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I had known this man before I left my marriage and he was the immediate reason I had left it, though I pretended to him-and to everyone else-that this was not so. When I met him I tried to be carefree and to show an independent spirit. We exchanged news-I made sure I had news-and we laughed, and went for walks in the ravine, but all I really wanted was to entice him to have sex with me, because I thought the high enthusiasm of sex fused people’s best selves. I was stupid about these matters, in a way that was very risky, particularly for a woman of my age. There were times when I would be so happy, after our encounters-dazzled and secure-and there were other times when I would lie stone-heavy with misgiving. After he had taken himself off, I would feel tears ru
In one of these moods I phoned Su
“It’s beautiful here,” I said.
But the country we were driving through meant nothing to me. The hills were a series of green bumps, some with cows. There were low concrete bridges over weed-choked streams. Hay was harvested in a new way, rolled up and left in the fields.
“Wait till you see the house,” Su
She did not ask me-was it delicacy or disapproval?-about my new life. Maybe she just did not know how to begin, could not imagine it. I would have told her lies, anyway, or half-lies. It was hard to make the break but it had to be done. I miss the children terribly but there is always a price to be paid. I am learning to leave a man free and to be free myself. I am learning to take sex lightly, which is hard for me because that’s not the way I started out and I’m not young but I am learning.
A weekend, I thought. It seemed a very long time.
The bricks of the house showed a scar where a verandah had been torn away. Su
“Mark lost the ball,” the older one-Gregory-shouted.
Su
“Hello. Mark threw the ball over the shed and now we can’t find it.”
The three-year-old girl, born since I’d last seen Su
Su
“It’s you,” we said, almost on the same breath. We laughed, I rushed towards him and he moved towards me. We shook hands.
“I thought it was your father,” I said.
I don’t know if I’d got as far as thinking of the well driller. I had thought, Who is that familiar-looking man? A man who carried his body lightly, as if he would think nothing of climbing in and out of wells. Short-cropped hair, going gray, deep-set light-colored eyes. A lean face, good-humored yet austere. A customary, not disagreeable, reserve.
“Couldn’t be,” he said. “Dad’s dead.”
Johnston came into the kitchen with the golf bags, and greeted me, and told Mike to hurry up, and Su
“When we were kids,” Mike said.
Johnston said, “Really? That’s remarkable.” And we all said together what we saw he was about to say.
“Small world.”
Mike and I were still looking at each other and laughing-we seemed to be making it clear to each other that this discovery which Su
All afternoon while the men were gone I was full of happy energy. I made a peach pie for our supper and read to Claire so that she would settle for her nap, while Su
The things Mike remembered were different from the things I remembered. He remembered walking around on the narrow top of some old cement foundation and pretending it was as high as the tallest building and that if we stumbled we would fall to our deaths. I said that must have been somewhere else, then I remembered the foundations for a garage that had been poured, and the garage never built, where our lane met the road. Did we walk on that?
We did.
I remembered wanting to holler loudly under the bridge but being afraid of the town kids. He did not remember any bridge.
We both remembered the clay ca
We were washing the dishes together, so that we could talk all we wanted without being rude.
He told me how his father had died. He had been killed in a road accident, coming back from a job near Bancroft.
“Are your folks still alive?”
I said that my mother was dead and that my father had married again.
At some point I told him that I had separated from my husband, I was living in Toronto. I said that my children had been with me for a while but were now on a holiday with their father.
He told me that he lived in Kingston, but had not been there very long. He had met Johnston recently, through his work. He was, like Johnston, a civil engineer. His wife was an Irish girl, born in Ireland but working in Canada when he met her. She was a nurse. Right now she was back in Ireland, in County Clare, visiting her family. She had the kids with her.
“How many kids?”
“Three.”
When the dishes were finished we went into the front room and offered to play Scrabble with the boys, so that Su
“What did I tell you?” said Johnston.
“It’s the same game,” Gregory said. “You said we could finish the game and it’s the same game.”
“I bet,” said Su
She said it was a lovely night, and she and Johnston were getting spoiled, having live-in baby-sitters.
“Last night we actually went to the movie and Mike stayed with the kids. An old movie. Bridge over the River Kwai.”
“On, “Johnston said. “On the River Kwai.”
Mike said, “I’d seen it anyway. Years ago.”
“It was pretty good,” said Su
“No, it wouldn’t,” Johnston said, in the tone of somebody who had been through this argument before. “Where’s the suspense?”
“I agree with Su
“Mike?” said Johnston.
“I thought it was pretty good,” Mike said. “Pretty good the way it was.”
“Guys against the women,” Johnston said. “Guys win.”