Part 11 (1/2)

We picnic on the grey sun-baked cliffs of Bay Bulls out on Bread and Cheese Point. Thick sandwiches and expensive leaf lettuce and a bottle of French red and crunchy pickles and ice creams and the orange guitar.

The hard wine bottle clunking against the rock.

26 There is a lawn on Waterford Bridge Road shot through with blue crocuses. I watch Lydia admire them. She has a soft spot for oddities in nature.

But then a hardness appears. We're in her kitchen. I had finished was.h.i.+ng the dishes and she turned on the faucet with a dishcloth, getting in my way, and the cloth wiped my sleeve leaving a grease mark and I backed away, got my stuff from upstairs the tap still on in the kitchen. I ask, Do you want the tap on? Lydia: No. In a tone that says,You left it on.

I ask if anything's bothering her.

I wish you'd taken a loaf from the freezer when you finished the bread. Is that too much to ask?

I havent had any bread.

And she gives me a look that says I dont admit to anything.

27 I decide to walk down to Lydia's without phoning first. The door is locked and I have to ring. She is there with Earl Quigley and Craig Regular, having a toke. Craig tried to get back into the States, but they found marijuana on him at the border. She'd made them supper.

Lydia: I was just about to call you.

This is her second most favourite phrase. Her first favourite is, So what's your point?

I realize I am taking the annoying side of every issue.

I size up the waist size of both Earl and Craig. I notice the underwear is gone now from the detergent box.

I recall that Lydia admitted she felt a little alone. That Earl and Craig allow her to laugh, to be connected. And here I am standing in the kitchen looking at these two men eating supper with Lydia, sharing a spliff, and I must be talking but my concentration is on remembering Earl's professional accents that Lydia falls into, of Lydia laughing when Craig holds her arms so she can't answer the phone.

If I were holding Lydia, she would be p.i.s.sed off.

All night I'm quiet until Lydia inquires. I say,You dont find what I have to say interesting. When I tell how my father couldve been an excellent burglar Gabriel, youve said that a number of times.

Did I ever tell you? Because I'd felt like I'd told you, but you were silent.

Gabe, youve told me dozens of times that your father would say this is what a burglar would do. Do you want me to be entranced with everything you keep repeating?

Just tell me if I'm boring you. But saying nothing.

Lydia, on an elbow, says how unfair that is, thirty times I must have told her that, what do I expect from her. What I expect is for her to say,You'd be driving along like this? Would your brother be with you? Where would you be driving? Out of town? And he'd just scan the houses, or would he point one out in particular? Did your mother know he thought this way? Did you ever think he'd do it? Do you think it affected Junior? Etc. When Lydia talks about her family I'm interested, I ask these kinds of questions, I draw the stories out of her, I make her embellish. I ask for things. Whereas Lydia nods, or changes the subject, or says, So what's your point? Lydia will never be on the phone long with me, and never laugh as hard as she does with Wilf or Craig or Oliver.

How mean and small of me.

She curls around me. But my lower legs are aching. So I sleep on the couch. So I can ma.s.sage my legs and move freely without waking her. At seven-thirty I go back to her bed. Get up at 9:20. I make bagels and coffee. Lydia says, Dont be sad. I say, It's a physical thing. She says,Yeah, I'm gonna take care of that physical thing.

28 I havent had a cup of coffee in a week. The last four days a headache. I hate picturing Lydia toking then pa.s.sing the toke on. It's an intimate act.

Lydia was clearing up garbage behind the house and came across the dead baby starling. I pick it up. It's about two inches long, a big b.u.m, featherless except for a tuft ball on its back, soft, little pink arm, no wings but claws, its yellow beak is not hard, ringed around its mouth like a duck's. All the promise of summer has left the nest in the soffit above.

29 It's six in the morning and I'm walking around Quidi Vidi Lake with Maisie Pye. She does this on every morning she doesnt have Una. It's part of her training, she says, for the regatta. The lake is lined with fishermen.

Why all these fishermen?

Maisie: Someone has released a tagged trout worth ten thousand dollars.

On the water there are teams of rowers practising.

Maisie says the fishermen make her wish to be sixteen and to fish in a pond at Flatrock, where her father fished he couldnt bring her to the best spots because the place he went was too treacherous. She got tired of fis.h.i.+ng, though. Getting caught in the trees and her father patiently untying the knotted, tangled line. Parents, dont ever think your acts go unappreciated.

The fishermen are patiently spinning and the rowers are methodically rowing.

30 There are white flowers on the raspberry bushes.

31 I went swimming with Daphne at the university pool,which is much more utilitarian and small and low-ceilinged and choked with industrious swimmers churning out the lengths.

We shared a lane by the tiled cement and I banged my foot several times.

Daphne says, You sure speed along.

She loans me her goggles for a few laps. And I watch her underwater as she pa.s.ses. Her belly full of baby. She's four months pregnant. Beautiful to see a pregnant woman swimming. It seems the perfect exercise.

Alex Fleming arrives and she has a tattoo outline of a canna-lily on her shoulder. The one painted by Georgia O'Keefe, she says, except in reverse colours.

June.

1 Max and I eat pea soup and rolls.

Pea soup is easy to make, Max says.

He wants us to go down the Exploits River. A four-day trip in July. Three couples in three canoes. He can lend us a canoe.

They are on the couch, Daphne's legs on Max's lap. Holes in her tights at the big toe. It's easy to see theyre in love. They are c.o.c.ksure. I touch Daphne's big toe after I bring the soup bowls back to the kitchen. They have a delicate, crenellated hibiscus flowering by the fridge. Max nursing his finger of metaxa. I have a snifter of Jack Daniels. He says we have to get out of town more and explore Newfoundland.

His father has taken a bad turn, is in hospital. Max has realized most of his life has been spent in the city, whereas his father is a rural man.

My feet are sore from dancing in flat boots. Max can dance. Leading, gently pus.h.i.+ng Daphne to the end of her arms. They are used to each other and the pregnancy makes their dance more delicate and caring. And on that couch, comfortable. Daphne flexes her bare toe.

Lydia did not want to join us for a nightcap. So I kissed her goodnight at Hallidays meat market.

Lydia will definitely want to go, I say.

2 Iris: How would you feel if your roommate kept something from you?

Depends, I say. Did the roommate get married?

Yep.

In Madeira. Helmut was wearing shorts. A man named Junko was the sole witness. Under a full moon, on the beach. A Moravian minister performed the ceremony, for the money. They had thought about getting married here, but Iris wanted it to happen outside and it was cold in Newfoundland.