I ask him, What were you doing back then.
He pauses. Thirteen years ago. Walking around the hill. I met Maisie.Yep, that’s when it all started.
Oliver says, If you die 366 days after an assault, the assault is not considered a homicide.
He says, A woman in Labrador shot out the appliances in her home today, then lightly stabbed her husband.
Lightly?
Oliver believes that in a dream, parts of a house represent parts of your self. He is eating this wedge of watermelon at his back door. On the stoop. Hidden from public view, but still outside. And we catch him wolfing into it, a secret act, an act of private joy that Oliver could not appreciate indoors. His eyes find ours while his teeth are sunk into the meat of the watermelon. Such a hot day.
13 We wake up and I ask, and Lydia says no. I say a gentle prayer. For Lydia’s period. I have never had a prayer unanswered, though I’m careful what I pray for. Lydia is calm about it all. She says her breasts feel sensitive, and bigger.
Lydia believes the world can be split into dreamers and writers. For the dreamer, words are strung together easily, you can fill libraries with their answers. But only a writer can tell you what life has meant. A writer cringes at how easily the dreamer pours out words. Politicians and bad writers are dreamers. Art is made in the kitchen. Whereas dreamers speak in front of the king.
14 Lydia says, I’m pregnant. She says this declaratively. We are going to have a child.
Let’s get married, she says.
Okay then, I say.
I love you, she says. And she means it.
I have a rippling ecstasy coursing through my shoulders. I have never permitted myself to plan the future. And now large chunks of clear landscape have risen up.
I have thought so long to make Lydia pregnant. Her belly swollen, cupping a hand to her stomach. I wanted her changed like that. Carrying a baby. Cradling her. What an incredible nine months this will be.
I confess that I’d prayed.
Lydia: That I wouldnt be pregnant?
Me: I was careful. Because of the monkey’s paw curse. You prayed I wouldnt have a monkey’s paw?
I prayed that you werent pregnant, yet. I wanted to make sure I wasnt praying that we could never get pregnant.
You wanted our baby to come later.
Yes.
Lydia: Maybe I should pray.
Okay. Something positive. That whatever happens will be a good thing.
Yes, that we’ll have lots of good times no matter what. That whatever happens it’ll have your looks and my brains.
15 We bicycle to QuidiVidi gut. Boyd Coady is fishing for sea trout. He nods to Lydia. I ask if they will take a fly he is using a spinner. Boyd says he’s seen people flyfish, but theyve never caught anything. The fish are too nervous, scared by the line.
A couple of skinhead bikers search for bait under boulders. Now three short-haired boys and a girl, about fifteen years old, are fishing. She’s got a waterproof radio. Sporty waterproof electronics are always yellow.
A tourist couple have walked behind us on the concrete breakwater.
One of the boys catches a sculpin. A friend has joined them: Have you brought me a smoke?
The boy is bashing the sculpin against the rocks.
Boyd says he had on a German brown that was sixteen inches.
Sitting on the concrete breakwater, poured in 1961. The Atlantic bearing down between the Narrows. My tall ginger bike glinting in the trees, leaning against Lydia’s.