Simple Recipes (8 page)

T
he way you imagine it, the car is speeding on the highway. Over Confederation Bridge, streetlamps flashing by. It’s early
spring and the water below, still partially frozen, shines like a clouded mirror. You saw this bridge on a postage stamp once.
It is thirteen kilometers, made of concrete, and it is not straight. It curves right and left so that no one will fall asleep
at the wheel. In the morning sunshine, the concrete is blindingly white.

“Here we go,” Heather, the driver, says. She has a calm, collected voice.

Charlotte — you saw a picture of her once, dark-brown hair tied in a low ponytail — has her feet
propped up against the dashboard. Her toenails are lacquered a deep sea blue. In the back seat, Jean leans forward, nodding
appreciatively at the coastal landscape. The earth is red, the way they imagined it would be. It is rolling and the colors
segue together, red and coffee brown and deep green. A flower garden on a hill shapes the words
Welcome to New Brunswick

Beside the road there are cows standing in a circle, heads together, like football players in a huddle. Charlotte points through
the windshield at them. “Strange sight,” she says. Her words get lost under the radio and the engine accelerating, but the
other two nod and laugh. They wave to the cows. The car is shooting down the highway, trailing over the yellow line and back
again, down to a curve in the stretch of road where they slip out of sight.

This country is a mystery to you. The farthest east you have been is Banff, Alberta. To imagine these three women then, Charlotte
and Heather and Jean, you have to make everything up as you go. Take Atlantic Canada, for instance. You remember postcards
of white clapboard churches, high steeples glinting in the sun. You’ve never met Charlotte, but you picture yourself with
the three of them, driving by, snapping pictures. Along winding dirt roads, they chance upon coastal towns, lobster boats
bobbing on the water. Or
else abandoned canneries, paint bleached and peeling, the wood still smelling like the sea.

Instead of working, you daydream or sit cross-legged on the couch roaming the television channels. For you, news is a staple
food. There’s a story about a freighter that sprang a leak crossing the Atlantic Ocean. Thousands of boxes fell into the water.
Months later, the cargo — a load of bathtub toys — washes up on the shoreline. Children and adults comb the beach. “I am six
and three-quarters years old,” one boy tells the cameras proudly. “I have collected fifty-three rubber ducks.” He smiles,
his pockets and hands overflowing with yellow.

You’re writing a book about glass, the millions of glass fishing floats that are travelling across the Pacific Ocean. They
come in all shapes, rolling pins, Easter eggs, perfect spheres. And the colors, cranberry, emerald, cobalt blue. In North
America, these glass floats wash up in the hundreds. Decades ago, boys and girls ran to gather them in, the buoys shimmering
at their feet. They sold them for pocket money. Now, the floats are harder to come by. In the wake of storms, collectors pace
the beach. Every so often, a rare one appears. Recently, on Christmas morning, a man and his granddaughter came across a solid
black orb. Shine it as he did, the glass float remained dark as a bowling ball. The float has no special markings and, to
date, its origins are unknown.

For hours, you stare at the computer screen thinking about the load of bathtub toys. You have far too much time on your hands.
Sometimes a thought settles in your mind like a stray hair and refuses to leave. Like now, you remember your husband coming
in after a jog in the rain. He went straight into the bathroom. When you heard the sound of water drumming against the bathtub,
you snuck inside, steam and hot air hitting your lungs. For a full minute, you watched your husband shower, his back to you.
The skin on your face broke into a sweat. You watched his body, the runner’s muscles, the tendons. You reached your hand out
and placed it flat against his spine, where the vertebrae curved into sacrum. He didn’t even startle.

You think now that he always knew you were there. You think of the million ways he could have read this gesture. But what
did you mean, putting your hand out? Perhaps you only wanted to surprise him. Perhaps you only wanted to see if through the
steam and heat he was truly there, or just a figment of your imagination.

Sometimes when they’re driving, no one wants to stop. Like they’re married to the highway, the exit signs flashing past. They’re
thousands of exits away from Vancouver.

It’s food that lures them off the road. A Tim Horton’s at the side of the highway, beckoning. You watch them giggle into a
booth, styrofoam cups of coffee balanced in their trembling, stir-crazy fingers. The first half-dozen doughnuts go just like
that. Heather lines up for more. “Get the fritters,” Jean says, laughing, her voice shrill in the doughnut shop. “I just
love
those fritters.” Heather buys a dozen. They’re sugar-crazed by the end of it, strung out on the sidewalk in front, their
legs stretched in front of them.

At night, the three of them pile into a double bed. “I’ve forgotten what the rest of my life is like,” Heather says. They’ve
each written up a handful of postcards, but have yet to send them off.

Charlotte lies back on her pillow. Her hair has come loose from its elastic band and it floats down beside her. “Don’t you
ever wonder what it would be like
not
to go back?”

“If I had a million dollars,” Heather says.

“Don’t you ever think, though, overland, we could drive to Chile. If we just started going in a different direction. Instead
of going west, we could be in Chile.”

The next morning they continue west and no one complains. Outside Thunder Bay, they pull over at the statue of Terry Fox.
Charlotte sits down on the stone steps and cries. She can’t stop. “It’s the fatigue,” she tells them, struggling to catch
her breath. “God, I’m tired of sleeping in motel rooms every night.
Let’s pull out the tents and camp. To hell with indoor plumbing. Can’t we do that?” The tears are streaming down her face,
mascara thick on her cheeks.

Later on, in the dark of their tent, she tells them how she remembers the day he died. When she describes it — how she stood
at her elementary school in a jogging suit, listening to the announcement on the radio, watching the flag lowered to half-mast
— she feels her life coming back to her. Bits and pieces she thought were long forgotten. Before that moment, she was too
young to fully understand that death could happen. But then the young man on the television, the one with the curly hair and
the grimace, he died and it broke her heart.

Your husband has the body and soul of a long-distance runner. He is a long-haul kind of man. Even asleep, he has that tenacity.
At a moment’s notice, he’ll be up again, stretched and ready. Unlike you. When you lie down, you doubt your ability to up
yourself again. You are the Sloppy Joe of women. You watch TV lying on the couch, you read in bed, curled up on one side.
Sometimes, when the lights are out, you drag your computer into bed with you. While your husband snores, you write about the
woman who owned four thousand glass floats. An arsonist torched the building she lived in. The apartment collapsed but,
miraculously, no one was killed. The morning after, passers-by came and picked the surviving balls from the rubble — black
and ashy and melted down.

At night, in the glow of the screen, you type to the up, down of your husband’s breathing. It’s difficult to look at him in
these moments. His face is so open, so slack-jawed, vulnerable and alone. Both of you have always been solitary people. Like
big cedars, your husband says, bulky and thick, growing wider year by year. You are charmed by your husband’s metaphors, the
quiet simplicity of them.

Your husband has never been unfaithful to you. But only a few months ago, you found the letter he had written to Charlotte.
They had grown up together and, in the letter, he confessed that he loved her. Your husband left the letter, and her reply,
face up on the kitchen table. You imagine the instant he realized, standing on the warehouse floor, broom in one hand. He
tried to call you, but you just stood there, letting the telephone ring and ring. When you read his confession on that piece
of looseleaf, your husband’s perfect script stunned you. You thought of his face, his brown eyes and the receding slope of
his hairline, the way he sat at the kitchen table reading the paper, frowning, his lips moving silently to read the words.

The woman, Charlotte, had written back. She had told him to pull himself together. She’d returned his letter, telling him
that their friendship would never
recover. And then he left both letters on the kitchen table. Not maliciously. You refuse to believe he did it maliciously.
Your husband is not that kind of man. He is the kind of person who honors privacy, who can carry a secret until the end. Shell-shocked
and hurt, he must have forgotten everything.

You’ve imagined it perfectly. Before he left for work, he took both letters and laid them on the kitchen table. He read them
over and over. He’d offered to leave his marriage for her, but she had turned him down flat.
Pull yourself together.
He made a pot of coffee and poured himself a cup. He put on his shoes, then his jacket. The envelope was on the counter.
He folded it up and tucked it in his pocket. Hours later, while his mind wandered back and forth, he pulled it out, only to
discover the envelope was empty. The letters were still face up on the kitchen table, where his wife, sleep-creased and hungry,
had found them. He called, but the phone just rang and rang.

That night, you went out and didn’t come home. You climbed on a bus and crossed the city, crying intermittently into the sleeve
of your coat. At a twenty-four-hour diner, you ordered a hamburger and fries and sat there until dawn, when the early risers
started showing up for breakfast. You read the paper from the night before, and then the paper from that day, cover to cover,
and then you walked home, through the tree-lined streets and the slow muscle of traffic
heading downtown. At home, your husband was already gone. You turned on the TV, then you lay down in bed and slept for hours.

You’ve pictured it from beginning to end, upside and down, in every direction. You’ve pictured it until it’s made you sick
and dizzy. Your husband has never been unfaithful to you, but something in your life is loose now. A pin is undone. When he
came home and lay down beside you, you told him, “We’ll work things out,” and he, ashen-faced, nodded.

His skin was pale in the white sheets and you hovered above him, kissing his skin, trying not to miss anything. You have never
been unfaithful. That’s what you were thinking every time you kissed him. Look at me, you thought. I have never been unfaithful,
and here I am, kissing you. You looked straight at him. Your husband’s heart was broken and it wasn’t you who did it. That’s
what you thought, when he pushed his face against your chest, his body taut and grieving.

There’s a memory in your mind that you can’t get rid of. The two of you in bed, lying next to one another like fish on the
shore, watching images of Angola. Out on Oak Street there’s the white noise of traffic, endlessly coming. Catastrophe. Your
husband said that line again, “Too many cameras and not enough food,” and the two of you watched a woman weep.
She wiped her eyes in her dirty handkerchief. And you, on the other side of the world, on another planet, watched soundlessly.

Instead of writing your book, you are watching the midday news. Like some kind of teenage kid, you’re lying on the couch,
the remote cradled on your stomach, hand in the popcorn. The world is going to hell in a handbasket. You think this but never
say it aloud because it’s terrible to be so cynical. But look at the world. While your city works its nine-to-five, bombs
detonate, planes crash, accidents happen. You sound like your mother. While your marriage stutters on, revolutions rise and
fall, blooming on the midday news like some kind of summer flower. There’s dinner to be made. Lately you have discovered your
weak heart. Instead of sitting at the kitchen table writing your book, you’re watching flood waters in Central America, you’re
watching Dili, people in trucks with rifles strung on their arms. You’ve never even heard a shot fired. You know you think
about your marriage far too much. You know that, given the chance, you will sit all day on your couch like this, watch what
happens in another country. There is a woman clinging to a rooftop. A flood in Mozambique. A lack of supplies, everything
coming too late. By morning, the water may rise over the spot where she sits. You want to get on a plane. You who have always
wanted to please
people, you want to sandbag and work. You know what you think of this woman on the rooftop — she did nothing to deserve this.
But what would she think of you? She would look at you with disbelieving eyes. She would look at you with only the faintest
expression of pity.

Through small-town Ontario, the three women snap photos of water towers. While you watch from the background, Charlotte climbs
through the passenger window, her body swaying recklessly out. When she ducks back in, her hair is wild, blown frizzy around
her head. She smiles a lopsided grin.

Past hockey arenas and high-steepled churches, blue sky over dry fields, they’re singing along to the radio. Looking forward
to night, when they will pitch their tent under cover of stars, break out the beer bottles which clank in the trunk. They
can see themselves dancing carelessly in the hot evening. Charlotte, drunk and spinning, saying, “Girls, I’ve known you all
my life. What would I do without you, girls?” How bittersweet it is, when she says that. How she wonders what it would be
like to be nineteen again, or twenty-one. But she’ll settle for this, curled up with her friends in front of the fire. When
they arrive in Vancouver, her life will return to normal. Heading
home to Saskatoon again, catching up on all the time she’s missed.