This All Happened(92)

            Oh, I’m sure she does. All I’m giving you is my slant on things. Maisie thinks the world of her.

            15 Maisie confesses she has always laughed — her family laughed a lot. She didnt realize until later that other families didnt laugh as much as hers. Oliver’s family is serious.

            She has always taken my demeanour as sincere. Most people think I’m not being genuine. I’ve watched myself on videotape and I understand how they make the mistake. I hesitate. I look like I’m lying.

            I have always been drawn to kind people. I love witnessing generosity and subtlety. If I were to begin a religious order, my first article of faith would be to commit sneaky acts of generosity.

            I am drawn to the Catholic demeanour. Maisie, Max, and Lydia are all Catholic. Mainly because Catholics seem to laugh more than Protestants. They seem less restrained. You have to be slightly embarrassed to come from an English background.

            16 Max and I are drinking homemade red wine in the car out in Ferryland.We were going to walk out to the lighthouse, but it’s too windy and wet. So we have cheese and olives on a board over the hand brake. The wine in paper cups. Max remembers his mother saying, That’s it, I’ve had enough. I’m gonna go up in the graveyard, dig a hole, and bury myself.

            Max: Mom would take the shovel and we’d start screeching. No Mom, we’d say. Dont do it. She’d say, Too late, I’m gone. And we’d watch her march up the rise to the graveyard on Merasheen with the shovel on her shoulder. We’d be bawling at the door, begging her to come back, We’ll be good, Mom, promise. Our faces all crumpled up.

            Well, eventually she would come back, after spending the afternoon next door, drinking tea.

            Mothers, he says, go through a period of madness.

            He says his arm still hurts from when Eli was born. He kept Daphne’s head down when she was in labour. For five hours Max’s arm crooked around her neck, bending her.

            When Max tells me this he pats himself on the shoulder, on the ribs. As if to reassure his body that it’s all right.

            17 Oliver drops by. He’s in his legal-aid suit. Smiling uncomfortably. As if a pain is spreading across his chest. He has been returning Maisie’s junk mail and he’s just off to the mailbox. For one, from an environmental agency, he has scribbled on the envelope, Stop sending mail, or I’ll club a seal.

            I show him an untitled recipe Lydia left on my fridge: Keep it white. Peel and dice potatoes. Saute in butter. You dont want any skin in there. Make love to your potatoes. Glazed, melt. Chopped onion. Translucent. Cover, barely, with water. Put lid on, simmer. Stop. Cool down. Lay on chunks of fish and scallops. Let the steam tickle your fish for four minutes. Break apart. Milk and cream. Never boil. Sometimes sweet corn.

            That’s pretty erotic, he says.

            I find things like this all over.

            And he understands my sentiment.

            18 I walk towards the harbour, thick snow on the dogberries. Thinking back on when I asked Lydia to marry me. Part of the reason we did not marry was my own reluctance to answer yes to Lydia’s every okay. The truth is, I knew about responding with okay to every hesitation a woman gives you on a commitment. As soon as Lydia hesitated I pounced on it. I was relieved. I wanted the decision not to get married to be her responsibility.

            I pounced on it in a very subtle, disinterested way.

            I had that sort of tone in my voice when I met Lydia’s hesitation with my own brand of hesitation.

            This is a maddening personal trait. To slip out of responsibility. To pretend an act is someone else’s decision.

            The truth is my future is always a dull extension of the evidence around me. That’s why I’m frightened to have children. The new.