The Big Why by Michael Winter Page B

from Boston. She had laid the envelope on the floor while I did push-ups, as if she’d known of the affair all along. As if nothing I did surprised her and she was above it. She knew better than me. She had a good spirit, whereas I had the devil in me. She judged me but loved me for the devil. It was the one thing she was superior about, and I was a coward to mention it. I was glad she was the way she was. I did not want a confrontation. It meant rubble. A confrontation meant everything that we were would crumble. So I took it. I accepted it like a punch to the ribs to protect the face. Faces. I hated the way my wife’s face remained steady, and I knew she had an ugly face when it fell into emotion (we all do) and she would not let me see her face ugly. It wasnt the affair or the baby but the way we dealt with it that made me think we could not be together forever.
21
    I thought of all this after walking with Rupert down to the Bartlett tunnel. He was offloading a floater. The tunnel is about eighty feet long, through solid rock. At the far end is Molly’s Island, and around it the green-and-white thrusting of the tide onto rocks, spraying up forty feet. We took a pony with us. The waves pushed in and rose, making the pony nervous. The men off the floater shook hands with us. Flour, roofing tar, new barrels, and pipe for a water pump. So, Rupert said, rumour has it you were in Newfoundland once before.
    He had heard something. I tried coming, I said, to New-foundland, yes. Four years ago. Soon after meeting your brother.
    We loaded the cart and pointed the pony back at the tunnel.
    You had plans, he said, for an art school.
    I wanted to bring artists and students here.
    You met Morris.
    Morris. Yes, Morris, the prime minister. He loved the idea. How’d you know that.
    Oh, I know Morris.
    So it was Morris who’d told him. We were walking back through the tunnel, and the underground aspect of Rupert’s questions made me feel like I was being interrogated.
    I guess youve found out about me then, I said.
    A thing or two.
    I decided to be open with Rupert. He was being nice to me, so why not confess. Morris told me that there are good ideas and bad ideas, and that this one, to make a university in Newfoundland, was good.
    Yes, Rupert said. That man’s mouth never goes slack.
    A promise, I said to Rupert, can shape you even when the promise is broken.
    You went to Burin.
    The prime minister suggested it. I liked the name. It’s the name of an engraving tool.
    Rupert: The bays are good there. Ice-free in winter. There are good storerooms on the water in Burin. Unlike here.
    Yes, what is it with this tunnel.
    We dont use it much now. But we needed it back when the fishery was good. Say fifty years ago. All this harbour was blocked with boats and wharves. Our claim was this here rock, and we got tired of lugging our gear around it.
    He smacked the rock with his hand. You were ambitious.
    To Rupert it must have been as if some external circumstance too chagrining had upset my distinct vision. And he would have been right. It was because I did not want to men-tion Jenny Starling in Boston. I did not, even now, want to mention it to you. I helped coax Rupert’s pony with his heavy load up to Hawthorne Cottage. We unloaded her.
22
    Even though I do not believe in God. Even though this. When I was alone in that house. When I was waiting for Tom Dobie to join me. While I waited for the coffee pot to heat. Even though I believed in experiences and objects and was a man who believed that a good, godless life can be lived on earth, even so I prayed to God. I knelt and prayed. I prayed to the fireplace, which was praying north. I asked God to make me strong and make me love the things that were good. I wanted to love Kathleen. I wanted her to be enough and to be a vessel through which all the things of the world could be funnelled. I believed in children and friends. The fact that we do not live on, I did not let this depress me.
23
    I