When Is a Man (26 page)

Two days before New Year's Eve, Paul went upstairs to give Sonya some new interviews to transcribe. She puttered around her living room in a dangerously short, cable-knit sweater dress, her legs strong, lean, and pale, her hair wet from the shower. It struck him, absurd as the idea was, that she might be teasing him or even flirting. Not in a serious way, just wanting not to be bored or frustrated, or wanting to be acknowledged. He asked about Jory and she shrugged. “He goes a bit crazy when he's stuck in town. Helps to get on top of the mountains,” she said. “More sun, more open sky. But he pushes too hard. Can't say no to anything.”

He remembered the day he first met Jory on the river. “I've seen him afraid before.”

She looked surprised for a moment, then shook her head. “Not with his friends around, you haven't.” She asked about Gina, and laughed when he became flustered. “Kind of old to blush, aren't you?” she said. She told him she was glad he'd hooked up with someone good, in a town where the pickings were lean. “You've got some swagger in your step,” Sonya said. “Funny how getting laid gives you confidence.”

“Oh, it still freaks me out,” he said, wanting to be honest with her, but not too much, obviously. “It's your generation that has all the confidence. It took me all my twenties to figure out sex, to get comfortable with it. And now.” He stopped himself.

“And now you've got all that experience. Lucky her, right?” She laughed, then gave him a look. “My generation. Jesus. You're not that old, you know.”

He left, his mind buzzing. Was it because of Gina? Did Sonya see him now as a normal guy, not the mysterious loner downstairs—did that bring certain instincts to life? Or was he just imagining things, his mind becoming clouded again with sex?

Ever since Basket Creek, he'd been heading, he believed, toward a life that was less impulsive and self-serving, more rational than his old one. Gina and Sonya threatened to derail that sense of calm. Sex was becoming a renewed obsession, pushing aside his research, even the mystery of Ready's drowning. A barrage of erotic imagery, urges with no outlet. His subconsious trotted out various scenes, past performances outlining the mechanics of sex, nearly instructional in nature—just in case his impotence was rooted in forgetting. It wasn't. He remembered quite clearly, thank you, what lay out of reach.

Dr. Norcross was a slim man with a rugged but youthful face, despite the flecks of grey in his beard and at his temples. He had a bounce to his step and abnormally perfect posture, neck stretching upward as though he were about to levitate out of his leather shoes. Beneath his white smock he wore earthy colours, a brown wool sweater and green hemp jeans. He seemed fascinated, almost delighted, by Paul's unusual history, and went through the checkup and flipped through his file humming some upbeat tune.

“Blood draw in two months,” the doctor said. “Your
PSA
.”

Paul nodded impatiently.

“That's a significant event. Are you nervous?”

“I'd forgotten all about it.”

The doctor gave him a skeptical look and Paul gave him a sheepish grin. “How about the incontinence?”

“It still catches me by surprise.”

“Don't be disappointed by the rare event, but I think in your case, being so young, you'll have fewer incidents as time goes on.” He pencilled something on Paul's file. “You said you had questions about exercise.”

“I spent a month lifting things, back in October.”

“No harm done, it seems.” Dr. Norcross chuckled. “I knew a man in his sixties who played tennis a month after his prostatectomy. How about sexual function?”

Paul shifted on his seat, wary. The doctor nodded. “Sometimes it takes a year, maybe more, barring complications.”

“I understand.” He was, in a sense, relieved. Absolved. The comfort of a professional opinion, the way it permits you to settle into your state of being, the truth of things.

“Still, I'm a bit surprised. Maybe you're setting too high a standard.”

“How do you mean?”

“Have you heard the term
stuffable erections
?”

“Have I . . . no.”

The doctor smiled at Paul's reddening face. “Men under sixty report the highest recovery rate for potency, which we define as an erection sufficient for vaginal penetration. With help—certain positions and so on—
sufficient
is a flexible term.”

“Pardon the pun.”

“Exactly.” Dr. Norcross marked something down. “So, no success with the Viagra yet.”

“Pardon?” His sense of resignation, which had come to him easily, almost pleasantly, fell away. Paul sat frozen like a child caught red-handed in a shameful act.

“Your file from the Centre says you were prescribed Viagra—to start two days after your surgery.”

“Was I?” His doctor at the Prostate Centre had given him things: pamphlets, slips of paper. Prescriptions for antibiotics, yes. He'd taken those, and followed the regimen for hygiene.

“You haven't been taking it?” Dr. Norcross said incredulously.

“I kind of—forgot,” he said. Not true—he'd rejected the idea and tore up the prescription at 12th and Oak Street. That piece of paper had felt like a very cruel joke, just the possibility of needing it. After that, he'd spent the summer blanking the prescription from his mind.

The doctor frowned. “It isn't just about sexual function. Increased blood flow supplies oxygen to the area, it keeps tissues healthy. Are you married?”

“I'm with someone. But we don't need it. We don't—find intercourse necessary.”

Norcross stifled an irritated laugh. “You honestly believe that? You're young, in the prime of your life. You're damn lucky.”

“Lucky,” Paul repeated blandly.

Now the doctor had stopped looking amused altogether. “A lot of older men require radical measures to maintain some form of sex life. Pumps, intracavernosal injections, or penile implants. Strap-ons.”

“So I've heard.” The images appalled him, but he also felt compelled to defend them. “Aren't those decent enough alternatives?”

“For them,” the doctor said. “But at your age—no one would wish that on himself. Anyway, I highly doubt you'll need those things. Like I said, you're lucky.”

He shoved the slip of paper into Paul's hand. “Here.” He paused. “Sex is part of health, whatever else it means to you. Get used to being healthy, Paul. That's your future.”

The second of January, the phone cool against his ear.

“Hello?”

“Is this Hardy Wallace?”

“That's right.” The voice was scraped raw by age or lack of use but uncannily self-possessed.

“My name's Paul Rasmussen. I'm conducting a study. I understand you were once a resident of Lambert?”

“That's right.”

“I've been interviewing people from the valley. Gathering their thoughts on their lives before and after the dam. Would you,” Paul paused. “Would you be interested at all in such an interview? That is, would you be able to tell me about how things—changed? In your life?”

Jesus, he thought. Listen to yourself. He was so nervous, he'd even squeezed some lemon juice into a glass of water hoping the tartness would keep his mouth moist. It didn't.

“Oh.” A wary chuckle, a mocking tone. “You sound like a Monashee fellow.”

“I'm not from Monashee, Mr. Wallace. I'm doing research. For a university.”

Hardy said nothing for a moment, though there was breathing, a slight wheeze. “I don't come into town in winter.”

“At all?”

“No.”

This had to be a lie, but he couldn't do much about it. “What if I came out there?”

A scratching over the line, maybe beard stubble across the receiver. “That would be fine.”

He left the next morning just before nine, hoping the snow would hold off. The dam's grey concrete blended into grey sky, the spillway gushing steely water past stalactites of dull ice. A tall industrial crane, its arm brightened with Christmas lights, added colour to the horizon. The reservoir was low, the shore a vast, snowy plain marked by jutting boulders and lumps of hidden stone. He recognized landmarks, things lifted from aerial photographs and transcribed interviews: the remaining strip of Agnes Hutchinson's old property, the abandoned wharf pilings and stone trestles.

He started thinking about his visit to the doctor the other day, and his upcoming blood draw. If the test went badly—but no, he knew, as did the doctor, that the odds were in his favour. For Dr. Norcross, the real questions were of potency, masculinity. Actually, there was no question at all, only the necessity of regaining those things, as though there were only one way to live as a man—
at your age
. It was absurd to think there was some monkish middle ground, or that Paul might want to choose, as an older man might, to surrender and adapt. He was just clinging to self-pity. Stupid, and cowardly. He needed the pills.

Once he left Bishop behind, the snowbanks on either side of the road grew higher and thicker until there was barely enough room for two vehicles to squeeze by each other. It began to snow. Mesmerized, anxious, he almost missed Hardy's place. The driveway was an icy slope, a toboggan hill with Hardy's truck blocking the bottom. If he parked up top, hopefully no one would come by. He turned the wheel and rammed the left side of the truck onto the bank, thinking the snow would have compacted and frozen into a solid-enough crust. The wheels sank almost immediately. He'd hung himself up.

He turned off the ignition and watched snowflakes relentlessly settle on the windshield. 11:45, fifteen minutes late. He climbed out the passenger side door with the daypack that contained his notebooks and recorder. He stared at the sunken front tire, then turned and negotiated the icy driveway. Halfway down he slipped and flung himself sideways into the snow to break his fall. He struggled to the bottom of the driveway, bracing himself against Hardy's blue truck to brush himself off. Then he realized the old man was standing next to the woodpile, watching him with a blank expression.

Paul inched away from the truck, testing the ground for traction. “Mr. Wallace?”

He looked much like Paul remembered. Someone who had probably been husky and imposing once, now diminished by age but still capable, fit. He wore the same fleece he'd worn that day at the fish fence, with a heavy, grey wool cardigan thrown over top. The white hair that poked out from the bottom of his toque looked like it had been roughly hacked by kitchen scissors, though the full beard made him appear oddly staid, composed.

“I'm Paul. Sorry I'm late.” He pointed to the top of the driveway and was about to speak when Hardy interrupted.

“Six elk in the yard this morning.” He picked up an armload of wood. “Grab a bundle.”

Paul fumbled four pieces of split birch into his hands and cradled them against his chest, keeping the top piece steady with his chin. They kicked off their boots in the small mudroom and entered the kitchen.

“Air's so still out there I heard you coming the last half-hour,” Hardy said over his shoulder. “I've put coffee on.”

The stove sat in the middle of the living room on a bed of rough inlaid stone. The rest of the floor was dark-stained hardwood in surprisingly good shape, partially covered by mismatched rugs, a brown, threadbare sofa, a low wooden coffee table, and two old rocking chairs. Paul stacked the firewood by the stove and followed Hardy back to the kitchen, where the old man motioned for him to sit. The table rested beside two large windows that overlooked the Immitoin. The black water weaved past the mounds of snow that topped each boulder, sheets of ice like wings on the sides of stones.

As Paul shrugged off his coat and hat, Hardy rummaged through cupboards, pulling out a bag of white sugar and two mugs. It was a simple house. Everything could be seen from the kitchen except where two doors were closed—probably the bedroom and bathroom. The table was a sturdy rectangle of thick maple, stained with coffee rings and darkened. The solid, ornate bookshelves in the living room, the broad windowsills—he remembered how Agnes Hutchinson and Elsie Hubert had preserved so many relics from their old homes, but he hadn't expected the same degree of care from this man.