“Where is this coming from?” Anthony was squinting in the sun, straining to see, and to grasp the meaning of what had just been said. The chainsaw hung by his side.
“I’m not sure,” was all Alex could manage.
“Well, why did you say it?”
“I don’t know. Let’s just forget it.” Alex put the thermos down and pulled her leather gloves out of her pocket.
“Let’s just cut the tree — please.” She fussed over the fit in the fingers of her gloves so she didn’t have to look up and see her husband’s face.
Finally, Anthony started the chainsaw.
“That’s the thing about an affair,” Alex said when her fear of being heard was drowned by the deafening sound of the rusty chainsaw, and Anthony was busy pushing it into a thick limb. “It awakens the dead.”
Alex held onto the fallen tree as tight as she could while Anthony methodically cut it up. Yes, she thought, it awakens the dead, and the self-conscious, long-denied greediness of an aging libido, and the youthful courage to expose oneself without a care about repercussions or rejection. That — and it brings about the unfortunate surfacing of truths about yourself you managed to shove into the dark corners of your mind. Those convenient man-made cubbyholes you forget exist until your house is shaken up, aroused by the pounding of your own heart and a renewed interest in what the next day might bring.
“So this is what it’s like.”
She wasn’t surprised or disappointed, only certain that Anthony didn’t suffer the same way after his trysts with naked women in the converted chicken coop. That’s what bothered her the most. The guilt and self-blame about what had gone wrong with their marriage had landed squarely in her lap.
On a cloudy Saturday several weeks later, Vincent and Alex got into his truck and drove south with no particular destination in mind. They ended up in Prince Edward County, where tri-coloured gourds and apples of every kind imaginable were on display at tiny roadside stands, with names like Windwillow Farms. They drove past well-run orchards and quaint towns with more antique shops than houses — through valleys and hamlets where people rode mountain bikes in large groups and ate in sophisticated country cafes, then spent the day perusing the area’s artisan shops.
Vincent and Alex passed by it all, opting for the ambiance of the desolate ruins of Lakeshore Lodge on the rocky shores of Lake Ontario. They ate the tomato and red onion sandwiches Vincent had packed for them in the shell of one of the lodge’s cottages — where steady lake winds blew through glassless windows and banged the loose whitewashed boards on the wall against each other.
It wasn’t the first time Alex had been here.
Two years before, she had been standing outside one of the studio windows watching Anthony paint a nude. The young woman looked no more than 25, with brunette hair cut just about her shoulders, streaked with red highlights. Her breasts were on the small side, but her nipples were huge and dark brown. Anthony had matched the colour perfectly on the canvas.
The young woman looked off into the distance, towards the door. Her breathing was shallow, as instructed by Anthony, her life briefly suspended as she sat naked on a white sheet Alex knew she would find later. It would be waiting for her on top of the washing machine in the house. Anthony always used the same sheet.
As she stood watching, nothing happened that could be considered upsetting, except for the way Anthony looked at the woman. He was so intense, so captivated. His eyes smiled at her, amused and smitten. He occasionally made one-word observations. Beautiful. Perfection. Lovely.
Alex soon walked away and got into her truck. She drove aimlessly for hours, talking to herself above the steady drone of the radio, which she turned on in case someone spotted her babbling out loud. They would just think she was singing along — a middle-aged woman who no longer cared about making a fool of herself, belting out off-key songs about love gone wrong.
She eventually ended up at Lakeshore Lodge, after hiking through the huge sand hills of Sandbanks Provincial Park. She stood on the foundation of what was once the main lodge. Parts of it were blackened from the fire that had flattened it a few years before. Then she sat inside the smallest of the remaining cottages, on a tree stump, and emptied the sand from her shoes. There were cigarette butts near her feet and an empty bottle of gin in one corner.
The view from the glassless window looked out over the endless waves on the lake, with a couple of tall cedars to the left, on the crest of a ledge that dropped off sharply. Below the ledge, there were huge flat rocks, soaked from the slapping water. Alex imagined the view had not changed much over the years and that others, who sat in the cottage decades before, had also been calmed by the surroundings and the sound of the seagulls sitting on the rocks nearby.
Something about the place conjured up images of a young woman sitting on a bed in the same room, looking out the window in the late afternoon, tired from playing shuffleboard earlier in the day. Alex had seen the remains of a shuffleboard court in front of the foundation of the main lodge — a flat grave for buried pleasures in the lives of those lucky enough to afford a stay at this old luxury resort.
She had also found the cement wading pool with peeling bright green paint, half-hidden in the tall grass. The pebble-speckled marble floor of the old dance hall, still scuffed from the shuffling feet of those who would have danced to Glenn Miller across the floor and over the embedded Lakeshore Lodge emblem, with the sun and the waves on its crest.
At the time, Alex felt she had been there before — sitting on the edge of the bed in the later afternoon, tired out from a hot day in the sun, anticipating the dance that night and the solitude of the flat rocks in the moonlight. Feeling alone and at home, in the place with the calming view, with water reaching out beyond all that she carried inside her.
Two years later, she was sitting in the same place with her lover, seeking shelter from the wind in a cottage that had seen better days and more love and discontent than the weak and tired walls could reveal to inexperienced eyes. A simple cottage that remains forever in good condition in the memories of those who stayed there — remembered, because of their sudden displays of affection, or the nightmarish release of feelings of emptiness and unhappiness. People either left there more in love than ever before or with the realization that love had died.
Now it was Alex and Vincent who had come to sort things out among the falling walls. Alex knew that they too would become part of its history, and when the cottage finally collapsed and was dragged away, bit by bit, they would still live on there with all the others — that their love, however short it might last, would continue to blow in on the winds. For nothing could ever take away the lake and the flat rocks below. They would always be there even when the last trace of the lodge was gone. She would always be able to come back and remember what it had been like.
After a while, after very little was said about anything, they headed over to the Outlet Beach on the eastern side of the park. A wooden snow fence had already been erected along the top of the beach, to protect the fragile dunes from the oncoming winter winds and frazil ice. Alex and Vincent walked along the water where dark green algae had washed up for the gulls to feed on.
They passed a young family trying to capture the joys of summer with one last chance to build sandcastles. The rest of the beach was empty, hard and wet from an early morning rain.
From a distance, nothing else could be seen. But Alex was walking with her head down, making a mental list of the debris before her — plastic white spoons and baggies, and straws. Bottle caps and cigar tips, and bits of coloured plastic from broken shovels. And a scattering of dull white feathers, where a pack of seagulls stood waiting for a rippled chip to be thrown by a playful child, who was later scolded by annoyed parents who couldn’t stand walking on sand splattered by the gulls’ mushy grey shit.
“Did you ever come here with Anthony?”
Alex