Kathleen Winter - Annabel

“You have a fine husband, if you compare him to all the dishonest men in the world,” Eliza Goudie said. “There’s a lot to be said for a modest, honest man.” This was a new point of view for Eliza. She had finally allowed her doctor to prescribe her an antidepressant medication, and had become a different person.

“You were hardly depressed before,” Jacinta said. “You were euphoric a lot of the time.”

“That was my problem. I was so euphoric I couldn’t sit still. Now I’m much more balanced.”

Jacinta’s friendships in Croydon Harbour were coloured by the fact that she had come from St. John’s, though she had been here ten years. They were also coloured by her nature, which, like Treadway’s, was reclusive. It was unusual for her to come down the hill, as she had now done, knock on Eliza’s door, and tell her friend she was ready to leave her husband. She could not say the real reason was that Treadway refused to let Wayne act like a girl. Nobody understood except Thomasina, and Thomasina was in London. Her last postcard said she loved London and did not want to leave it. There was enough theatre that you could go to a different play every night of the year and not see the same thing twice. Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, Agatha Christie, and young writers no one outside London knew yet. Thomasina loved all of it, and she was staying in a hostel so she could stay longer and see all the plays she wanted.

So Jacinta fled to Eliza Goudie. Of all Jacinta’s Labrador friends, Eliza was the one who confessed the most. She had told Jacinta everything about Edward, her own husband, and had explained her affair with Tony Ollerhead, the geography teacher, in vivid detail. Things Jacinta had not wanted to know, she now knew, such as the colour of Tony Ollerhead’s underpants — warm chocolate brown — and the fact that they fitted his body tightly, unlike Edward’s plaid boxers. Mr. Ollerhead wore Old Spice, and had a fine trail of silky hair leading from his navel to his pubic bone; hair that turned gold in candlelight. Jacinta had heard all about this while she was trying to seal two dozen jars of partridgeberry jam.

“If I remember correctly,” Jacinta said after she had left Treadway and the bag of onions, “you weren’t too fussy about honest husbands a month ago. You could have taken honest husbands to the edge of Shag Rock and pushed them off.”

At this point Eliza would have come to her senses, Jacinta thought, had she not been drugged. They would have laughed until tears came, and that was what friends were for. Jacinta had not indulged as much as her other friends had in talking about the folly of husbands, but she had done it at times when the pressure became great. She had not expected Eliza to defend Treadway. But then, she had not confessed her whole story.

“He doesn’t even try to understand beauty.”

“Since when did you expect him to?”

“I can create my own romance. But Wayne is only a child. How could Treadway stamp out such a sweet thing?” She had told Eliza the bridge was gone, but it didn’t seem such a big deal, somehow, when she told it. It did not seem like what it was to her: a kind of annihilation by Treadway of some part of his own child’s soul.

“Treadway is a woodsman and a trapper,” Eliza said. “He is a good provider. He has never let you down, and he never will. You could go off on your own for ten years and come home and Treadway Blake would take you back. No matter what, you can always rely on him.”

“I don’t think he’d take me back. I think he’d find another woman after three months. I think I’m completely replaceable.”

“You’re not. And I’ll tell you why. Treadway Blake is an intelligent man, and he knows a fantastic woman when he sees one, and he adores you.”

“If I adored someone I would tell them, in plain English.”

“Well he’s not going to, because that’s not his strength, and you should be used to that by now. Go to the doctor and get some Valium. It has changed my whole life. I love my husband. I’ve finally seen him from a proper perspective.”

“You mean you no longer feel like throwing up every time he walks in the house?”

“No. As a matter of fact, our sex life is phenomenal. I sent away for three garter belts for myself and two black jockstraps for Edward out of this catalogue I got from Montreal. You should go through it. I leap into bed with my husband. Leap, I’m telling you. I don’t know how he put up with me before. It’s all part of his basic goodness. And your husband is basically good too. I wish you could see it, for your sake. Go to your doctor and get the Valium. I promise you, you won’t regret it. I leap into the bed.”

Jacinta, despite her wishes, envisioned Eliza leaping into bed, highly elevated and in a kind of supernatural slow motion, in her garter belt, and Edward waiting for her clad only in his garment from Montreal. It was not a pretty sight, and Jacinta wished, not for the first time, that she were more honest with her friends. She wished she could tell Eliza to stop taking the drug that skewed the truth for the sake of convenience. She wished she had told all her friends, the day Wayne was born, that he had been born a hermaphrodite. She wished she had not locked the secret inside her, where it clamoured to get out. Treadway would have just had to deal with it. The beautiful bridge would still be up, with her child on it, singing and drawing with his best friend, a girl. Her child would not have to come home this evening to find the bridge had disappeared.

“Why does Treadway have no idea that he has no right to destroy someone else’s possession?”

But her friend was unmoved. “The property is Treadway’s. It’s on Treadway’s land, and a man’s land belongs to no one but himself.”

Jacinta thought of all the times she had listened to Eliza. No matter how outrageous Eliza’s reasoning, Jacinta had tried to understand it. Even now Jacinta did not argue about the Valium, though she felt Eliza’s new outlook was a chemically induced illusion. This is my problem, Jacinta thought. I am dishonest. I never tell the truth about anything important. And as a result, there is an ocean inside me of unexpressed truth. My face is a mask, and I have murdered my own daughter.

Roland Shiwack gave Wayne his eight dollars, and Wayne walked home feeling the bills in his pocket. He could buy supplies for the bridge: some Caramel Log bars, and Cheezies, and a couple of cans of Sprite. It would be great if he and Wally had some art supplies they could leave there instead of bringing them back and forth from home. There was a spyglass in the Eaton’s catalogue. He could save up for it and use it to watch the constellations. He could lie on his bridge and find the magpie bridge in the sky. He could save up for a new sketchbook.

There were dragonflies, ladybugs, and strange, flat bugs whose copper-coloured carapaces glittered amazingly. If you had a spyglass you could watch the secret life of the creek and take scientific notes or make accurate sketches. Yes, he would put money aside, and see what other work he could get, and buy the spyglass. If he saved his whole eight dollars and forgot about the junk food, he’d need only seven more days’ work from Roland Shiwack. And Wally could contribute too. She helped Gertie Slab with her grade four homework for three dollars an hour, and she babysat.

The great thing about walking home with eight dollars in your pocket was that you could imagine spending it, over and over, on a whole bunch of different things you might want, and it was fun to envision all of them.

By the time Wayne had walked up the hill he had spent the money, in his mind, on Caramel Logs, on the spyglass, and on things for other people. There was an Italian cheese grater his mother wanted but would not send for from the catalogue. She had a grater but it was ugly. The Italian one grated hard and soft cheeses. The top had a knob that fit snugly in your hand, and it would never rust. And there was a tool in the Hudson’s Bay store that his father looked at every time he went in. It was a long iron bar, called a pince-monseigneur, that you could use to lever just about any heavy object from one place to another. Treadway had used an ordinary crowbar to move all the boulders from the front yard except one, a piece of pink granite near his mother’s old-fashioned roses. That granite needed the pince-monseigneur, but Treadway did not want to spend thirty-five dollars on something he considered a toy.