Category: Canada

Where is that buzzing coming from?  Is it a horsefly?  I hate horseflies. The welts are big and itchy and last for days. Besides, there are no horses on the island. Although the mudroom does smell of horse; an unexplained mystery.

Maybe it’s a deerfly. There are deer on the island.  Four of them. I saw three of the four yesterday, when walking the east side road. I’d not walked this on my own before, so I checked back at every turn to recognize markers, particular trees; No Thru Road sign. We were down a No Thru Road; up the drive and left; stop.

I hate deerflies.

But it’s a bee. I sit in the prow of the house and look up and she’s buzzing; not frantic, not lazy; just moving around in a somewhat disorderly manner.

Nate opens the door to tempt her down. The bee ascends ever higher. NO I CAN’T BE OUT THERE. UP HERE ONLY NO DOWN.

Finally she descends, ending up a few feet from me, testing the window edge where rain had leaked in.

Now a bee outside, bumping the window. OUT HERE, DUDE!

I think I’ll get a glass and reunite her with her sister.

As soon as I form the intent, she soars into the skylight; an only occasionally sociable bee.

I settle in to read my book, accompanied by the occasional musical buzz.

An hour later I look over at the window sill where she has alit and waits expectantly.  I get the glass, slide a paper on under it, and send her outside to soar. Perhaps she’ll find her sister bee, who is out saving other fellow travelers. Perhaps she won’t. I’ll never know.

“Where’s the key? I can’t find the key!” He said, frustration rising in his voice.

I didn’t know and wouldn’t have cared, except that we had carried over six bags of groceries along with our backpacks on the sturdy little seaplane. It was only a mile and a half to the house; a doddle if we didn’t have the groceries. The truck could stay at the dock until we reached his sisters and found out where the key now lived.

“I can’t find the key! Why didn’t I ask them before we came?” Frustration turning to anger at himself. The seaplane would be back on Saturday. We could hump the fresh stuff today and come back for the packaged tomorrow.

But we didn’t have to. Another truck rolled up, an elbow resting on the driver’s rolled-down window, and a voice: “ Do you need some help?”

Well, yes. I explained our situation as I tossed bags and backpacks into the truck bed and hopped in before Nate could say no, we were fine, we’d figure it out.

Benoit had motorcycled to Victoria from Montreal. He still had a soft Quebecois intonation, soothing even when he said “the lady I’m working for; yes, she can be a handful. I’ve had more than my fair share of non-enjoyable moments unfold here. But I’ve also had good times. Take some and leave some, smile and nod. That sometimes works.”

We have taken the road through the farm, forgetting it was no longer in the family. Nate jumps out to shoo the chickens away; they cluck reproachfully, wandering away on their chicken legs. As the truck jounces I’m holding my hat on, remembering all the times I’d hitchhiked last century. Strictly forbidden by the safety folks today, but ah, what memories they are. Lying in the bed of a ‘74 Mazda truck in my sleeping bag, looking up at a new moon and old stars, wondering where I’d be the next day and the next day; thrilled to not know. It could be anywhere. It could be anything.

And now we’re pulling up in front of John’s Boston Whaler. Nate gets out and begins pulling the backpacks and bags, and I tip up and over the truckbed, miss the bumper, and tumble ungracefully to the dirt. “I’m fine,” I say, standing up. Not even much to brush off. “That was a nice fall,” said Benoit. “Nice shoulder tuck.” I preen in the glow of his approval.

“Thanks for the ride!” I say to Benoit. “We have some Okanagan cider and Black Canyon wine, if you want to come by later.” Benoit tips his hat and climbs back into the car; slowly steers his way back on the narrow lane. I walk towards the side of the Shelter Logic; variations of which each house has tucked away to store lumber or firewood or runabouts, towards the house key. We know where that is.

Nate says disapprovingly, “I intentionally waited until he was gone. We don’t know his backstory. He could be anyone and be capable of anything.” My very own Safety First husband. I understand his need to make sure nothing goes wrong here; this is his father’s legacy; his sisters’ summer home. In a sense we are just visitors here. Colorado’s distance doesn’t allow for more than one trip a year, and we’re lucky if we make that. Meg and Gabrielle are here three or four times a summer.

If something goes wrong on our watch, it will fall on Nate’s head, and I’ll hear that familiar rise in his voice; the fear that he’ll do something wrong again and everyone will be disappointed but not really, because what else would you expect from Nate? He strives for perfection and doesn’t achieve it, because no one can. I know I’m not perfect and I know I’ve disappointed but somehow that means less to me than this does to him.

Perhaps it’s the difference between eldest boy child and eldest girl child. I’ll be happy to stretch in the decaying Eames chair, in the house’s prow, reading May Sarton’s House by the Sea, in this house by the sea. He’ll be satisfied with no less than writing the definitive novel about A House by the Sea.

The newly-opened house smells like my grandparents’ basement: damp, still; not moldy, but unused.

The next morning I come out to the deck, where he hunches, intent, over a particularly knotty book of speculative fiction; a glass of red wine to the side.

“Are you reading or are you sad?” I ask

“The two are not mutually exclusive,” he says, a bit stiffly.

We sit in companionable silence.

The Seabus is a large, industrious ferry, and not what I expected. No wind in our faces, no smell of sea air. We are headed to Nate’s 40th high school reunion, and I am both hoping he will find joy at seeing so many old friends, and wondering where I will squirrel myself away to write a tiny memoir of our trip.

It’s a fearsome thing, seeing young pictures on badges and not so young faces above them. I prefer everyone’s current face. Lived in is better than the aimless gaze of youth. And noise. Noise everywhere. People are so pleased to see one another, so leaning in to hear one another. Age’s advantage over youth: the cliques have dissolved and the hurts have mostly been forgotten. Although not by Nate; he still feels unmemorable, unnoticed; not actively disliked but inactively ignored.

I sit, squirreling.

“Hi, who are you?”

“Married to Nate Higgins”

“You just looked so alone, sitting there. I thought maybe you were a journalist.”

I guess I am, if writing journals makes one so.

I’m one of four spouses here. We all have a slightly hunted look. People peer at my badge.

“And you are?”

“Married to Nate Higgins.”

“Ah. Well. It’s nice to meet you.”

Watching my husband find joy in His People gives my heart happiness. Usually he views the world as What Will Next Go Wrong? His Higginsian harrumph does not give me joy, but it does make me smile. Who could not love a man who sees another lose a quarter while pacing at the ferry terminal, who worries away for minutes until he says, abruptly, “I’m going to find that man to give him that quarter.” And returns to tell me “He has scoliosis and wasn’t able to bend down. I think he was a little nonplussed that I thought it important to bring it to him.”

“YOU. PIPE DOWN.”

Aaaaaaagh. My husband, right behind me. He can be loud. And effective. This time he is helping the organizing girls, lined up to give their speeches. “Thank you to . . . . “. “It’s so nice to see so many of you here . . .” “Please remember those who have passed and cannot be . . .”

Many more men than women are here. One of the organizers says “I think the women are all too worried about their looks.” She’s probably right. I know I look at pictures and think Oh My God, Look At Those Fat Arms. But I remind myself that no one else is looking at my fat arms; they’re all looking at their lumpy midsections and lousy hair, none of which I see. I see the radiant smiles and the light in their eyes when they talk about how they met their husbands, the joy their children bring.

Dishes and napkins appear on platters around us, in the light, competent hands of quiet waiters. Smoked salmon and cream cheese and capers on pumpernickel, sliced veg, potstickers, sushi, sashimi, Olives. Oh. Olives with pits. Little odd tasty tartlets. Dishes and napkins unobtrusively disappear.

I, a slightly odd tartlet, squirreled away in a corner, look around; happy with my life, happy with my husband; the one who looks surprised that people like him. Happy.

The first place I look for in a new town is a shoe repair shop. And a used bookstore. It’s not that I need more shoes or books; it’s the smell of leather and old paper. I carry one of my dad’s portfolios for the same reason; the paper is old, the leather laced. Dad stamps every personal item with his name and address. He’s lived in the same house for 45 years. Long ago he also used his social security number until Mom said “Honey? No.”

We are in Ambleside and I not only want but have to find a repair shop. My walking shoes have come apart at the edge. Soon we will be at Granville Public Market and since there are coffee shops and fruit and vegetable and cheese and pickle and hand-crushed olive oil stands, I will need good walking shoes. And when we fly above the Salish Sea to Secretary Island, shoes will be as crucial as raincoats and hats and all the books that I haven’t read; usually lined up in sullen reproach but look – I’m reading you. Stop sullening . No Internet. No shops. No restaurants. Blessed, anticipated, feared silence. We will walk through sheep meadows and apple orchards and search for cult leader Brother XII’s fabled Mason jars filled with gold. Walking, walking, walking.

Where to find a shoe man? An Old English sheepdog drowsed at the feet of the gentle man in the Christian Science Reading Room (I took a Christian Science Monitor Weekly as a thank-you). “I think there’s a shoe repair shop two blocks down,” he said. And so to Marcell’s Shoe Renew.

Marcell was not the old Quebecois shoe man I had pictured. Curt, short, Chinese. He did have the cigarette, so I was one for three.

“Repair?” he asked.

“Yes,” I answered.

“Tuesday.”

“Um, this afternoon?”

“4pm maybe.”

“Thank you.”

And then, I returned at 2pm and hopefully, diffidently, sidled in and raised my eyebrows.

“All done. Ten dollars.”

Sometimes it is the smallest things that make the biggest difference.

June 2 2018