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Authors: Andre Alexis

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     – Well, it's not as if I wasn't ever going to speak to him again
and said
     – Okay
though it had just rained and the ground would be impassable in places.
     – I don't want to hear anything about how much you love me, she added.
     The woods had already begun to change colour. Some of the leaves had turned
yellow and orange, and the pine trees, encouraged by the rain, spread their
scent as if they were in mating season. The ground was muddy in spots. The only
practical thing to wear were wellingtons and, of course, stepping in the wrong
place made it feel as if your boots wanted to stay behind.
     Robbie arrived before Elizabeth. It was not yet dark but he'd brought a flashlight, just in case they talked until darkness. Not that either
of them needed light to find their way home, but it occurred to him that it
might be gentlemanly to have a flashlight to offer, on the off chance she
wanted one.
     Elizabeth, when she arrived, was all business.
     – What do you want? she asked.
     – I just …
he said, suddenly self-conscious.
     – I just wanted to say …
he said, unwilling to say much, for fear it be the wrong thing.
     – I just wanted to tell you how much I miss you.
     – It's always about you, she said, about how much you love me, how much you miss me.
Have you thought for a second about how I feel?
     Risking everything, he answered honestly.
     – No, he said, I haven't.
     – Why not?
     – I'm a little … I'm not smart like you are, Lizzie. I try to think about others, but I don't always manage to in time. But I do think about you and how you make me feel. I
haven't always done the right thing. I'm sorry.
     He meant it and she knew he meant it. After all, knowing someone well means
knowing all the signs of genuine emotion, and they had known each other since
they were children. She knew that he was struggling to say what she already
knew, struggling to say it with the right words, though so little of what
anything means comes through words. Here he was, wishing for an eloquence his
body and spirit already possessed. What good would it have done for him to go
on like some lost troubadour? What was that poem they'd studied in Grade 12?
     
     When I see leaves, flowers and pears
          appearing on the branches and hear
          the birds in the woods sing,
          then Love buds, blooms and bears fruit in me …
     Devil-tongued bastards, all of them. Anyway, she already knew that he loved
her, missed her and wanted her back. What she didn't know was if any of that counted.
     – You're sorry, she said. What does that change?
     –I don't know, Lizzie, but it should change something, shouldn't it?
     – Yes, she said, I guess it's nice to know you're sorry.
     – I'm not saying you have to or anything, but I'd still like to …
     – You want me to marry you, after what you put me through?
     – I'm not saying you have to or anything. I'm just saying maybe think about it if you still love me, 'cause none of this is ever going to happen again. I swear it on the Bible.
     How little he knew himself. If it was true that he hadn't sought to be in love with two women at once, how could he possibly know if it
would or would not happen again? And now she had a perfectly good idea how he
would behave if it did. The next time, however, the next time, if she married
him, there might be children involved. Would that stop him? Or was it
amor vincit omnia
 forever and ever? There was no telling, from this side of the divide, just what
he might do.
     – What if it does happen again? she asked.
     – It won't, he answered. Lightning doesn't strike the same place twice.
     Again his lack of self-knowledge was flagrant. But how little he knew her! It
was bad enough that he'd not known how hurt she would be by this Jane Richardson business, but he
rarely knew how to reassure her when she needed it most. He had known her for
as long as she had known him. How could he not know her feelings?
     – What do you think I'm feeling now? she asked.
     – I think you're feeling like I don't know what you're feeling, he answered.
     She looked at him – his brown hair pasted to his forehead, his eyes looking into hers – and saw that his attention was entirely given to her, as it rarely was except
when they were making love. It occurred to her that he did know her somewhat
and that at times he did have the right answer. These were thoughts that,
despite herself, gave her pleasure.
     Well, after all, it took time to fall out of love. She was vulnerable and knew
it.
     – I've got to go home, she said.
     – You want me to come with you? I brought a flashlight.
     – No, I don't want you to walk me home. I'll call you.
     
In the end, if you could call it winning, she had, she supposed, won. She had
Robbie to herself, if she wanted him.
     She should have been … if not pleased, then at least satisfied. But it was not so simple. What was
there to feel satisfied about, really? She had learned a lesson about her fiancé and it had marred her picture of him. Also, the idea that she had ‘won' him from Jane Richardson was repulsive. And again: by now, it seemed everyone
between Barrow and Sarnia knew her business. One day, she'd gone to Petrolia to see Dr. Reidl and even there it seemed people knew all
about her situation. The way they looked at her with sympathy. Christ on a
cross! Nowadays, everyone had sympathy for her, and the more sympathy they had
the worse it was. She couldn't give change without feeling the weight of an unstated ‘you poor girl.' Hard to find satisfaction in any of that.
     Then there was
the
 question. Did she still want Robbie? Not did she still love him. She did, she
supposed, if only out of long-standing habit. But that did not mean she would
do anything for him. So, did she want to marry the man? The answer was yes and
no. It had been yes and no for some time. She had not, for instance, cancelled
the wedding. She'd meant to, but hadn't got round to it while her friends and family made ready for the happy day. Had
she been hoping for Robbie to come back to her? Not that she was aware. Had she
been hoping for another husband? No, not at all. Why then had she not been able
to speak the handful of simple words: ‘I can't marry him, after what he's put me through'?
     Now, unexpectedly, it was a question of keeping the day of her wedding. She
could, if she wanted, marry the man she'd been hoping to marry. Perhaps it really was significant that she hadn't called the wedding off. Perhaps it meant that, deep within, there had been
(there was still) an undiminished hope that Robbie would return to her. Maybe
the love she'd felt for him would survive its transplant to this new world in which she was
not sure what she wanted.
It had been a rainy day, the rain falling slantwise against the stained glass of
the church so that Alexis the beggar seemed to be begging underwater.
     After a confession during which she'd told the priest everything (all her feelings, all that had happened between
her and Robbie), Elizabeth and Father Pennant sat together at the front of the
church.
     – I think you're right, he said. Love isn't the only thing to consider. Love between a man and a woman is perishable
because men and women are fallible. There is no perfect love, here below. You
love him and he's shown that he loves you … in his way. You need to decide if that's enough, but, in my opinion, you're fortunate. You know the worst of him. You know his selfishness and his
thoughtlessness. You've had your eyes opened. If you can still love him, under the circumstances,
that's a blessing. And then, too, maybe you've gone through the worst.
     – You think so?
     – I don't know for sure, he answered, because I don't know Robbie well. But I know you well enough to guess that you know the
answer. I think you have a good idea if worse is to come. It's a matter of listening to yourself.
     Thunder sounded and the rain renewed its onslaught on the saints. Hard to know
one's own mind in the din.
     – You've been helpful, Elizabeth said.
     From that moment she tried to listen to her own feelings. Had she gone through
the worst? Was Robbie capable of putting her through unendurable humiliation?
Or was he, as he insisted, a man who had been ‘prey to a love he couldn't fight off'? (Hearing those words made her wonder if he'd been reading, though, of course, he hadn't finished a book since they were in high school. The words had almost certainly
been Jane's.) Were there other loves out there to prey on him? Could she endure those if
she had to? ‘Listening to herself' brought neither comfort nor certainty. What it brought were questions about
herself, about her capacity to forgive, about her ability to imagine the worst
and yet to go on in a way that would allow her the self-respect she needed to
survive.
     Her wedding was a month away. Elizabeth allowed herself this thought: if, on
the morning of her wedding, she decided she could not live with Robbie Myers,
she would say no at the altar. It would be a costly and cruel no, but she would
say it, and the idea she
could
 say no brought with it a yes. On the appointed day there would be a wedding. She
could not say if there would be a marriage.
Father Pennant was not at peace with himself either.
     To begin with, there was the situation with Lowther. He was no longer annoyed
with Lowther. He was worried about him. Lowther had begun to accept that he was
in perfect health and that the chances of his dying were slim, but acceptance
had brought distance. Lowther executed his tasks and practised his cello, but
he no longer followed Father Pennant around, preferring his own company and the
comfort of lugubrious music – all of it for the cello, all of it sounding dirge-like.
     Then there were his own feelings of anomie. It was taxing to sense one was not
part of the community in which one found oneself. He went about his work,
comforting the bereaved, marrying happy couples, visiting the sick and infirm.
But he was himself in need of a comfort that did not come. What relief he took,
he took from the fields around town, drawing pictures of the flora and fauna in
his notebooks.
     Sometime after speaking to Liz Denny about her marriage, he went for a walk
that took him miles out of town to an abandoned farm. The farm had once
belonged to George Preston, a farmer who had been well-loved by all in Barrow.
Preston had died a year before Father Pennant's arrival and in that time the farm had been untended, waiting for a buyer, its
apple trees and rows of strawberries growing wild. Behind the orchard and the
field of strawberries, there was a wooded area through which a shallow creek
ran. Father Pennant made for the creek, looking for toads, fish, moss, reeds
and cattails.
     It had rained only hours before he set off, so the land smelled of greenery and
muck. The congeries of smells was intoxicating. How many things he could
distinguish by their scent! There was everything from the wet earth itself to
the trunks of fallen trees with their ­tenacious mushrooms, from the sweet smell of rotting apples to the slightly sour
odour of the creek bed. And all of it brought solace.
     He had followed the creek for a while when he heard bells and bleating and saw,
on the opposite side of the creek, four sheep: a group of three following
behind one that did not have a bell and did not bleat. Beautiful creatures:
dark-legged, dark-faced, their white fleeces recently shorn, their ears
twitching as a cloud of midges pestered them. He was about to move on when, in
an odd instant, he had the distinct impression that the lead sheep had spotted
him and wished to approach. The sheep stepped into the creek and, almost
daintily, forded the shallow stream. It was unnerving to watch.
     Father Pennant stood still where he was. The sheep, once it had crossed, shook
itself the way dogs do, and a frisson travelled back and forth along its
whitish flank. The sheep then approached, until it was a yard or so before him.
     – Walk with me, Christopher, said the sheep.
     It then turned away and followed the bank of the creek, taking the path Father
Pennant himself might have. This, thought Father Pennant, was an excellent
illusion, better than the gypsy moths had been and better by far than the
ridiculous walk on water the mayor had taken. Having been prepared for the
unusual by the previous ‘miracles,' he was amused, not at all awed or frightened by the sheep. He looked for a
speaker or microphone where, no doubt, the bell collar should have been. Was
the sheep even real, he wondered, and found himself admiring all the work that
must have gone into the illusion.

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