This All Happened(79)

            The soup is delicious, I say.

            And Wilf turns and sees me for the first time.

            Alex says, Would you mind getting me a bowl?

            I ladle her up a bowl. I can’t find a spoon so I give her the ladle.

            Wilf turns to the chicken wings. I join him. I say, How did the show go?

            What?

            The show at the Hall. You were the special guest.

            What?

            I’m thinking maybe he forgot about the show. I dont want to be the one to remind him.

            Youre talking about the show next week, he says.

            Oh, that’s it.

            Yeah, that show. It went well.

            And he gives me a little grin.

            Went really well.

            Lydia walks in and Wilf says, It’s time for you to have some kids.

            Alex:You dont need kids.

            Wilf: Sure you do. He nods to me. And you dont have to worry about the donor.

            We walk home to Lydia’s, exhausted.

            Lydia: What do you think of what Wilf said?

            Me: I think he’s pretty brazen.

            Lydia: He’s funny, though. Can’t you see how he’s funny?

            28 I sit in on one of Earl Quigley’s lectures. Earl is talking about the physics of decay. He describes a coffin birth. A pregnant woman dies in childbirth. She is buried, and the soft tissues degenerate. The fetus slips out of the womb into the coffin.

            I look at Lydia in the mirror of her study. How I can see her face ageing, and what her face will be like. As if the mirror distorts her or she is not Lydia. So I can see her face as skin and bone and not an identity attached to it.

            It’s like holding a drawing up to a mirror to see if it’s balanced.

            Lydia picks out a green-and-yellow striped dress her mother wore, when she was younger than Lydia. She tucks it under her chin, swaying the hem. The carved edges of cheeks and chin. I realize I am holding some professional distance from her.

            29 Maisie, on the phone: Did you get mail?

            I havent checked. Have you?

            It came. There was none.

            Want me to check?

            Okay.

            Want to come with me?

            Okay!

            I’ll get the portable phone.

            Pause.

            Me: You hear me?

            Yep.

            Okay, I’m going out the screen door, hear the creak? There’s oregano still, I’ll just rub some between my fingers, smell that? The dogberries are deep clusters of

            Gabe, I got the picture.

            Okay. Oh, my God, it’s in there.

            What’s in there?

            A letter from the C B C.

            What? What’s it say, Gabe.

            It’s definitely about the contest.

            How come I didnt get anything?