This All Happened(8)

            The ruffled whirr as the birds ascend and disperse. In Peterson’s guidebook: at a distance the grouse’s muffled thumping is so hollow that sometimes it hardly registers as an exterior sound, but seems rather to be a disturbing series of vibrations within the ear itself.

            The strongest socket is in the wing. The legs are like the front legs of a rabbit, no ball joint. The eye sunken but brown.

            Josh says, With the cold, the meat should be healthy. He says Franky Langer was once lost in the woods and had to eat his dog. He was gone four days, Josh says. I mean, four days. He couldnt last longer than that before eating his dog?

            18 I miss Lydia. When youre used to holding someone, a physical habit, you miss it. Is it habit to miss a voice too, to miss a response to your thought? I do no writing. There is nothing in Heart’s Desire to fill the absence of Lydia. I stare at the road and wait for the school bus. Josh says, in an accusing tone, You wasnt up by lunchtime.

            How do you know? You were in school.

            My parents said at noontime there was no smoke coming out of your chimley.

            Toby: What happened to Maisie’s fridge?

            I broke it trying to thaw the freezer.

            Josh: You laid a hammer to it.

            Yes, I went at it with a hammer.

            Trying to break out chunks of ice.

            Yes.

            They both shake their heads.

            Josh: Dad got a old fridge in the basement.

            Well, I’d love to have it.

            Josh: I’ll see what I can do.

            They take the axe and go out to the shed to cleave up some junks of wood.

            19 Josh’s father, Cyril Harnum, stands up on the grey flatbed truck, the garbage truck. With two men helping. The flatbed has a fridge roped to it.

            The young driver, with a screwdriver, pops out the hinge bolts on the side door.

            I can smell coffee, the other man says. You want her plugged in or thaw her out?

            I should have kept the plug out of her last night, Cyril Harnum says.

            I have paid fifty dollars for this fridge. The fat, heavy enamelled door that opens onto a salmon pink interior with two chrome shelves that swivel out. There is a pair of lightbulbs sunk into the bottom so the shine strikes up on your food, floorlights on a stage. It makes the food seem solid, planted, stars of the grocery world. The corners of the milk carton lit in a gold aureole, the spout silhouetted. I e-mail Alex about it and she responds that it was built in a time when kitchen appliances were treated as art.

            All night I leave my work to go open the fridge door and admire the rich pink interior.

            Cyril Harnum: Come over to supper tomorrow.

            20 I call Lydia and beg her to come out. She says, I thought you wanted time on your own? I have no response. I miss watching her do things. She doesnt do things the way I do them. She makes a lot of ice cubes. I’m a man who forgets to make ice cubes. She makes sure there’s air in her bag of lettuce. She sprinkles talcum powder in her hair if it’s greasy.

            Josh comes by on his bike with no handlebars.You like fish? He is steering with a set of vice grips clamped to the front fork.

            I eat nine pieces of fish with slices of hot homemade bread. The fish is served from the stove. On the table are jars of tomato and rippled pickle slices. I have a mug of boiled water in which I can put a tea bag or a spoonful of instant coffee. There’s a can of evaporated milk.

            Josh’s mom, Doreen, is rolling cigarettes at the table. There’s patch in the varnish at the end of the table faded from cups of tea. I’ve told them my decision to lift my slips and Josh thinks it’s foolish but his dad can see how it’s cruel.