The Death of Small Creatures (10 page)

I feel burned, even from this distance. I know what burnt flesh feels like, and somehow this knowledge is enough.

The glass in the French doors at the front of the suite is clouding with steam from the basmati rice and broccoli simmering in the kitchen. The copper pots hanging from the pot rack have likewise developed a feverish glow.

Leigh is making dinner—baked salmon with honey Dijon mustard glaze. He is chewing something, as always when he makes dinner, always chewing contentedly some sprig or vegetable stalk, some carrot chunk that was destined to never see the cool fold of a lettuce leaf. Sometimes I think I hate him for it, whatever it is he thinks he's doing over there with that fish, that sprig of something in his mouth, like I can't help but hate him for being a contented forty-something man whose cellular memory contains no trace of thousands of years of self-deprecation, who has been propelled into the twenty-first century with a butcher knife in his hand, food in his mouth and joy in his disposition. He's so goddamned cheerful.

Is it as simple as his relationship to a well-balanced meal—the vitamins in his body, the nutrients in his blood and his self-professed peculiarity of never having dreamed at night? Yet there is no denying his goodness. There is no denying my love for him.

There is another fish nailed to the wall above our General Electric chrome microwave. The fish's head and tail are made of chrome too, but the body is made of maple, so the completed fish seems to be the victim of a disjointed vision of an artist struggling to reconcile the industrial era with the deepest quadrants of the ocean. I call it our Christ fish. It's a fish whose heart is trapped between the mechanical grind of its head and ass. It's a fish whose initial purpose was to be a cutting board, but Leigh and I decided it was better suited for display, ornamental, a kind of crucifix. You could, however, lay the cutting board fish horizontally and place a real fish on it in order to perform the gutting process—the long slice up the belly, beginning at the small puckered orifice up the length of its body to the throat, followed by the removal of the guts and the satisfying extraction of the skeletal system in one deft tug.

Leigh is using a square wooden cutting board instead, cheerfully concentrating over his fish as he makes the final two cuts, uncannily reserved for last—the head and tail. The chopping off of the thick tail feels more barbaric than the hack at the fish's neck, perhaps having something to do with the animal's method of propulsion being so suddenly and violently amputated. It seems to still retain the ability to think and feel without the head, as if its true essence emanates from its shiny silver scales, and its brutalized body is still whispering, defiant and headless from the slab,
I have swum blind up a thousand rivers before
.

As Leigh positions the fish onto the cookie sheet and tenderly brushes the creature with honey Dijon, I think,
That fish isn't going anywhere
.

In earlier times,
the engagement ring was a partial payment for the bride, and a pledge of the groom's intentions. Later, the ring represented clarity; its brilliance reflected innocence and purity. Its strength signalled enduring love. The ring is worn on the third finger of the left hand. The vein in this finger was once believed to go directly to the heart.

Until the fifteenth century, only kings wore diamonds; they wore them as a symbol of strength, courage and invincibility. The diamond was first discovered in India; here the diamond was valued more for its magic than its beauty and was believed to protect the wearer from fire, snakes, illnesses, thieves and evil.

When our plates are cleared, I excuse myself to go to the washroom.

The washroom feels like a little water closet; pristine white, a free-standing sink, two back walls opening into a V. I take my time in there, wash my hands three times, check my makeup, powder my nose and apply some blush and lipstick.

I think,
This is it
. Then I think,
Maybe I've imagined all of this. Maybe he is not going to propose to me. I've been such a fool
. And in thinking the latter, I feel a pang of resentment. Why won't he propose to me? What's wrong with me? We've been together for years. My rationalization is neurotic. The second I think he is going to propose I am instilled with panic. The second I think he is not going to propose I am instilled with resentment.

I survey myself in the bathroom mirror, stand back and try to capture my whole body, the whole picture, but I come back at myself cut off at the thighs. I realize I look like a bit of a nymph; I have worn a long, flowing, pastel blue skirt and an equally flowing white cotton blouse. I feel as if I am swimming in cotton. It barely touches my skin. My clothing floats upon my body as I exit the bathroom and make my way across the dining room back to Leigh. A cool air-conditioned breeze floats up my skirt, makes me shiver.

One of the
chefs in the suite below is tall and slender. He has brown hair and brown eyes and parks his red 1960-something Buick Skylark in the driveway. He goes out there sometimes on a Sunday afternoon and sits in the Skylark with the engine running. I have never questioned why he does this, somehow having acquired the knowledge in my female life that young men (even older men) are inclined to do such things with mechanical objects, whether it's a car, a Harley Davidson or a lawn mower, in a way that women never will. I see him out there in his Skylark staring blankly into the windshield, and my heart aches for him, that guy in the car going nowhere while the universe expands and the earth hurtles through space.

The other two guys are nice enough, the one kid kind of chubby and blond and friendly. I get the feeling that the shorter skinny guy is wounded somehow, like he's wandering through life and needs someone to love him. Sometimes they roast broad beans on the barbecue. It smells wonderful.

Preparing dinner one
night: I'm making a roast, a surprise for Leigh when he gets home from sailing. I won't eat this. I have placed two bricks on his spinnaker out there on the deck, in order to keep it from sailing away in the wind. I hate that sail out there like that, the way it blankets everything. It flaps and crackles and threatens to depart on its own despite my best efforts to pin it down.

Leigh said he was going to be a crewman on another man's boat tonight, as opposed to the captain. He uses these terms proudly, having come from a long line of Norwegian sailors. I tell him the sea is in his blood, but he doesn't seem particularly interested in my analysis, being an older logical man, a quiet practical man. I am probably with him for these reasons, even though at times I think I might die from the pragmatism and logic that permeates our relationship.

I rub salt into the raw meat and contemplate marriage. I tell myself that marriage is the union between two people in love. Marriage is also the union between two people based on economy of space. Your life becomes full of the other person—their nuances and habits, scents and flavours. You scarcely remember your own scents and flavours, your many private nuances.

In the beginning, Leigh and I played truth or dare. He was living in his dad's vacant house. The house was bare, the remnants of his ex-life boxed up and catalogued by his ex-wife. She got the BMW and the house in Oak Bay. She got the children. He bought a shiny blue Volvo, but has since traded it in for an automatic shiny gold Volvo.

There were only two chairs in his dad's vacant house. There were candles in the fireplace. I stood naked against a wooden wall and rocked back and forth in firelight as rain beat hard at the window. Leigh approved.

He fed me oysters shucked from shells, poured martinis. I did things to him he had never experienced before, took him in deep. I knew he was not thinking of his ex-wife anymore. I was infused with the taste of something sweet every time we kissed, and I mean literally, in my mouth, on my tongue. It was the oddest thing.

This roast will be cooked in the appropriate roasting pot, a not-too-shallow pot with a good diameter that nicely contains the whole roast while allowing space around the edges for the chopped-up carrots and potatoes, a little vegetable moat. The roast must be heavily salted. This is how Leigh likes it. Normally he cooks the meat, but tonight I am going to surprise him with his favourite meal. I don't contest his authority over the meat. He has authority over pork roasts as well as hams and chickens or any large quantity of meat that must be roasted over a long period of time in a conventional oven. We've never discussed this. It goes without saying.

Pork blood (or is it pig blood?) pools around the hunk of meat and seeps into the wood grains. I have pushed the chopped carrots, potatoes and onions to the far right side of the board, so an invisible moat separates the meat from the vegetables. This is no man's land, this space in the middle of the board. It's a large surface. There's plenty of room for negotiation. I might have on another day chosen quadrants, four little piles of vegetables in the four corners of the board, or perhaps a large ring of vegetables encircling the thing in the middle. That would change things, the vegetables occupying an absurd but distinct position of authority (perhaps even aggression) over the meat, a circular attack formation, a siege.

The wind has picked up. I'm beginning to worry.

I love him most of all these nights. It is possible, however unlikely, that he won't make it back. People die at sea. If he does not die tonight, he will die another night. He will die tonight or tomorrow night or a thousand nights from now, it's hard to say.

I am rubbing salt into this raw meat in order to buffer the pangs of inevitable loss, in order to make this love hurt less.

By autumn the
herbs will be dead. The tang of basil and mint will have acquired a new perfume, an earthy spice.

Our suite used to be the attic. The pale green shingles are weathered, paint chipped here and there. The floor is made of wood too, though the boards are somewhat lighter in colour than those on the ceiling. Dust accumulates with remarkable fastidiousness, coats the smooth blades of the ceiling fan which turn at medium speed months at a time, except on the rare occasions when we flick off the switch and wipe the blades clean with a warm wet cloth.