Double Talk by Patrick Warner Page A

though most transient phase of consciousness: happiness.
    I stood and took in the breathtaking view from there. I stood on that blissful planet for as long as I could and basked in a kind of stasis. I listened to the white noise of countless jammed frequencies and ignored the pulse of that one bass note calling me back to earth. And yet, even as we were joined by words, even as family and friends applauded and cheered, even as we felt their bodies press us closer together — I remember the heft of Nancy’s breast against my back and the jaggedness in Violet’s mother’s embrace — a contrary note sounded. Even as I kissed my wife for the first time, in that bunker cooled by sea breezes and lightened by colourful cloth and the scents of flowers, I was drawn by a mounting note of discord. No sooner had we exited the chamber through a swirl of confetti than I began to hear half notes and quarter notes within it. In fact, no sooner had I slipped into the back seat of Keppie’s Lada, than I began to look past the smiling faces and the upraised hands of our well wishers. I began to look over the flat concrete slabs of the bunkers and out through the glittering Narrows at the North Atlantic.
    â€œAre you happy?” I asked my mother one day as we sat together in the kitchen after mid-day dinner. I had just filled out the university application I hoped would take me away from home, to a new life in Newfoundland. My father had gone back to work, and we were drinking fresh-perked coffee and whipped cream from green glass cups. It was our time of day to talk. “Are you happy?” I asked again. She was looking a bit grim, I remember. Hot days always made her wilt. She didn’t answer for a while, though she didn’t take her eyes off me, either. The dog, bothered by the sudden silence, walked with ticky-tacky nails across the linoleum and laid his big head in her lap. She stroked his ears mechanically, and he responded with pig-like grunts. Occasionally, her eyes narrowed as she worked through what appeared to be — if the length of time it took her to reply was any indication — a great number of possible answers. Finally, she took a long pull on her cigarette and, as she exhaled, raised her left eyebrow ever so slightly: “I’m as happy as it is possible to be in this life, son,” she said. Her answer shocked me, though not in a bad way; it was more the shock of surprise. I found myself trying not to laugh. I was sixteen years old and someone had finally spoken the truth to me. I knew it was truth because her words resonated so deeply, lit up a stretch of some barely perceived interior.
    My last few months in Bridgetown had been a purgatory. I could only watch and wait as the town faded from photograph to negative, while the future, as always, remained a blank strip. At first, clown-footed, I was happy to tell everyone the where and the when and the why of my going. I squeezed the rubber ball on my brass horn and they gathered around: “Newfoundland, any day now, to study, to bang my head against wisdom and wait for a panel to mysteriously open.”
    And at first, everyone was interested. “NewFOUNDland,” they said, crowding around me and nodding their heads like dashboard ornaments. They made a bodhran of my back, a pump handle of my arm; they squeezed my hand as if it might produce milk. They were so happy for me, weepy eyed that the little buds of opportunity still flourished abroad. Less happy to cultivate them at home. They looked at me as if I had quadrupled in size, as if before their eyes I was inflating with promise. They looked at me as if I might at any second ascend into the sky, climbing higher and higher until I disappeared behind the racing clouds.
    But the months went by and I was still home. “Still waiting on that visa?” they would shout out to me as I walked the rain-washed streets, as I made the rounds past the cattle mart where