This All Happened

by Michael Winter

  I take a burning plank from the fire and hold it to Sheep. The plank has cinders and blistered edges. She bends towards it. The plank is hot on the fingers, but I still hold it. I know Sheep thinks this is dramatic.

  The harbour is shiny. The planks we are burning are the same kind the house is made of. The updraft is making a ghost float.

  Inside, Sheep takes me by the waist and says, Dance with me, Question Man.

  Lydia comes up to me, and offers the final question of the night: What is the function of regret. And I say, it allows you to understand that there are other possible lives to lead.

  No one, thankfully, asks me Leibniz’s question: Why is there not nothing?

  November

  1 I wake up. I wake up in the dark and there is someone leaning in to my room. It’s a woman. Come on, she says. She must be tugging my shoulder.

  Gabe, come on.

  It’s Lydia.

  We’re going to Max’s, she says.

  It’s the middle of the small hours. Max is propped by the gatepost, giggling in the dark. The giggle tells me he’s loaded. Maisie is sitting on the rock wall.

  A boy, Max says. I’ve got a boy.

  I’m afraid to take his arm from the gate. I am too sober to enjoy them. But we walk arm in arm up the road.

  Max says there was a seam of black, the blood vessels breaking on Daphne’s face. He cut the umbilical cord. The cord deep blue and red.

  Shhh, Max says. He misses the keyhole with his key. He tries again. I try taking the key from him, but he resists.

  Are they in hospital?

  Max: Theyre upstairs. Let’s go around the back.

  And we sit on his deck and whisper loudly.

  Daphne, he says. With a finger to his lips.

  Have you got a name yet?

  Havent got a name. Maybe Eli.

  They are all about five beers ahead of me. Max and Lydia had called but my phone was unplugged.

  Max finds us a round of beer. I realize they are in conversation. It’s a conversation I can’t follow, but there’s a raw nerve of excitement, of the new boy in the world.

  I drink my beer and let them gush on. At one point, Max says, Some people never become themselves because theyre afraid to be fools.

  2 Sometimes, at night, late, I will see Boyd’s pickup idling, parklights on, in behind the Big R on Long’s Hill. Boyd Coady stands across the street, hands in jeans pockets, looking in a gallery window at a print on an easel. He was on his way home and had to have a look. Longing for something in the print. The print is nostalgic, an outport at dusk, yellow squares of light indicating windows, woodsmoke, a reflection in a still sea. Boyd is longing for this. He lived there once.

  3 I’m at Maisie’s house. From the porch I can see Maisie leaning into the sink to pour herself a glass of water. In the porch Oliver Squires says, I have two sisters. One’s dead. There’s one I’d love to drown, and she’s not the one who’s dead. Yes sir, I know exactly where I’m going to drown her.

  And then Oliver leaves.

  He leaves because he can’t stand seeing Maisie. Maisie says Oliver gets into moods. He can’t enjoy himself at a thing like this. He thinks he has no friends.

  We all think, in the end, that we have no friends.

  Maisie: He’ll be worried for me.

  Why.

  Oh, that I’ll drink too much and lose control and someone might take advantage of me, I mean it’s ridiculous.

  You left him. It’s all about power.

  Maisie: Yet he’s glad to be with his prize student. He’s delighted about her being pregnant. He just can’t get used to me being with other men.

  Me: That’s common. I have that. It’s having to let go. Maisie: Yeah, men are great. But sometimes they try to be controlling and it just doesnt work.

  4 I arrive late for badminton and Lydia is there and I have to play on her court. It’s hard to watch her have fun. I’m glad to be free of her, but I dont want her happy.

  I leave early because I dont want to be ignored any longer in front of others. Lydia took offence because I suggested that when she’s passing the birdie to us, she lob it with an underhand shot instead of her inaccurate overhand. I know that the overhand tends to smash the birdie and, coupled with its inaccuracy, is jarring. But Lydia found this irritating and chose to ignore it.

  Lydia has to run an errand, so I go to the Ship. I buy a round. Maisie confesses things have been bad with Oliver. He’s not good about their daughter. Essentially, he wants to have the baby, have his student, and get back together with Maisie, and he resents that she’s not interested.

  In the past, she says, Oliver has often thought of breaking up with me. But then wanted me again. I spelled out his wish list and he very soberly agreed with me. Girlfriend on the side. I had to explain to him that I’m better off without him.

  Me: I think we’re all better off alone.

  Maisie: I think women are better off than men.

  I think men are starting to catch up.

  Maisie: It’s as if everyone has had enough of the one theyre with.

  Lydia enters the Ship and walks to the bar to use the phone. She is calling someone. She is the kind who guesses at a number. She often gets a wrong number but this is part of her push into the world. I miss it. She doesnt mind saying, Oh, sorry. She is lavish with apologies. I try to limit mine. It’s true I’m mean with my apologies.

  I have to stop watching Lydia.

  5 There’s a bonfire in the field below me. A gang of boys feeds branches of the dead pine into a bed of molten rubber tires. Some steel-belted radials are burnt so that a mesh skeleton of tires remains, standing amid the inferno like some macabre effigy. At ten they run out of fuel and begin hauling pickets off the fences. Off my fence. A fire truck wobbles into a lane, and fat hoses are dragged up to the fire. The kids are swearing at the firemen. Cinders are landing on shingled roofs.

  6 Now that it’s definitely November you can see through veils of dying shrubs. The world is going bald. Hedges you can see through. You can stare into a house. There are no secrets. With the trees bare you see the whole city sitting on the hill in its underwear. The striptease of the city is complete. Honesty reigns and the honest picture is barren and mean.

  The grass melting through snow. Grass still green. Sedum still erect and burgundy.

  7 Maisie says there are five things she needs in a man: sense of humour, emotionally stable, treats me like a queen, a good listener, intelligent.

  I tell Maisie I think she is beautiful and can’t understand why there are no men. She says she knows of men, but theyre all taken. St John’s has a dearth of good men. Daphne found one.

  Me: What about Earl Quigley?

  Maisie: He’s set in his ways. As you get older your standards get higher.

  I said there were things I needed from Lydia that I never got, so I ended it.

  Maisie: Dont settle for less than you want. Better to die alone searching than settling.

  Max is not so sure.

  Maisie: Dont ever compromise for the sake of a man. That’s my motto.

  8 Max has come into money. His father’s will has been settled and there’s a massive windfall. At first I’m a little stiff. Then Max says, I’m egocentric because I was the only son Mom gave me love I thought Dad should receive. And Dad, it would have been embarrassing for both of us if we’d verbally expressed our love. But I know he loved me.

  We are in the Ship guzzling our pints, raising one for old Noel Wareham. And what to do with the money.

  He says he’d like to give Maisie some and Lydia. And put away a pile for Eli and Daphne.

  It has to be anonymous, I say.

  Otherwise it’ll change how they are to me?

  Just dump a bundle in their mailboxes.

  Would you be jealous if I gave Lydia some?


  I think it would be a beautiful gesture. Let her make a movie on it. Offer a proviso.

  Yeah, I’ll be executive producer. The interest, he says, on a half million is twenty thousand a year.

  Max is drinking pints of Smithwicks. I’m on black and tan. He feels the money is a weight. And having to settle his father’s affairs. The house in Arnold’s Cove. He had antiques. There was a key to a safety deposit box. There was nothing Max wanted except the boat.

  Max: I didnt even want to go to the funeral.

  9 Maisie stops in her car and I get in. Just to drive around. I open her glovebox and it’s full of fall leaves.

  Maisie: I filled that a few weeks ago. I want to have it there this winter. So whenever I get sick of the sleet, I’ll just open up the glovebox and stare.

  She says Oliver left a message on her machine last night. He was disappointed she wasnt in.

  Maisie: It wasnt obvious that he was being polite.

  I have an ache of sadness in my ribs, where they cleave. As if an axe has split me partially in two.

  10 Walking up Carter’s Hill: two girls and a boy singing, London Bridge is falling down, my fair lady-o . . .

  And then, Take the keys and lock her up . . .

  And I remember I’ve never had a key to Lydia’s place. Even when it’s the boy’s turn to get caught in the collapsing steeple of the girls’ arms, they sing: Lock her up.

  A man opens a door for a woman and calls her darling and she calls him dearie. She says the word weathervane and the door closes. Tenderness.

  11 I meet Wilf Jardine down on Water Street. He is on his way to the welfare office. The fridge is looking empty. No shame in him at all, it’s a joke to Wilf. I know he uses jet fuel in his kerosene heater. His buddy at the airport gets him the fuel. He makes ninety-proof alcohol from a still, the charcoal takes away the impurities. He doesn’t buy booze or heat. All he needs is food.

  12 Tonight after racquetball, in the sauna, I ask Max if Alex Fleming is seeing anyone.

  Isnt she seeing Craig Regular?

  That’s old, Max.

  He says Maisie Pye has officially broken up with Oliver. Max, you are way behind.

  He says, Okay. Oliver made a pass at Daphne, can you believe it.

  Now that’s news.

  Max: He did it because I used to see Maisie. I told Maisie, and she said, If they get together, what will that make us? I said, Wary.

  Max, of Oliver: It’s two things at once. It’s as if he leaves it

  all out there, and then it’s as if nothing’s there at all. Of himself. Max is cautious of what he says around Oliver. It will come

  back on him sometime later.

  You did punch him out.

  Max: That was self-defence.

  My open ear is what Max needs. He doesnt need advice. Max needs to air his beefs about Oliver.

  13 Oliver says eating mussels is the same texture as chewing on your lip.

  We’re in the Indian shop at the east end of Duckworth. In back the vat of frying. And then the woman, on her mat praying directly through the harbour. She is wearing taupe.

  We walk along the path around Signal Hill. I dont really like Oliver, but we share the word bereft.

  Oliver stops, turning on the path, interrupting to say, Look at that. The bone white shine of the path behind us, leading to the city. I look at Oliver and he is crying.

  It’s just the wind, he says.

  14 Alex Fleming grew up in Quirpoon. She says, Theyre gonna shoot the big Hollywood feature in Rocky Harbour. It should be shot in St Anthony. They should get Maisie in on it, to write it no offence, Gabe. But Maisie should write it. And Lydia should direct it. Did you read the book?

  I can tell, before I say anything, that Alex has a definite opinion, and it’s probably negative. In fact, she has an opinion on everything. At least, initial opinions. She seems willing to relent. I say that I didnt finish it, that I found the voice false. I heard the author speak at the Learneds and she claimed that she heightened, or torqued, the language in order to best capture the place and people. I found her persona arrogant. I dont agree that caricature is the essence of novels, that you have only three hundred pages and life is much longer. So you need to condense and heighten.

  Alex has been clenching her thin fist on the table. I can’t stand her, she says. She stayed in our bed and breakfast. When she came to St Anthony she was poor. She stole that book from Maisie. Maisie had it all written down and she took it. That voice belongs to Maisie. She didnt make anything up. That’s very dishonest. I know these things: ethics, that’s my area of study.

  Alex says the author even slagged her mother at that lecture at the Learneds.

  Me: I dont remember that.

  Alex: Well, it was a veiled reference to her as being stupid. You were there?

  I heard about it.

  I think I would have remembered that. And about Maisie. Yes! Maisie!

  Maisie was in her writing class.

  Well, then you know.

  She’s a good writer.

  But to myself I know other things. That she helped Maisie with her manuscript, that she encouraged Maisie to send it to her publisher.

  I say, I thought Maisie said good things about her.

  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.

  19 At the cash the woman says I remind her of Prince Charles. This one’s got royalty in him, doesnt he?

  Oh, he’s much more handsome than Charles.

  No, Charles as a young man.

  The other woman, keen to assure me I’m better looking, says, When he’s older he’ll be far more handsome than the prince.

  20 There’s a big wooden fence out by Mount Pearl. It’s supposed to be a barrier between the houses and the highway. But as you accelerate, the fence begins to blur, the gaps between the pickets link up, and suddenly the fence vanishes. You can see, with no interruption, the houses in behind. But the houses can’t see you. If you slipped off the road and hit the fence at the right speed, you’d slip right through it.