raises both her arms in a jubilant wave. With a start, he realizes not only that she can see him but that she could for as long as he’s been standing where he is.
‘You must be lonely,’ Alex says behind him.
‘I suppose it’s a matter of getting used to something to the point that you don’t even notice it anymore.’
‘Oh, it’s still there.’
‘You’re not telling me that you don’t have guys sniffing around.’
‘I’ve gone out,’ she admits. ‘They come to me , you know? It’s unbelievable. Pushing the stroller or wiping snot off Rachel’s lip, wearing track pants and searching for the cheapest laundry detergent in the dollar store—they come to me . And not just the damaged goods, either. Some of them are cute, and/or rich, and/or sweet. Oh yeah, definitely, I’ve gone out.’
Alex pauses now, arms crossed and her index finger tapping against her biceps as though taking an accounting of these men, summoning theirpositives and negatives to her mind. It takes her a while.
‘It doesn’t sound like loneliness to me,’ Miles says, and snorts.
‘The test isn’t whether you go out on dates, or have friends, or even get laid from time to time. The test is whether what’s going on around you breaks your heart or not.’
The idea of Alex being broken-hearted takes Miles by surprise. He had always thought of her as too lucky for real suffering. Who can know sorrow who has grown up white, semi-affluent, free of the multiple varieties of childhood abuses?
She could, of course. And he had been its cause. This comes to him as a belated revelation. After he’d run, and left her with his child—without a word, just as his father had—surely it was she who had the more valid claim to heartbreak than he. What did he think followed from his leaving? As unlikely as it strikes him now, he’d assumed a quick recovery. Once he was gone, she would have eventually come to realize her good fortune that he’d fucked off before he had the chance to do any undoable damage, as he certainly would have had he lingered on. Alex would be rid of him. But he would never be rid of himself. He calculated the latter as being the greater burden of the two.
He knows he’s only being selfish with his victimhood, but he indulges this line of thinking for a moment. He studies Alex now and grafts onto her skin the veil of her fortunate youth.Home-video years spent in Stratford, Ontario, a leafy, postcard town of moneyed retirees, a repertory theatre, ball bearing factory and gift shops. Her parents still lived there. Retired now themselves but keeping up the family home, a Tudor monster on one of the broad streets of competitive landscaping and gardens in which beloved Labradors were buried.
Miles liked Alex’s parents, but before he’d ever met them he’d developed an idea of them being smug and humourless Tories, and even the discovery that he was wrong couldn’t stop him from needling Alex about them. The truth was he admired her father, the county solicitor who went to Harvard (and told deflating jokes about the place every time it came up), and his knockout wife, whom Miles got very confessional around and was half in love with. It was a home to spend Christmas in. Every December he and Alex had taken the train to the big cherry-smoke and Eggs Benedict house in Stratford, and every year he felt roughly awakened from a dream when it was time to go back. Alex always offered to go with him to Vancouver Island to stay with his mother over the holidays, and Miles would remind her of how much plane tickets cost at that time of year. But the real reason he didn’t go back was to be with Alex’s family instead. A home without missing people, the tinnedsoup smell of unrecoverable losses.
Outside, the jumping game has turned into a kind of crazy tag, all the kids running around thetrampoline and then back the other way, a Keystone Kops routine that ends with them piling up against each other.
Then, all at once, they
‘You must be lonely,’ Alex says behind him.
‘I suppose it’s a matter of getting used to something to the point that you don’t even notice it anymore.’
‘Oh, it’s still there.’
‘You’re not telling me that you don’t have guys sniffing around.’
‘I’ve gone out,’ she admits. ‘They come to me , you know? It’s unbelievable. Pushing the stroller or wiping snot off Rachel’s lip, wearing track pants and searching for the cheapest laundry detergent in the dollar store—they come to me . And not just the damaged goods, either. Some of them are cute, and/or rich, and/or sweet. Oh yeah, definitely, I’ve gone out.’
Alex pauses now, arms crossed and her index finger tapping against her biceps as though taking an accounting of these men, summoning theirpositives and negatives to her mind. It takes her a while.
‘It doesn’t sound like loneliness to me,’ Miles says, and snorts.
‘The test isn’t whether you go out on dates, or have friends, or even get laid from time to time. The test is whether what’s going on around you breaks your heart or not.’
The idea of Alex being broken-hearted takes Miles by surprise. He had always thought of her as too lucky for real suffering. Who can know sorrow who has grown up white, semi-affluent, free of the multiple varieties of childhood abuses?
She could, of course. And he had been its cause. This comes to him as a belated revelation. After he’d run, and left her with his child—without a word, just as his father had—surely it was she who had the more valid claim to heartbreak than he. What did he think followed from his leaving? As unlikely as it strikes him now, he’d assumed a quick recovery. Once he was gone, she would have eventually come to realize her good fortune that he’d fucked off before he had the chance to do any undoable damage, as he certainly would have had he lingered on. Alex would be rid of him. But he would never be rid of himself. He calculated the latter as being the greater burden of the two.
He knows he’s only being selfish with his victimhood, but he indulges this line of thinking for a moment. He studies Alex now and grafts onto her skin the veil of her fortunate youth.Home-video years spent in Stratford, Ontario, a leafy, postcard town of moneyed retirees, a repertory theatre, ball bearing factory and gift shops. Her parents still lived there. Retired now themselves but keeping up the family home, a Tudor monster on one of the broad streets of competitive landscaping and gardens in which beloved Labradors were buried.
Miles liked Alex’s parents, but before he’d ever met them he’d developed an idea of them being smug and humourless Tories, and even the discovery that he was wrong couldn’t stop him from needling Alex about them. The truth was he admired her father, the county solicitor who went to Harvard (and told deflating jokes about the place every time it came up), and his knockout wife, whom Miles got very confessional around and was half in love with. It was a home to spend Christmas in. Every December he and Alex had taken the train to the big cherry-smoke and Eggs Benedict house in Stratford, and every year he felt roughly awakened from a dream when it was time to go back. Alex always offered to go with him to Vancouver Island to stay with his mother over the holidays, and Miles would remind her of how much plane tickets cost at that time of year. But the real reason he didn’t go back was to be with Alex’s family instead. A home without missing people, the tinnedsoup smell of unrecoverable losses.
Outside, the jumping game has turned into a kind of crazy tag, all the kids running around thetrampoline and then back the other way, a Keystone Kops routine that ends with them piling up against each other.
Then, all at once, they
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