In the summer of 1979, I went to my friend Shanny's house near Uxbridge, Ontario, walked into the kitchen, and saw a man standing at the counter, making himself a ketchup sandwich.
I had driven in the mountains of northeast Toronto, and with my husband — my second husband, not the one I left that summer — I had leisurely and persistently searched for the house, tried to find the way it was located, but without success, most likely demolished. A few years after I visited Shani and her husband, they sold the house. It's too far from Ottawa, where they live, to be a good summer getaway. Their children grow into their teens and are reluctant to go there anymore. There's also too much maintenance to do for Johnson (Shanny's husband), and he likes to go golf on the weekends.
I found the golf course – I think it is, even though the original crooked borders have been renovated and the clubhouse is more luxurious than the original.
When I was a kid in the countryside, the wells would dry up in the summer. When there is not enough rainfall, it happens every five or six years. These wells are holes dug in the ground. Our wells are deeper than most, but the animals in our corrals need a lot of water – my father kept silver foxes and mink – so one day the driller came with spectacular equipment, and the hole was deepened and deepened until water came out of the rock. Since then, no matter what the season, no matter how dry the weather is, we have been able to make pure, cool water. That's something to be proud of. There is a tin cup hanging from the pump, and when I drink from it on a scorching summer day, I think of the black rocks, where the water shimmers and flows like diamonds.
The Driller — sometimes called the Digger, as if no one was bothering to find an exact name, the old one was more pronounced — was a man named Mike McCallum. He lives in the town near our farm, but he doesn't have a house there. He stayed at Clark's Inn—he would be there in the spring, and he would do whatever he wanted to do in the area, and when he was done, he would leave, and then he would work elsewhere.
Mike McCallum is younger than my father, but his son is a year and two months older than me. The boy lives with his father in a hotel or boarding at his father's place of work and attends a nearby school. His name is also Mike McCallum.
I know his exact age, because that's something that kids want to confirm right away, and it's one of the basic conditions for them to consider whether or not they want to be friends. He's nine and I'm eight. His birthday is in April and mine is in June. When he and his father came to our house, the summer vacation was coming.
The crimson trucks his father drove were always disgraced. When it rained, Mike and I climbed into the cab, and I don't remember if his father went to our kitchen to smoke and drink tea, or stood under a tree, or went on working. The rain washed the cab window and crackled like a stone on the roof. The car was filled with the smell of men – their overalls and tools, tobacco, dirty boots, sour cheese-smelling socks, and the smell of damp long-haired dogs, as we brought the "Ranger" with us. I'm used to the Ranger and get used to it following me everywhere, and sometimes I will order it to stay at home, go to the barn, and don't bother me for no reason. But Mike loves it, always happily calling it by name, telling him about our plans, and waiting for him when he starts his dog plan, chasing a marmot or a rabbit. Living like his father, Mike would never have had a dog of his own.
One day, the Ranger went out with us to chase a skunk, and the skunk turned around and sprayed stinking at it. Adults think Mike and I are to blame. My mother had to stop what she was doing and drive to town to buy several large jars of tomato juice. Mike convinces Ranger to jump into the tub, and we pour tomato juice over it and comb its fur thoroughly, making it look like we're bathing it with blood. How many people do you need to have so much blood? How many horses? How many elephants are there?
I'm more familiar with blood and killing animals than Mike. I took him to a corner of the pasture, near the gate of the barn's yard, where my father shot and slaughtered horses and fed them to foxes and mink. The ground was trampled bare, with deep blood stains and a rusty red. Then I took him to the barn's butcher's storehouse, where the horse's carcass hung before it was chopped up for feed. The meat storage house was a barbed wire shed, and the walls were blackened with flies, drunk by the smell of carrion. We got pebbles and crushed them to death.
Our farm is not big—only nine acres, so small that I can explore every inch of it, and each inch has a different look and character that I can't put into words. It's easy to see the peculiarities of the wire sheds, where the long pale carcasses of horses hang from cruel hooks, trampled on blood-soaked ground, where live horses are turned into meat. But there were other things, like the stones on either side of the barn passage, and though nothing memorable had happened, they didn't diminish what they said to me. On one side of the passage there was a large whitish stone, smooth, protruding, dominating the others, so that this side had an expansive and open atmosphere for me, and I always chose to climb to one side rather than the other. The stones on the other side are darker in color, huddled together, and appear low. The trees on both sides have similar gestures and appearances - elms look calm, oaks are sinister, maples are friendly and ordinary, and hawthorns are ancient and irritable. Even the deep pits on the river beach, which my father had sold out of gravel years ago, had their own characteristics, which might be easier to spot if they were filled with water when the spring flood receded: a pit was small, round, deep, and perfect; the other stretched out like a tail; One is wide, has an indefinite shape, and there are always broken waves on it because the water is too shallow.
Mike would look at these things from a completely different perspective, and so did I because I was with him. I look at them in his way and in my own way, my way is inherently ineffable, so I have to keep it a secret, and his way is practical. The large, pale stones of the passage were used as a springboard, short, powerful runs, and then launched themselves into the air, clearing the pebbles from the slope below, and landing on the compacted ground beside the stable door. All the trees are meant to be climbed, especially the maple tree next to the house, which can be climbed out of the branches and jumped to the top of the balcony. The gravel pit is used to jump into, and after running through deep grass, it screams and jumps into it like an animal pounces on its prey. If it's earlier in the year, when there's more water in the pit, we can build a raft, Mike said.
We considered the one that had to do with the river. But the river in August was a waterway, and it was almost a rocky road, and we took off our shoes and waded through it, instead of drifting down or swimming in it – jumping from one bone-white bare stone to another, slipping on foamy rocks beneath the water's surface, trekking through water lily bushes and other aquatic plants with flattened leaves, the names of which I can't remember or don't know at all (wild parsnips?). Poison hemlock? ）。 These plants grow so dense that they seem to be rooted on an island or dry land, but in reality they grow out of river mud and wrap our legs around their tangled root systems.
The river also flows through the town, and as you walk upstream along the river, you can see the double-span highway bridge. I've never walked that far to the bridge when I'm alone or with the Ranger, because there's usually the townspeople there. They came to the river to fish, and when the water was deep enough, the boys jumped from the railing to play. They weren't diving at this time, but they were probably splashing water underneath – loud and hostile, as the kids in town always do.
Another reason is that there could be homeless people there, but I didn't say that to Mike. He walked ahead of me as if the bridge were an ordinary destination, nothing unpleasant or forbidden. The sound came, just as I expected, the sound of boys shouting—making people think that the bridge belonged to them. The "Ranger" had followed us so far that he had lost his enthusiasm and turned around towards the riverbank. He's an old dog, and he's never going to like all kids indiscriminately.
A man is fishing, not on the bridge but on the shore. When the Ranger jumped out of the water, the calm of the water was broken, and the man yelled at the Ranger and asked us if we couldn't even manage a dog and let him stay at home. Mike walked on his own, as if the man was just whistling at us, and then we went into the shadow of the bridge, where I had never been.
At the bottom of the bridge is our roof, and a few rays of sunlight leak through the gap between the bridge decks. A car rumbled by, instantly blocking out the sun. As the car passed, we stood quietly and looked up. Under the bridge is a separate world, not just a small section of the river. As the car drove by, the sun shone through the cracks again, reflecting waves on the water, and strange bubbles of light were reflected on the high concrete piers. Mike called a few times to test the echo, and I did, but quietly, because the boys on the shore and the strangers on the other side of the bridge scared me more than the wanderers.
I went to a country school off the farm. The school enrollment rate was so low that I was the only student in my class. But Mike had been in town school since the spring, and he knew the boys. If his father hadn't thought of taking him with him at work so that he could keep an eye on him from time to time, he would probably have played with them instead of me.
These town kids must have had some verbal greetings with Mike.
Hey, what are you doing here?
Didn't do it. What about you?
Didn't do it. Who is with you?
No one. That's her.
Oh. That's her.
In fact, they were playing a game, and everyone was engrossed in their own business, including the girls—the girls on the other side of the river—even though we were all past the age when a bunch of boys and girls played together as if nothing happened. They may also have come from town following the boys—pretending not to follow—or the boys may have followed them and wanted to harass them, but when everyone was together, somehow the game took shape, requiring everyone's participation, and the usual rules were broken. The more people there are, the more fun it is, so Mike easily jumped on board and brought me in.
That's a game of war. The boys split into two groups and attacked each other behind forts made of sloppy branches, some covered with rough, sharp grass, and some hiding in the reeds and water weeds that rose above our heads. The main weapon is a mud ball, about the size of a baseball. It so happened that there was a special source of clay nearby, a gray pit, half hidden in the weeds, and the other half extending to the shore (probably this discovery made everyone think of playing this kind of game), and it was there that the girl's task was to prepare ammunition. Pinch a ball of clay and make it into a tight ball, the tighter the better—it may be mixed with gravel, weeds, leaves, and small sprigs that can be collected on the spot, but no one will intentionally add stones to it—a lot of these balls of mud are needed, because each can only be thrown once, and if you don't hit it, you can't pick it up and throw it together.
The rules of battle are simple. If you get hit in the face, head and body by a ball of mud — officially a cannonball — you'll fall down and die. If you hit your arm or thigh, you will fall, but it will only be injured. Another task for the girls is to climb out and drag the wounded back to a place where they are stepped out, pretending that it is a hospital. The leaves were pasted as plaster on the wounds, and they had to lie quietly and count the hundreds, and then they could get up and continue the beating. Dead soldiers are not allowed to rise until the end of the battle, that is, when all the soldiers on one side are dead.
Girls, like boys, are divided into two groups, because they are not as numerous as boys, so they cannot supply ammunition and nurses to just one soldier. And there will be alliances, and the real battle is the same. Each girl had her own pile of mud balls, which were specially used by certain soldiers, and when a soldier was wounded and fell, he would call out the girl's name so that she could drag herself away and treat her wounds as quickly as possible. I supply Mike with ammo and he will also call my name when he is injured. The voices come and go - the shouts of "you're dead" are endless, it's a cry of victory or a cry of anger (anger is because some people should be "dead" but always try to creep back and continue fighting), and a dog barking, not a "ranger", which somehow joins the melee - it's so noisy that you have to always be alert to the boy who calls your name. Whenever a cry is heard, there is a fervent fear, like a stream of electricity flowing through the body, a wonderful feeling of devotion. (At least for me, I'm different from other girls, I only serve one fighter.) ）
I don't think I've ever participated in a group game like this before. Being part of a large group, being desperate to be aggressive, being singled out, being part of it, and vowing to serve a warrior makes me happy. Mike never opened his eyes when he was wounded, and he lay there feebly, while I would press the big sticky leaves to his forehead and throat—and pull up his shirt—and stick the leaves against his white, soft belly, which was topped by a wonderful, delicate navel.
There is no winner in this battle. After a long time, the game disbanded in a quarrel and a collective resurrection. On the way home, we lay flat in the river, trying to get the mud off our bodies, our shorts and shirts dirty and dripping with water.
It was nearly evening. Mike's father prepares to leave.
"For God's sake." He said.
We hired a temporary worker to help my father with the slaughter and do some chores. He looked old-fashioned, but childish, panting and snorting, like an asthma patient. He loves to scratch me tickle until I feel like I'm about to suffocate.
No one intervened in the matter. His mother didn't like him like that, but his father said he was just joking.
He was in the yard, helping Mike's father.
"You two are wallowing in the mud," he said, "and the first thing is that you two get married first." ”
Mother heard it behind the screen door. (If the men knew she was there, they wouldn't have said that.) She came out and said something to the hired man, in a low, reproachful tone, before she began to judge the way we looked.
I heard a little bit of what she said.
Statue brother and sister.
The hired man looked at his boots and grinned helplessly.
She was wrong. The hired man is closer to the truth than she is. We're not like siblings, not like any siblings I've ever met. My only brother is a small baby, so I don't have this sibling experience myself. We are not like the couples I know, first of all, they are all old and living in different worlds, and they don't seem to know each other. We are like tacit and firm lovers, and our bond does not need to be expressed externally. At least for me, that's dignified and stimulating.
I knew the hired worker was talking about "sex," even though I didn't think I understood the word. I hated him more than I had ever been. Exactly, he was wrong. We don't like the intimacy of revealing, touching, and sin—no bothering to find a secret place, no pleasure and chagrin of playing, and no simple shame that arises at the moment. I've tried this with a cousin, and with some older girls, older sisters who are at my school. I would hate these playmates before, and I would even angrily deny that such a thing had happened. I don't even think about such deviance for people I like and respect - I only do this kind of thing with people who make me disgusting, because those disgusting vulgar desires make me feel disgusting too.
In my affection for Mike, this confined demon turned into excitement and tenderness, permeating the skin, the delight and whizzing satisfaction of the presence of another person. I woke up every morning longing to see him and to hear the drillman's truck jolt all the way along. I loved him, but I didn't show it, I loved the back of his neck, the shape of his head, the way he frowned, his long bare toes, his dirty elbows, his loud and confident voice, his scent. I am willing to accept, even with a piety, a role that has formed between us that does not need to be explained and practiced—that I will help and worship Him, that He will guide me and be ready to protect me at all times. One morning, the truck didn't come. That morning, of course, the work was done, the well was covered, the pump was reinstalled, and the fresh water was admired. There were two less chairs at the lunch table. Big Mike and Little Mike had been having lunch with us before. Little Mike and I never talk or look at each other. He likes to spread tomato sauce on bread. His father and my father talked about drilling wells, accidents and the water table. He is a serious man. My father said his mind was full of work. But he—Mike's father—laughs every time he finishes speaking. There was a lonely and low sound in the laughter, as if he was still in the well.
They didn't come. The work is done, and there is no reason for them to come back. This project for my family is the last job for the drillers in our area. There were still people waiting in line elsewhere waiting for him, and while the good weather was still going on, he wanted to start as soon as possible. He stayed in a hotel and could pack up and leave at any time. In fact, that's what he did.
Why don't I understand what's going on? Why is there no goodbye? Didn't I realize that Mike was leaving forever when he climbed into the truck that afternoon? No wave, no looking back – or rather, no looking back – the truck, laden with equipment, swayed out of our alley one last time. When the water gushes out – I remember that the water is gushing out, and everyone gathers together to taste it – why don't I understand that it's all over, it's over for me? Now I wonder if it was a deliberate arrangement to not let the scene get too ostentatious, so that I — or we — would not be too sad and distressed.
At that time, it seemed that no one would take into account the child's feelings. That's something we have to endure or refrain from.
I didn't get in trouble. After this first blow, I didn't show any changes. The hired employee makes fun of me every time he sees me ("Your boyfriend dumped you, right?"). But I don't even look at him.
I must have known that Mike was going to leave, just as I knew that the Ranger was old and would soon die. I could accept the absence of the future – but it wasn't until Mike left that I realized what it was like to be missing. My own territory had all changed, and it was as if there had been a landslide, erasing all the meaning of losing Mike. I couldn't help but think of Mike when I saw the white stone on the passage, so I felt disgusted by it. I felt the same way about the maple branch, and my father cut it down because it was so close to the house, and the scar it left was just as disgusting to me.
One day, a few weeks later, I was standing in front of the shoe store, wearing my autumn coat, and my mother was trying on shoes, when I heard a woman shout, "Mike." She shouted "Mike" and ran from the front of the store. I was suddenly convinced that the woman I didn't know was Mike's mother—Mike hadn't told me, but I knew that his mother was separated from his father, not the kind of yin and yang separation—and I knew they were back in town for some reason. I didn't think about whether this return was temporary or permanent, I just ran out of the store, thinking that I would see Mike soon.
The woman caught up with a boy of about five years old, who had just picked up an apple of his own from an apple stand on the sidewalk, just in front of the nearby grocery store.
I stopped, staring at the little boy in disbelief, as if an infuriating, unfair magic was happening before my eyes.
A common name. A nasty flat-faced boy with dirty blonde hair.
My heart was pounding, like a roar in my chest.
Shani picked me up at Uxbridge Station. She was a large, bony woman with a cheerful complexion, silver-brown curls that were pushed to the sides of her cheeks with a mismatched comb. Even when she's fat—she is—she doesn't look blessed, but rather dignified and girlish.
She swept me into her life, as she always did, telling me she was going to be late because Claire had bugs in her ears that morning and was going to the hospital to rush out, and then the dog threw up on the kitchen steps, most likely because it hated traveling, the house and the country, and when she, Shanny, came out to pick me up, Johnson was asking the boys to clean up because they were going to have the dog, and Claire was complaining that there was still a buzzing in her ears.
"So how about we go to a nice quiet place to get drunk and never come back?" "We still have to come back," she said. Johnson invited a friend who wanted to play golf, and the man's wife and children went to Ireland. ”
Shani and I are good friends in Vancouver. Our pregnancies are well connected, so we can share a maternity outfit. About once a week, we would meet in the kitchen of my house or hers. Children distract us, and sometimes we languid ourselves from lack of sleep, so we refresh ourselves with strong coffee and cigarettes, and then start talking nonsense about our marriages, fights, personal flaws, funny and humiliating motives, our past lofty ideals. We read Jung at the same time, trying to interpret our dreams. In that period of confusion during the breeding period, the woman's mind was overwhelmed with milk, but we will still talk about Simone de Beauvoir, Arthur Kostler and The Cocktail Party.
Our husbands think in a completely different way than we do. When we try to talk to them about these things, they say, "Oh, that's just literature" or "You sound like Philosophy 101 Questions."
Now we've all moved out of Vancouver. But Shani moved with her husband, children, and furniture in a normal way, for ordinary reasons—her husband found another job. And I moved for the reason of novelty, only to get strong but fleeting recognition in certain special circles - everything I got during my leave of husband, house, and marriage (except, of course, children, we need to divide labor), and I wanted to create a life free from hypocrisy, self-loss, or shame.
I now live on the second floor of a house in Toronto. The owners live downstairs - having moved from Trinidad decades ago. The entire street is lined with old brick houses with balconies and high, narrow windows, former homes of Methodists and Presbyterian members whose names are Henderson, Grisham, and McAllister, and are full of olive- or brown-skinned people who speak English with unfamiliar accents. The smell of their spicy and sweet food was always in the air. I embraced all of this – it made me feel like I had truly changed completely, completing the long and necessary journey out of the confines of my marriage. But expecting my daughters, who are only 10 and 12 years old, to feel the same way, would be extravagant. I left Vancouver in the spring, and they came at the beginning of the summer vacation and planned to stay for two months. They found the smell of the streets disgusting and the noise horrible. It was hot, and even with the electric fan I bought, they couldn't sleep. We had to leave the windows open, and the backyard party sometimes lasted until four in the morning.
Visiting the Science Centre, the CN Tower, museums and zoos, eating in air-conditioned restaurants in department stores, and taking a boat trip to Toronto Island don't make up for the lack of friends or make them accept the four different homes I offer. They miss their cats. They want their own room, where they feel free to live, where they can spend time at home.
For a while, they didn't complain. I heard the big one say to the little one, "Let Mommy think we're happy." Otherwise she would be sad. ”
Finally broke out. All sorts of accusations, painful confessions (and even exaggerating the pain, which I think is caused by taking care of my emotions). The little one wailed, "Why can't you live at home?" The big one told her in pain, "Because she hates her father." ”
I called my husband – he asked me the same question and gave almost the same answer. I changed my ticket, helped the kids pack their bags and took them to the airport. Along the way we play stupid games, taught by the boss. Pick a number — 27,42 — and look out the window to count to the 27th or 42nd man you see, or whoever you want to marry. When I got home alone, I collected all the things they had left behind—a small cartoon, a large copy of Glamour magazine, all kinds of jewelry and clothes that they could wear in Toronto but not at home, and stuffed them into garbage bags. Every time I think of them, I almost do the same thing – forbid myself to think. There was some pain I could bear—the pain associated with men. And the other pains – those related to children – are beyond my reach.
My life is back to when they didn't come. I don't make breakfast anymore and go to the Italian grocery store every morning to buy coffee and fresh buns. The thought of being away from the housework intoxicated me. I didn't pay attention to it before, but now I notice the look on the faces of people sitting in front of the window or at the table on the sidewalk every morning – for whom this is by no means an enviable good, but a cliché of living in solitude.
Then when I got home, I would sit at the wooden table by the window and write for hours, and the window outside the window used to be a balcony, now a makeshift kitchen. I want to make a living from writing. The sun quickly warmed up the small room, and the back of my thighs—I would wear shorts—stuck to my chair. I could smell the distinctive, sweet, chemical smell of the plastic sandals that had soaked up the sweat of my feet. I love the smell – that's the smell of my diligence, and I hope it's also the smell of my achievement. What I wrote was no better than what I wrote in my old life, when potatoes were boiling in the pot and clothes were thumping in the washing machine. I just wrote a little more, and it didn't get any worse - that's it.
Later in the evening, I'll take a shower and maybe go see a female friend. We drank at the roadside tables in front of the small restaurants on Queen Street or Bowen Street or Brownwick Street and talked about our lives – mainly our lovers, but we found it disgusting to say "lovers" and called them "the men we dated with". Sometimes, I go to meet the men I am in a relationship with. He was banished while the children were with me, even though I broke the rules twice and left my daughters in the icy movie theater.
I knew this man before my divorce, and he was the direct cause of my divorce, even though I pretended not to him—to anyone—that it wasn't. When I met him, I tried to be carefree and independent. We exchanged news – I made sure I had news to say – we laughed and went for a walk in the canyon, but what I really wanted was to seduce him into having sex with me, because I think the high level of passion that comes with sex blends people's best selves. I'm stupid at these things, and in a way risky, especially for a woman my age. Sometimes I feel so happy after our date – dizzy, secure – but sometimes I'm suspicious and lie down like a stone. After he undressed, my tears would flow down my eyes unconsciously. It was because I caught a glimpse of his shadow, or because of some kind of slackness, or because of his roundabout warning to me. Outside the window, as it gets dark, the party in the backyard is about to begin, and the sound of music and shouting, and the provocations that might turn into fights, I feel fear, not hostility, but a lack of presence.
During a similar emotional episode, I called Shani and got an invitation to go to the countryside for the weekend.
"It's beautiful here." I say.
But the countryside we drove through meant nothing to me. The mountains are rolling green, and some have cattle on them. The weed-clogged river is topped by low concrete bridges. The hay harvested by the new method is rolled into bales and left in the field.
"Wait until you see the house," said Shani, "it's dirty and messy." There was a rat in the pipe, still dead. Tiny mouse hairs always appear in our bathwater. It's all taken care of now, but you never know what's going to happen next. ”
She didn't ask me how my new life was – out of caution, or disapproval? Maybe she just didn't know how to speak, didn't know how to imagine. In any case, I was definitely going to lie to her, or half-truths. It's hard to break through, but it has to be done. I miss my children, but there is always a price. I'm learning to let go of men and let go of myself. I'm learning to take sex lightly, and that's hard for me because I wasn't like that. I'm not young anymore, but I'm learning.
A weekend, I think, seems like a long time.
A scar leaked from the brick house, which was left by the demolished balcony. Shani's sons ran around the yard.
"Mark lost the ball." The older one—Gregory—shouted.
Shani asked him to say hello to me.
"Hello. Mark threw the ball to the back of the shed and we couldn't find it. ”
The three-year-old girl, who was born after the last time Xia Ni and I met, ran out of the kitchen door and stopped, surprised to see the stranger, but she calmed down and said to me, "A bug has flown into my head." ”
Shani picked her up, and I took my overnight luggage and walked into the kitchen with her. Mike McCallum was there spreading ketchup on bread.
"It's you." We said it almost in unison. We laughed, and I ran to him, and he walked towards me. We shook hands.
"I thought it was your father." I say.
I don't know if I thought of the driller. I was thinking, who is this familiar-looking person? A man as light as a swallow doesn't seem to take climbing up and down the well at all. Short hair, some gray, deep-set light-colored eyes. The thin face is humorous and serious. A polite but easy-going reserve.
"No way," he said, "my father is dead." ”
Johnson went into the kitchen with his golf bag and greeted me, urging Mike to hold on. Shani said to Johnson, "Honey, they know each other. Who would have thought that they actually knew each other! ”
"We met when we were kids." Mike said.
Johnson said, "Really? It's so rare. Then we all said what he had to say together.
"It's a small world."
Mike and I were still looking at each other, smiling — as if to clarify to each other that this discovery, which Xaney and Johnson might find wonderful, was a comedic explosion of good luck for us.
The whole afternoon after the men left, I was full of joy. I prepared peach pie for dinner, read to Claire so she could take a quiet nap, and Shane took the boys to fish in a stream full of scum to no avail. Then the two of us sat on the floor of the front room and drank and became good friends again, talking about books instead of life.
Mike remembers things quite different from what I remember. He remembered walking on top of a narrow old concrete foundation, pretending it was the tallest building and falling to his death if he stumbled. I said it must be somewhere else, and then I remembered a car repair shop that had poured the foundation, but it never was built, right where our alley and road were connected. Have we really walked on it?
It's true.
I remember wanting to shout under the bridge, but being scared of the kids in the town, and he couldn't remember what the bridge was.
Our common memory is mud shells and battles.
We wash the dishes together so we can talk about whatever we want to talk about without being rude.
He told me about his father's death. He was in a car accident while returning from work near Bancroft.
"Your family is alive, right?"
I said that my mother died and my father remarried.
In saying something, I mentioned that my husband and I are separated and live in Toronto on my own. I said that the kids had stayed with me for a while and were now on vacation with their dad.
He told me he lived in Kingston but hadn't been back for a long time. He recently met Johnson for work. They are both construction engineers. His wife is Irish, born in Ireland, but when he met her, she was working in Canada. She's a nurse. Now she is back in Ireland to see her family in County Clare. The children went with her.
"How many children?"
"Three."
After washing the dishes, we went to the front room and asked the boys to play Scrabble so that Shaney and Johnson could go out for a walk. After one round of play, it was time to go to bed, but the kids convinced us to play another round and our parents were still playing when their parents returned.
"What am I talking about?" Johnson said.
"It's the same round," said Grigory, "and you said we could finish the round, and this one isn't over yet." ”
"I bet so." Xia Ni said.
She said it was a beautiful evening, and she and Johnson were flattered to have a full-time live-in nanny to help take care of the children.
"Actually, we went to the movies last night and Mike stayed with the kids. It's an old film, "Bridge across the River Kwai". ”
"There's no 'span,'" Johnson said, "it's 'Bridge over the River Kwai.'" ”
Mike said, "I saw it anyway, many years ago. ”
"Good movie," said Shani, "but I can't agree with the ending." I think the ending is wrong. Do you remember that paragraph? Alec Guinness went berserk in the morning when he saw the wires in the water and realized that someone was going to blow up the bridge, making things so complicated that everyone was going to die. I think he should have seen that wire, knew what was going to happen, and stayed on the bridge and blew it up with it. I think that's in line with his character, and that would be more dramatic. ”
"No, it won't." Johnson said, in a tone as if he had argued about it before, "So what's the suspense?" ”
"I agree with Shani," I said, "and I remember thinking the ending was too complicated as well. ”
"Mike, what do you say?" Johnson asked.
"I think it's good," Mike said, "and it's a good ending." ”
"Men's team vs. women's team," Johnson said, "men's team wins." ”
Then he told the boys to clean up the Scrabble, and they did. But Gregory offered to look at the stars. "That's the only place where you can see the stars," he said, "and all you see in the house is lights and bullshit." ”
"Be mindful of your words." His father said. But then he said, all right, five minutes, we're all going out to see the stars. Let's find the North Star, the second star near the scoop handle of the Big Dipper. If you can see, Johnson says, your eyesight is good enough to go to the Air Force, at least during World War II.
"I can see it, but I already know where it is," said Shani. ”
Mike says he is too.
"I can see it," said Gregory contemptuously, "whether I know where it is or not." ”
Mark said: "I can see that too. ”
Mike stood in front of my side. Actually, he's closer to Shani than to me. There was no one behind us, and I wanted to touch him - just a gentle casual touch on his arm or shoulder. If he doesn't avoid it—out of politeness, taking my touch as an accident—I'd like to put a finger on the back of his bare neck. If he was standing behind me, would he do it? Will he focus on this thing instead of the stars?
However, I feel that he is a cautious person who will restrain himself.
For this reason, he certainly won't come to my bed at night. Either way, it's impossible because it's too risky. Upstairs there are three bedrooms – both the guest room and the master bedroom are attached to the great room where the children sleep. Going to each bedroom has to go through the children's room. Mike, who slept in the guest room last night, has moved to the sofa bed in the front room downstairs. Shani gave him clean sheets, and instead of changing the sheets for the bed he slept in last night, she just rearranged them.
"He's clean," she said, "and he's an old friend after all." ”
Lying on the same sheet kept me from sleeping peacefully. In the dream, not in reality, the sheets exude the scent of aquatic plants, river mud and reeds under the scorching sun.
I knew he wouldn't come to me, no matter how small the risk was. It would be immoral to do such a thing at his friend's house, and they would be, if not already, his wife's friend. But how can he be sure that I want him to come? Or, how can he be sure of what he wants? Even I'm not sure. So far, I have considered myself at all times a woman who is faithful to the person with whom I share the bed.
I slept unrealistically, and my dreams were monotonous and lewd, accompanied by some annoying and unpleasant episodes. Sometimes, Mike is ready to work together, but we run into obstacles; Sometimes he shifts his target, like he says he bought me a gift, but forgot where he put it, and finding it is crucial for him. I told him it didn't matter, I wasn't interested in gifts, because he was the best gift I had, the person I loved, the person I always loved, I said so. But he was preoccupied with finding gifts; Sometimes, he rebuked me.
All night — at least whenever I wake up, I always wake up — crickets are singing outside my window. At first I thought it was a bird, a chorus of perseverance from the night birds. I've lived in the city for so long that I've forgotten that crickets make the perfect sound of a waterfall.
I will make it clear that sometimes I wake up and find myself stranded on a dry land. Unpleasantly lucidity. What do you know about this man? And how much does he know about you? What kind of music does he like? What is his political leaning? What kind of expectations does he have from women?
"Did you two sleep well?" Shani asked.
Mike said, "I fell asleep all at once. ”
I said, "It's fine." ”
That morning, everyone was invited to a neighbor's house for brunch. Swimming pool in the neighbour's house. Mike said he would prefer to go to the golf course if he could.
"Of course you can," said Shani. Then look at me. I said, "Oh, I don't know if I'm -" Mike said, "You don't play golf, do you?" "I don't fight.
"You can be a caddy."
"I'll pick up the ball for you." Grigory said. He was willing to take part in any of our outings, and we were obviously more comfortable and playful than his parents.
Shani said no. "You're with us. Don't you want to swim? ”
"All the kids peed in the pool. I hope you know that. ”
Before we set off, Johnson warned of rain in the forecast. Mike said we could try our luck. I like him saying "we" and I like to sit next to him and sit in my wife's seat. The thought of us being a couple makes me happy—like the hot joy of an adolescent girl. The idea of being a wife fascinated me as if I had never been a wife. I've never felt this way about my current lover. Can I really settle down with true love, get rid of the parts of me that are not suitable for being a wife, and live happily?
But now that we're alone, it's very constrained.
"How beautiful the countryside is!" I say. Today I'm talking about real feelings. Under the cloudy white sky, the mountains look much softer than they did yesterday under the bright sun. At the end of summer, the leaves of the trees are rotten, and many of the edges of the leaves have begun to turn rusty, and some have turned brown or red. That's when I noticed different leaves. I said, "Oak." ”
"It's sandy land," Mike said, "and this area — people call it Oak Ridge." ”
I said, I guess Ireland should be beautiful.
"There are places where there are no people, only rocks."
"Did your wife grow up there, too? Does she have that cute accent? ”
"If you hear her talk, you think so. But when she returned, people said she didn't have that accent anymore. They said she spoke like an American. They often say Americans - they don't care about Canadians. ”
"And what about your children - I guess they don't have an Irish accent at all."
"Not at all."
"And are they—boys or girls?"
"Two boys, one girl."
I suddenly wanted to tell him about the contradictions in my life, my sorrows and my needs, but I only said one thing: "I miss my children." ”
But he didn't say anything. No words of sympathy, no encouragement. Perhaps he doesn't think it's appropriate to talk about our partner or children in this context.
After a while, we drove into the clubhouse parking lot, and he deliberately shouted, "It seems that the rain god has left all the Sunday golfers at home." As if to make up for his stiffness. There is only one car in the parking lot.
He got off the bus and went to the ticket office to buy a ticket for the tour.
I've never been on a golf course. I've watched a game or twice on TV, and I didn't choose to watch it. I know some clubs are called irons, and one of them is called a nine-iron, and its course is called the links. But when I told him this, he said, "Maybe you're going to get bored." ”
"When I'm bored, I go for a walk."
That seemed to make him happy. He put his warm hand on my shoulder and said, "You will." ”
It doesn't matter how ignorant I am about golballs – it doesn't really mean that I pick them up – and I don't get bored. All I had to do was follow him everywhere and watch him. I don't even have to look at him. I can look at the trees on the side of the pitch – they're tall, the treetops are like feathers, the trunks are thin, I'm not quite sure their names – acacia trees? - Occasionally, when the wind blows, they flutter gently, and we don't feel the wind below at all. There are also flocks of birds, blackbirds or starlings, flying around with a common sense of urgency, but only from the tops of one tree to the tops of another. I remember birds like that. By the end of July or August, they begin to gather noisily, ready to fly south.
Mike said a few words from time to time, but basically not to me, and I didn't have to, and in fact it was impossible for me to answer. I think he said more than the man who played here alone. His thoughtless words were reproaches to himself, discreet congratulations or warnings, or not words at all—just voices that wanted to convey some meaning. In the long-term intimacy of your and my willingness, such a voice can indeed convey meaning.
That's what I'm supposed to do – to give him a broader and deeper view of himself. More comfortable view, you might say, is the sense of groundedness of knowing that someone is quietly walking around his solitude. If I were another man or another woman he didn't think it mattered, he wouldn't have thought that way, or asked so naturally and easily.
I didn't figure it out. As we walked around the pitch, I felt joy come over me. The desires that stinged me at night were all contained, trimmed into a neat starting flame, and focused like a wife. I swung the ball as he swung it, choosing, measuring, squinting, swinging, watching the ball's path as it flew towards our next challenge, our immediate future. In my opinion, he always plays successfully, but in his opinion it is always problematic.
We walked there almost without saying a word. Will it rain? We say. Do you feel the raindrops? I think I felt the raindrops. Maybe not. It's not a polite talk about the weather – the context of this conversation is playing ball. Will we finish this game?
The result was a drop of rain before the game was played, definitely a drop of rain, then another drop, and then a rain splash, getting bigger and bigger. Mike looked at the end of the pitch, where the clouds had changed color, from white to deep blue, and said, "We're here for our good weather." "I didn't mean to be particularly alert or disappointed. He began to methodically pack his things and fasten his bags.
We're almost at the farthest end of the clubhouse now. The birds became more and more agitated, wandering anxiously and hovering erratically. The treetops swayed, and there was a sound—which seemed to be right above us—like a wave of stones crashing against the embankment. Mike said, "Okay, let's go in here." He took my hand and hurried across the manicured lawn into the bushes and tall grass between the course and the river.
The shrubs on the edge of the grass have dark and modest leaves, as if they were hedgerows set there, but in fact they are wild, clumps and bushes, which look densely layered, but when you get closer, you can find small openings, narrow passages that animals or people who come to pick up golf balls. The ground slopes slightly downward, and once you pass through the irregular bush wall, you can see part of the river – which is why the sign at the entrance of the clubhouse reads "Riverside Golf Club". The iron ash of the river seems to be tumbling, unlike the water of the pond, which will be split and broken in such rain. Between us and the river there is a field of weeds that seems to be in bloom. Goldenrod, and impatiens, with a reddish-yellow bell-shaped corolla, and clusters of pink-purple flowers, I think flowering nettles, and wild aster. And the vines, clinging to anything it reaches, tangled in the ground. The soil is soft and not very sticky. Even the most delicate plants have grown to the height of more than a man. We stopped and looked up through these plants and could see the trees not far away, swaying like bouquets. From the direction of the midnight-black clouds, something was approaching. It was raining, and it was coming right after the rain that was pouring down on us, but it didn't seem to be just rain. It was as if a large expanse of the sky had slipped down, pressing down on the top, noisy and resolute, presenting an unrecognizable yet living form. The rain curtain—not a tulle, but a heavy, wildly fluttering rain curtain—was driven to the front of the form. We can see them clearly, but we can only feel the light and lazy raindrops. It was almost as if we were looking out of the window, not believing that the window would break, until it did, and the wind and rain hit us at once, and my hair was lifted and scattered all over my head. I felt like my skin was going to be lifted up right now.
I tried to turn around—I felt an urge I hadn't felt before, to rush out of the bushes and run towards the clubhouse. But I couldn't move. It's hard to even stand – as soon as you get to the open ground, the wind will knock you to the ground in no time.
Mike bent over, head down, against the wind through the weeds, moved in front of me, and took my arm. Then he faced me, standing between me and the storm, like a toothpick. He was saying something in my face, but I couldn't hear it. He was shouting, but nothing could reach my ears. He grabbed both of my arms, moved his hands to my wrists, and held them tightly. He pulled me down – we both staggered and tried to change positions – so we were crouched on the ground. We were so close that we couldn't look directly at each other—we could only look down at the small trickles of rain splitting the dirt at our feet, the fallen plants, and our soaked shoes, even through the waterfall that spilled down our faces.
Mike let go of my wrist and grabbed my shoulder with his hand. His touch remained restrained, not merely comforting.
We did this until the wind stopped. It won't take more than five minutes, maybe just two or three minutes. The rain is still falling, but it's a normal heavy rain now. He took his hand away, and we stood up trembling. Our shirts and pants were clinging to our bodies. My hair hung like a witch's long hair on my face, and his hair stuck to his forehead like short, black tails. We tried to smile, but there was little more strength left. Then we kissed briefly. It's more like a ritual to celebrate our successful escape than a physical need. Our lips slid over each other, smooth and icy, and the pressure of the hug gave us chills as fresh water was squeezed out of our clothes.
The rain gradually became lighter. We swayed slightly, through half-flattened grass and thick, damp bushes. Large branches are scattered throughout the course. It didn't occur to me until later that any single branch could kill us.
We walked in the open field, skirting the fallen branches and leaves. The rain had almost stopped, and the sky was clear. I walked with my head down—so that the water from my hair fell to the ground instead of to my face—and I felt the sun shining on my back, and I looked up at its festive glow.
I stood still, took a deep breath, and tossed my hair away from my face. It's time for us to be soaked, safe, and facing the sun. Now it's time to say something.
"There's something I haven't told you yet."
His voice, like the sun rising after the rain, surprised me, but in the opposite way, there was a heavy, warning in it—decisiveness and apology.
"It's about our youngest child," he said, "and our youngest son died last summer." ”
Yes.
"He was run over by a car," he said, "and I ran him over while reversing in the driveway." ”
I stopped again. He stopped. We're all staring ahead.
"His name is Brian. Three years old. ”
"It was like this, I thought he was upstairs, in bed. The others hadn't slept yet, so let him go to bed first. Then he got up again. ”
"I should have taken a look. I should have taken a good look. ”
I think about the moment when Mike got out of the car. He's going to scream. The moment when the child's mother ran out of the house. It's not him, he's not here, it's not happening.
On the upstairs bed.
He started walking again, into the parking lot. I followed him closely. I didn't say anything - not a word of kindness, ordinary, uselessness. We don't need to say those words anymore.
He didn't say that it was his fault, that he could never forget, that he could never forgive himself. But he did his best.
Or, his wife forgave him, but she will never forget it.
I know all this. Now I know he's hit rock bottom. Only he knew—I don't know, and I couldn't know—what the bottom was like. He and his wife knew that it held them together. This kind of thing is either to make people fly apart or tie them together for a lifetime. They don't live at the bottom all the time, but have a common understanding of it – that cold, empty, closed heartland.
This could fall on anyone.
Yes, but it doesn't seem to be like that. It seems to fall on this person or that person specially selected from here and there, one person at a time.
I said, "It's not fair. "I mean, this kind of flying disaster, this devastating blow of evil, is perhaps worse than it happens in a time when it doesn't go alone, in war, or in a catastrophe on earth. Worst of all, a person is forever held fully responsible for his or her actions, which are likely to be unrepresentative, unintentional.
That's what I mean, but there's another layer of meaning that it's unfair, what does that have to do with us?
A kind of almost innocent blunt protest, born of a true self-centeredness. This protest comes from yourself, is not public, and is therefore innocent.
"Ugh." He said softly. There is no such thing as fairness.
"Shane and Johnson don't know," he said, "and no one we've known since we moved." Maybe that's better. Even a few other children - they barely mentioned him again. His name was never mentioned. ”
I'm not someone they met after they moved. Not the people in the normal new life they have struggled to build. I'm just an insider – that's all. An insider he had in private.
"Strange." He said he looked around before opening the car to put his golf bag.
"What happened to the person who parked the car here before? Didn't you see another car parked here when we came in? But I didn't see anyone else on the pitch. I'm just remembering it now. Did you see that? ”
I said no.
"God," he said, "all right." ”
That's a word I heard a lot when I was a kid, and it's the same tone. The bond between one thing and another, either a conclusion or an expression of something or an idea that cannot be said more fully.
"A well is a hole in the ground." I replied jokingly.
A storm put an end to the poolside party. There were too many people to make it impossible for everyone to crowd into the house, and those with children mostly chose to go home.
On the drive back, Mike and I both noticed and spoke of tingling, itching or burning sensations on our bare arms, the backs of our hands and ankles. It's all about the places we didn't get covered by our clothes when we squatted in the grass. I remembered nettles.
We changed into dry clothes and sat in Shani's farmhouse kitchen, recounting our adventures and showing them our rashes.
Shani knew what to do. Took Claire to the local hospital's emergency room yesterday, and it wasn't the first time for the family. One earlier weekend, the boys went to the overgrown mud behind the barn and came back covered in red spots and lumps. The doctor said that he must have touched a nettle. They must be rolling around in there. Some cold compresses were prescribed, as well as antihistamine creams for allergies, and pills. There was still a bottle of ointment that had not been used up, and the pills had not been consumed, for Mark and Gregory had recovered quickly.
We said we didn't need to take the medicine – our situation didn't seem to be that serious.
Shani said she had heard from a woman on the highway who was fueling her car that there was a plant leaf that could be made into the best plaster for nettle abrasions. No need to take medicine or anything, the woman said. That plant seems to be called a cow's foot. Cold feet? The woman said that the plant could be found under a bridge at a fork in the road.
"I can ask her about the exact situation again, and I can go get some back."
She really wanted to try it, she liked folk remedies. We had to remind her that there was already a salve that had been paid for.
Shani loved to take care of us, and in fact, what happened to us filled the home with humor, giving them relief from the tedium of a wet day and wasted plans. The fact that we chose to go out together and had this adventure again – an adventure that left evidence on our bodies – made Shaney and Johnson start teasing us excitedly. His expression was amused, and she looked concerned. If we had brought back the real evidence of the guilt – the scratches on the buttocks, the red spots on the thighs and stomach – they wouldn't have been so happy and forgiving, of course.
It was funny to see us sitting there with our feet in the basin and our arms and hands clumsily wrapped in thick cloths. Claire especially thinks it's funny for us adults to be bare-footed with stupid feet. Mike twisted his long toes at her, causing her to let out a horrified giggle.
All right. If we meet again or again, it's going to be the same old thing. Unusable, duty-aware love (some say it's unreal, because it doesn't risk breaking its neck, turning into a bad joke, or dying sadly) doesn't risk anything, but it's like a sweet trickle, a source hidden deep underground. This new silence pressed down on it like a seal, sealing it away.
During the years when our friendship faded, I didn't ask Shani for any more news of him, nor did I get any news.
Plants with large pinkish-purple flowers are not nettles. I found them to be called Eupatorium. The stinging nettle we came across was an inconspicuous plant with lilac flowers, stalks that stretched out wickedly, and slender, sharp needles that pierced the skin. Those nettles must still be there, on the luxuriant waste lawn, no one notices them.
Translated by Ma Yongbo and Yang Yujun