Brad handed Sandra a book called Fields Under Stars. It was a book of poems about relationships, she figured.
One poem was about a husband cheating on his wife. Another, titled Roadblock, was about a young couple that planned to take a car ride and leave their baby on the side of the road.
Sandra read all of them.
“Do you work?” Sandra asks Brad outside. He lights a cigarette.
“I sell houses,” he answers.
When the police came and took Ken out of the house, his sister, Theresa, called them things like pigs and told them to go stuff their fat faces with donuts. She was just a kid then. They kept their course, though; one stood by the door as the other led him by the arm through the house. Theresa followed them out to the street.
“It was a perfect summer day,” she tells Drew as they drive slowly. The roads are damp from rain.
She watched them drive Ken away. They never even looked at her.
“It was as though I wasn’t even there,” she adds to Drew.
It’s winter break. Theresa is a teacher now as is Drew, her current boyfriend. They teach at the same high school. This winter they’re spending part of the break with her family and then plan to drive to Syracuse for the rest of the time.
She tells Drew this story, like it’s the first time, but she’s told him before.
Deb Quinn actually used the word serendipity when she broke off her engagement to Wood Bridges. That was the weirdest thing to Wood. For one he had never heard her use the word before, Deb is an accountant, and two he wasn’t sure that she was even using the word properly. After all, Deb had been on a team-building retreat in Algonquin Park and slept with the Guide. Wood wasn’t sure if that could be considered a serendipitous experience.
He would never tell anyone what he actually did that night. What did he care, anyway? He was on vacation and ‘being on vacation’ meant that you could do things that you normally wouldn’t do. He lay alone on the bed and then picked up the phone to call his wife on the other side of the country.
“What time is it there?”
“We’re sleeping,” she says.
He pauses then looks at a painting of a baby in bathwater on the wall. It was above a desk.
“The cabinet door came off its hinge again,” she says.
“Just tie it with some rope and I’ll fix it later,” he says.
“What do you mean rope?”
“A knot. A running knot. Christ,” he says. “Just tie a god damn slipknot.”
She hangs up the phone. He removes the picture from the wall and leaves the room.
exercise #3, 5/10
During grade nine gym class we would always listen to Nick Franklin’s stories about fingering Trish Chestnut. We’d be out doing laps and as we slowly made our way around the gravel track, Nick would brag about going down on her at the St. Clair Reservoir the weekend before. We all thought he was lying, though, because Trish wasn’t allowed out on weekends. Eventually, we’d duck behind some bushes next to the track and have a rest, while the other guys kept running.
Nick’s mother was blind. His house was dark and dusty. There would be unwashed plates and glasses, open cereal boxes and bowls of stale milk. The stove usually had something half cooked from the night before glued to a pan or pot and there was always a plate of stale chips by the TV. It felt like being frozen in time at the Franklin’s. Some days after school we’d go there and smoke joints on the roof, while the sun set in that way it does in late September. Chestnut red and bright. Indecisive about where to go to next.
exercise #2, 4/26
It was just a quick thud. Then Jack heard a woman on the other side of the street say ‘my God’, but he kept driving, at least for another block and a half before he stopped. By that time, the usually quiet street, with the elm trees that hang lazily over the newly paved road, had become almost violent with the sound of car horns honking and even a grown man slapping the hood of Jack’s car.
Jack had hit a kid on a bike. Not really a kid, more like a young man; a man that had run a quick errand to get milk from the same store where Jack was buying popcorn for the Habs-Bruins game. Jack looked back and saw a crowd of people around the spot where he first heard the thud. He didn’t look back again. Then he opened the door and walked away from the car. No one said a thing to him.
exercise #1, 4/17
