This All Happened(94)

            And what’s he like?

            He separates what I say and do from who I am. He doesn’t criticize me. You know, men do that all the time.

            Well. It’s hard to know the difference between criticism of acts and criticism of the person.

            I know I’m sensitive, she says.

            We hold hands. It’s meant for comfort. It is like holding your own hand, or patting your own sides to offer encouragement. It is dark, the river rushing under us, the air a little chilly. I have fished this river, and fishing takes the mystery out of a river.

            It’s true that all rivers connect. The sound of a river belongs in the same folder as all other rivers, and nothing quite compares, and so the memories of what has happened at other rivers is easy to summon. And so rivers are nostalgic and nostalgia means returning home, plus pain.

            25 They call out to me as I’m walking up Long’s Hill. The night so empty, sound travelling for miles.

            Maisie: Let’s go for a beer.

            Max: One beer.

            Maisie: We’ll split a beer. Three ways.

            Okay, I say. Say, arent you parents?

            26 I walk to the art gallery, and pass through the graveyard. The graveyard on Mayor always puts me in a mood. Boyd Coady is combing his dog there. The dog is tied to a pipe railing with a blue ribbon. There’s a number spray-painted on some of the pines above the Farrell graves.

            I ask him why.

            He says he just needed things. He needed to do his laundry. Did you fix the faucet?

            It was not a big problem. A washer, he says.

            And that’s your TV?

            She didnt have a TV. I like to watch TV. It was the TV that did me in.

            Me: I thought it might have been the underwear.

            And Boyd looks at me as though I’m nuts. It’s evident he knows nothing about the underwear.

            The sky darkens at 4:30.

            At the gallery, the commissionaire is reading a self-image book. I ask what it’s all about. It helps you improve your image. This war vet, sitting at a desk between rooms of Chinese prints and wrought-iron sculpture.

            27 I drive Iris to work at the marine lab. Jethro’s wipers are broken. Iris says she’s cooking supper tonight. She has brown eyes that remind me of a small ceramic deer I had once when I was eight. It came from a box of tea.

            I tell her that I saw Boyd, that I talked to him.

            I can’t believe you didnt hit him. With a stick. If I were Lydia I’d clean everything I own, she says.

            28 At St Patrick’s Church we watch Max Wareham and Daphne Yarn wed. Their son, Eli, in a pram with a blanket the same colour as Daphne’s dress.

            I flip through the book of hymns, and learn that the angel’s sole purpose is to praise God.

            Lydia reads a passage about the good wife. And she changes it. She adds vice versa to all the commands on the wife. She is sitting with Wilf and I hear him say, You changed the Old Testament on a whim? and she whispers, It was sexist.

            Also in the hymn book, the word chrism.

            Daphne’s mother ties a knot at the back of her necklace, to shorten it on her clavicles.

            29 Max’s house is larger than it looks. One of his knuckles is carefully scarred from a chainsaw and plastic surgery. He has thick wrists. His legs are thin. When he sits he is careful. He has an old man’s caution about sitting. His features are young. It’s only in the sum of his actions that he becomes his age. I have seen a pained look cross his forehead. This pained look is new.