am I forgiven?
Yes.
You sure I’m forgiven?
Do you think you should be?
Your tone conveys a certain unforgiveness.
It’s that you forget about me. You have to be reminded I’m in your life.
Dont you think it’s a good thing?
I say nothing.
Who’s there?
Iris and Helmut.