“Sorry,” was all Anthony said. Alex said nothing. She sat there listening to geese fly overhead. Most likely, they were headed for the pond in the woods at the back of the property. She opened her eyes to see them but they were already out of view.
Anthony ran his fingers through her hair after each ladle full of rainwater, carefully separating the knots along the way. Alex heard the odd car go by on the gravel road and the distant sound of a chainsaw cutting through wood. It brought the smell of wet leaves and earth to mind. It would soon be fall when Anthony and Alex would head to the woods themselves, to cut trees for the old wood-stove in the studio. If they were lucky, nature would provide enough fallen trees to avoid cutting any that were still standing.
Alex was going to ask him how much wood he thought they would need to heat the studio all winter. She also thought of mentioning the thank-you note Felicity sent the other day, for the painting they gave her as a wedding gift. She was even considering talking about the weather, just so they’d have something to say to each other. Instead, she only said “thanks” when Anthony finished towel-drying her hair. The damp, cool earth in Vincents sunflower field welcomed Alex’s body and spread before her the possibilities of endless lovemaking. A thousand faces would witness her release, she thought. She had already managed to shut out all concerns of what’s right and what’s wrong — what’s good and what’s bad. There was no room for the remains of dying love in a field full of golden sunflowers.
She lay there waiting in the pencil-thin red light of the fading sun as Vincent undressed, his head lowered in her direction, silhouetting his face and hiding his thoughts. There was no way to tell if what he saw was disappointing to him. She decided she didn’t care, and it helped to know Vincent wasn’t the sort to voice it anyway. So far, everything he had ever said to her was spoken without criticism. There was no reason to ever hold back or change things in mid-sentence at the first sign of judgement coming her way.
Alex wanted Vincent to take his time unbuttoning his shirt. She wasn’t in any hurry. She wanted to lie before him — exposed — and to have the chance to get the perspective absolutely right.
Lady in a Field, Oil on Canvas. Lying naked in a field of sunflowers, one arm resting at her side, the other on her stomach, just above her navel. One leg stretched flat against the ground — the other bent at the knee. Nothing to be embarrassed about. Her hips might have grown slightly wider over the years, but they were strong and bore her a daughter who was feisty and opinionated and determined.
Her thighs were thicker than they once were, but they were part of sturdy legs she could rely on for hours of weeding, and to hold her up during tiring days in the classroom, where she made a living and, sometimes, a difference in a kid’s life.
She would be lying there, waiting to make love to a man she barely knew — waiting to make love to herself. She’d be thinking of the field beside the one she was in, and the one beside that, and how their lovemaking could go on forever, and how comfortable she would suddenly feel lying naked before him.
Fall came with cooler-than-normal weather, changing the leaves earlier, making them more brilliant than Alex could remember. The tall maple near the mouth of the pond — usually a deep — yellow surprised her with its new dark orange leaves. She trailed behind Anthony, carrying a thermos of hot chocolate and looked for other transformations in the season of change.
She was no longer conscious of the swish-swish-swish of her rubbing thighs, or the hours that passed by with hardly a word from her husband. She walked with pleasure through the woods, passing familiar rocks, taking in the smell of the spruce and pine.
Part of her was wishing Vincent could be there. Part of her was happy to be with Anthony, whom she had followed down the same path for what seemed like a lifetime. He still wore the same thick blue and red plaid shirt, and carried the same rusty chainsaw. He still walked with his back straight as a board, his legs barely bending as he moved.
She thought if she could push memory aside, she would see Anthony only as he was that day. A man in the woods. A man walking tall, carrying death in his hands to the hundreds of trees that surrounded him and bathed him in their glory. It wasn’t evil she saw but vulnerability, and his failing eyes, which no longer saw the beauty of what stood before him.
Then memory intruded, and the fleeting freshness of what she saw was lost in the cool air blowing in her face, reminding her of the purpose of the day, and the stale truths about the man who was walking before her. It wasn’t easy to close the private gallery behind her eyes — to leave behind the long-running show of scenes of their life together.
Alex couldn’t look at Anthony without thinking of their time living in Toronto, when they first met after university. She still remembered every inch of the house they rented in the Beaches, and the corner smoke shop where she used to buy licorice pipes for Anthony and Felicity on her way home from teacher’s college.
She couldn’t erase the day they moved out of the city to the old farmhouse they slowly furnished in antiques collected together at auctions and early morning yard sales. Anthony could hardly contain his excitement. He jumped up and down, and sang and danced, as he unloaded the UHaul and carried their possessions across the threshold of the house he could call his own. He had come home to the country, just a few miles from where he grew up.
Everything about the place was endearing to him, even the downstairs windows that had been painted shut, the bodies of dead flies decomposing in the sun between panes of glass. He was going to transform himself into a handyman and fix them in no time, he said. He called a contractor after a week of unsuccessful bouts with several bent paint scrapers. It was the first of many defeats imposed on him by the old house, but nothing it did could ever kill his love for it. The well never ran dry. That was the important thing. He made it a mantra for their life in the country, and their marriage.
The real estate agent who sold them the farm told them it was an artesian well, and that it once supplied five other farms. While their neighbours regularly had their water trucked in during dry, hot summers, Anthony stood proudly on the porch watching the water trucks pass by, then went inside and washed his hands with the taps wide open.
For several years, they worked at restoring the farmhouse to its original beauty — stripping and sanding the hardwood floors, repairing and reinstalling the tin ceilings that had been stored in the attic. They converted the chicken coop into Anthony’s studio. Alex put in flower gardens and eventually a huge vegetable garden in the field beside the house.
There was always work to do, plans to draw up, materials to shop for — the before and after pictures recorded every moment. There were very few pictures of a family having fun. Even Felicity helped with the work, pounding nails into the heavy cedar boards Alex and Anthony held to the outside walls of the studio.
At one time, Alex thought about having another child. Her marriage didn’t seem complete, and she wanted Felicity to have a sibling. Anthony never talked about it much, and didn’t respond when she brought it up. She assumed he didn’t want the responsibility or the intrusion on his life, so she never pushed it. She felt she had already imposed Felicity on him and he had accepted the imposition without complaint.
As they walked on, past the pond and down the path towards a heavily wooded area, Alex tried to recall the day Anthony actually said he didn’t want a child. Nothing came, and she felt a chill in the middle of her back, and heaviness in the pit of her stomach. She watched Anthony’s reflection, rippled by the breeze running along the pond’s dark water.
The truth was Anthony never did say he didn’t want a child. He never said she should give up painting, or go to teacher’s college to support him, either. Or that she should sell vegetables at the market every summer. He never said Felicity was an imposition. They never talked about any of those things. Alex always made the decisions based on what was never said.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been able to talk to you.”
She said it out loud, like a statement in the middle of a conversation that up until that