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  But the canvas would not cooperate. It seemed to have developed a mind of its own. Before my very eyes it transformed itself and took on a silvery mirror-like sheen in which I could see nothing save my own sweet face.

  I would have known it anywhere.

  The Antonyms of Fiction (1991)

  FACT

  The facts of the matter are these:

  When I was twenty-one years old, I met and fell in love with a man named Jonathan Wright. We met at a Christmas party given by a mutual friend and two months later he moved in with me. We made a lot of jokes about him being Mr. Right. Two years later he moved out. After a brief but intensely unpleasant period of accusations, hysterics, and the odd suicide threat, it became what is fondly referred to as “an amicable separation” and then we made a lot of jokes about him being Mr. Not-So-Right-After-All. We remained (or should I say, we became) friends, suggesting that maybe someday, maybe ten years from now, who knows, maybe then we would get back together again and get it right. This led to another batch of bad jokes about him being Mr. Not-Right-Now. All of this happened ten years ago.

  Sometime later I moved away, two thousand miles away in fact, back to the city I’d come from in the first place. For a while Jonathan and I kept in touch with birthday cards, Christmas cards, and the occasional phone call for no good reason. Neither one of us was much good at writing real letters.

  Eventually, as so often happens over distance and the passage of time, our sporadic attempts at maintaining communication petered out and we lost track of each other’s lives. I can’t remember now the last time I heard from Jonathan. I also can’t remember the last time Jonathan and I made love. I can remember the first time very clearly but not the last because, as so often happens, I didn’t know it was to be the last time at the time and so I was not paying as much poignant attention as I might have been.

  Last Sunday morning at ten o’clock, I had a phone call from a woman named Madeline Kane, a woman I hadn’t heard from in years and who was, in fact, the mutual friend who’d given the Christmas party at which Jonathan and I first met. Madeline was calling Sunday morning to tell me that Jonathan was dead. She said she thought I would want to know. She said she thought I would want to know the truth. But as it turned out, she knew nothing, nothing but the facts.

  TRUTH

  According to The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English, truth is the quality or state of being true or accurate or honest or sincere or loyal or accurately shaped or adjusted.

  There were at least forty people at Madeline Kane’s Christmas party that year. It was a small friendly town and many of the residents, like myself, had moved there from other places and so did not have family handy for such festive occasions. We tended to gather frequently for these pot-luck parties, bearing from one house to another hearty steaming casseroles, salad in wooden bowls the size of wagon wheels, and many jumbo bottles of cheap wine.

  At Madeline Kane’s Christmas party, there was a big Scotch pine tied to the wall so it wouldn’t topple over and we all helped decorate it before dinner, stringing popcorn and cranberries, arguing amiably about the proper way to put on the tinsel: the one-strand-at-a-time advocates versus the heave-a-whole-handful-with-your-eyes-closed contingent.

  After dinner, we brought out the guitars and sang for hours. Jonathan Wright sang that Kenny Rogers song, “Don’t Fall In Love With A Dreamer.” And so of course I did.

  After the party, he came home with me. After we got undressed and climbed into my bed, I said, “I just want to sleep with you, I don’t want to make love,” and he said, “That’s okay, I just want to be close to you tonight.”

  In the morning we made love for a long time. In fact, we stayed in bed all day which was something I had never done before.

  Jonathan Wright and I loved each other suddenly and, in reality, we were very happy for a while.

  REALITY

  According to The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English, reality is the property of being real. According to The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English, real is actually existing as a thing or occurring in fact, objective, genuine, rightly so called, natural, sincere, not merely apparent or nominal or supposed or pretended or artificial or hypocritical or affected.

  In fiction, we are accustomed to encountering people driven to extremes, people brought to their proverbial knees by love and loss and other such earth-shaking heart-stopping soul-shifting events, people who are thrashing around inside their lives instead of just living them. In reality, these extremes are merely the end points of the continuum. In reality, it is all the points in between, cumulative and connected, if not downright boring, which are the important part. In real life, it is all the points in between which comprise the real life we are really living. In real life, people driven repeatedly to the limit are very hard to take. The friends of such people (if they have any friends left) suspect they are crazy, emotionally disturbed, mentally unbalanced, manic-depressive, but mostly just plain foolish. In reality, people who go from one extreme to the other (and back again) on a regular basis are more fun to read about than to know.

  Jonathan Wright and I loved each other suddenly and, in reality, we were very unhappy after a while.

  NON-FICTION

  On the phone last Sunday morning, Madeline Kane took down my current address and sent me the newspaper clipping and the obituary, which arrived in the mail today. It was unlikely that Jonathan’s death would be noted in the newspaper here two thousand miles away. It would be considered local news.

  Both these versions of the story are very short and to the point. As if there was a point. As if the truth could really be known. The newspaper clipping said:

  Jonathan Wright, 38, was shot to death in his apartment on Saturday night. An eyewitness, unidentified for her own protection, told police that when Mr. Wright answered a knock at the door at approximately 3 a.m., a lone gunman shot him twice in the head and then fled on foot. Police have neither confirmed nor denied the many rumours surrounding the case. Investigation continues.

  The obituary said:

  WRIGHT, Jonathan Lawrence—Suddenly at his residence on Sunday, August 5, 1991, Jonathan Lawrence Wright in his 38th year, beloved son of David and Elizabeth Wright, dear brother of Patricia and Susan, sadly missed by several aunts and uncles. Resting at Goodman Funeral Home. Friends will be received on Wednesday, 7–9 p.m. Funeral Service will be held in the Chapel, Thursday, August 9 at 2 p.m. Interment

  Landsmere Cemetery.

  POETRY

  I never expected to see you again / but I never expected you to die either. / I hadn’t seen you in so many years: / it was as if you were already dead / or / it was as if you would never die / would just go on living somewhere else / two thousand miles away / while I was still here / going on about my business / never giving you a second thought. / Unless a stranger in the street happened to have / a jacket, a walk, a smile, / or a receding hairline just like yours. / Unless I happened to be cooking your favourite meal / for another lover (pork chops, green beans, mashed/you called them “smashed” / potatoes) and it turned out he didn’t like pork. / Unless I surprised myself / looking through the old photo album / and weeping. / If this were a poem / I would have had a premonition / a cold-sweat shiver down my spine / at the very moment you died. / If this were a poem / I would still be able to see your face / your real face / not your other face, shot to pieces / exploding all over the wall / like the time we were splitting up / I was crying / you were drunk and raging / threw a whole plate of spaghetti across the room / and nobody cleaned it up for a week. / If this were a poem / I would be able to remember everything / including the weight of your body on mine / and how it felt to love you. / If this were a poem / the truth would be known.

  FICTION

  But the truth of the matter is: this is fiction.

  Pure fiction.

  Pure: mere, simple, sheer, not corrupt, morally undefiled, guiltless, sincere, chaste.

  Fiction: feigni
ng, invention, conventionally accepted falsehood.

  Pure fiction: a convenient literary device which allows me to say that I never knew a man named Jonathan Wright, there was no Christmas party at Madeline Kane’s house ten years ago, no Scotch pine, no tinsel, no Kenny Rogers song, no dreamers falling fast into love, and no bad jokes. Which allows me to say that I never cried into your angry arms, there was no spaghetti splattered on the wall, and I never ever missed you.

  If the truth were known, this is fiction, a valuable revisionist device which allows me to say there was no man at the door with a gun.

  Weights and Measures (1993)

  It is the question the writer asks when writing a book: Shall I fill in all the details? Or shall I let the reader imagine them all? … What if I give you dots and numbers and you draw in the lines?

  —Kristjana Gunnars, The Substance of Forgetting

  1. On the dining room table in my parents’ house, there is a shallow crystal bowl filled with 10 ceramic balls. They are like billiard balls without the weight, Christmas baubles without the hooks. They are perfect and useless, bright globes of pure colour. I am forbidden to touch them and, being a good girl, I don’t. Only my mother handles them. I suppose my father could too if he wanted but he doesn’t. Once a week my mother removes the balls one by one from the bowl and polishes them with a soft rag, a piece of my old nightie with ducks and bunnies on it. She lines the polished balls up like beads at the edge of the table against the wall. They make my heart ache.

  Occasionally she lets me hold one: the red one, the green one, just for a minute now, the blue one is my favourite, be careful. This is how I know the balls are nearly weightless. Occasionally I imagine smashing them one by one against the wall. More often I imagine juggling them in slow motion, a luminous halo of colours suspended over my head.

  In 1989, Anthony Gatto of the United States juggled 5 clubs without a drop for 45 minutes and 2 seconds. That same year, Jas Angelo of Great Britain juggled 3 objects without a drop for 8 hours, 57 minutes, and 31 seconds. In 1990, in Seattle, Washington, 821 jugglers kept 2,463 objects in the air simultaneously. Each person juggled at least 3 objects. The nature of these objects is not noted, nor how high or how long they were airborne.

  I try to learn how to juggle from a book but I can’t get the hang of it. I take up baton twirling instead.

  2. When my mother is happy, she bakes. She gets up before my father and me and ties an apron over her nightgown. She rattles and hums in the warm yellow kitchen while it’s still dark outside. If I get up early enough, she lets me measure the flour, the butter, the brown sugar which must be tightly packed into the measuring cup. If I sleep later, entering the dining room is like coming downstairs on Christmas morning. The bowl of ceramic balls on the perfectly polished table is surrounded by hot pies with flaky lattice crusts and multi-layered cakes with white or chocolate icing in delicate swirls on top. Sometimes I am allowed to have a piece of cake or pie after breakfast. All morning at school I walk around with the weight of it in the bottom of my stomach, the taste of it still sweet on the back of my tongue.

  The largest apple pie ever baked was made by Chef Glynn Christian in a 40 × 23 foot dish in Chelsfield, Great Britain, in August 1982. The pie weighed 30,115 pounds and was cut by Rear-Admiral Sir John Woodward. The largest cake ever baked weighed 128,238 pounds and 8 ounces, including 16,209 pounds of icing. Created in the shape of the state of Alabama, the cake was made to celebrate the centenary of Fort Payne. Prepared by a local bakery called EarthGrains, it was cut by 100-year-old resident, Ed Henderson, on October 18, 1989. The flavour of the cake is not noted, nor how much longer Ed Henderson lived.

  When my mother is unhappy, we go without dessert. But even when she is in her bedroom crying with the door shut, the rest of the house is still filled with the fragrance of her baking and my father is still smiling. On my birthday, whether my mother is happy or not, she bakes me a special chocolate cake with nickels in it.

  3. My diary is a small pink book with gilt-edged pages and a tiny gold lock and key. In it, I am allotted one page per day, one tissue-thin page covered with fine blue lines. No matter what does or doesn’t happen on any given day, I feel obliged to fill each page. I briefly note the events of home and school: The math test was hard. My mother made me clean my room. My true love kissed me after school behind the little kids’ slide.

  On boring days, I pay cursory attention to world events: Canada celebrates its centennial. The world’s first successful heart transplant is performed in South Africa. Martin Luther King, Jr. is shot and killed in Memphis. Robert Kennedy is shot and killed in Los Angeles. Jackie Kennedy marries Aristotle Onassis. The U.S. death toll in Vietnam passes 30,000.

  Mostly though I write about the future. I describe in detail the man I will marry. I choose names for our 3 perfect children and our dog. Sometimes I draw pictures of the house we will live in, the car we will drive, the dress I will wear on our wedding day. If the present is frequently confusing, at least the future and the exquisite weight of its abundant possibilities are always clear. Even from this distance, I can see the colour of his eyes, the smile on my lips, the never-ending song in my heart.

  The largest mirage ever recorded was sighted in the Arctic at 83°N 103°W by Donald B. Macmillan in 1913. It included hills, valleys, and snow-capped peaks extending through at least 120° of the horizon. It was the type of mirage known as the “Fata

  Morgana,” so called because such visions were formerly believed to be the nasty work of Morgan le Fay, King Arthur’s evil fairy half-sister. The technique used to measure and record a mirage is not described.

  I have all the confidence in the world. I wear the key to my diary on a chain around my neck like a locket. Being a good girl, I naturally assume that I will eventually be the recipient of an appropriate measure of eternal happiness. The future will be my just reward.

  4. I fall in love every time I turn around. I am supposed to be studying Philosophy and the great works of Literature but I am drinking coffee in the university cafeteria and falling in love instead. Even Plato had a theory of desire. I am always ready to be swept off my feet, even when I’m sitting down. I fall in love with a wrist on a table, a thigh in blue denim, a lock of black hair, the tickle of a moustache, the tender angle of a manly neck bent toward me. I pick up the electricity in the air, the force fields of handsome men who mill around me, until my stomach feels charred and my hands are shaking. This could be from all that caffeine but I take it to be another symptom of love.

  The only person in the world to be struck by lightning 7 times was ex-park ranger Roy C. Sullivan of Virginia, U.S.A. His attraction for lightning began when he was struck in 1942 and lost his big toenail. In July 1969 he lost his eyebrows. In July 1970 his left shoulder was seared. In April 1972 his hair was set on fire. In August 1973 his hair was set on fire again and his legs were seared. In June 1976 his ankle was injured. In June 1977, struck while fishing, he suffered burns to his stomach and chest. In September 1983 he died by his own hand, reportedly after being rejected by the woman he loved. The method of Roy Sullivan’s suicide is not noted.

  My best friend tells me I’m addicted to love. I say, At least it’s more harmless than heroin. She says, Are you sure?

  5. The men I love don’t love me back. I sleep with them anyway. The men I don’t love call me in the middle of the night, crying or cursing because I won’t sleep with them. I feel like I’m banging my head against a wall, one of those stucco walls with bits of coloured ground glass embedded in it.

  The beak of the red-headed woodpecker, Melanerpes erythrocephalus, hits the bark of a tree with an impact velocity of 13 mph. This means that when the head snaps back, the brain is subject to a deceleration of approximately 10 g. The type of tree is not noted, nor the possible long-term effects of this activity.

  I decide I will marry the next man who asks me. In the meantime, I try on the notion of celibacy the way other women try on a new coat. It doesn’t fit. I try
learning to live without desire but I can’t get the hang of it. Years pass.

  6. My husband is a poet. His poetry is epic, anguished, and rhyming. Although no one will publish his work, he refuses to compromise his artistic integrity by catering to the marketplace. He is sure he will be famous someday, perhaps posthumously. In the meantime, he drives a taxi to pay the bills. He also spends a lot of time lying on the couch watching TV, eating potato chips, and thinking great thoughts. He hasn’t written a poem in 6 months. In that time he has gained 10 pounds from all those chips and I have gained 20 because I am pregnant. His depression grows in direct proportion to the size of my belly. He eats more chips and changes the channel. His shirt is covered with crumbs. At least he’s dressed. The living room is filled with his misery. I read baby name books in the kitchen. Sometimes I think that the couch with the weight of him and his depression on it will eventually crash through the floor and plummet directly to the centre of the earth.

  The deepest depression so far discovered is the bedrock of the Bentley Subglacial Trench in Antarctica at 8,326 feet below sea level. The greatest submarine depression is an area of the Northwest Pacific floor that has an average depth of 15,000 feet. The deepest exposed depression on land is the shore surrounding the Dead Sea, now 1,310 feet below sea level. The rate of fall in the lake surface has been 13 3/4 inches per year since 1948.

  My husband says he cannot possibly be a poet and a parent at the same time. He reads Paradise Lost and sometimes speaks in iambic pentameter. I borrow books on childbirth and breast-feeding from the library. I go to prenatal classes and practice the breathing alone.

  7.We talk and we talk and we talk. We cry. He makes up his mind and then changes it back again. Finally he goes out, ostensibly to buy a bag of chips. He returns an hour later with a 3-piece set of matching luggage, soft-sided in royal blue with locks and tiny keys like the one I had for my diary in Grade 8. He fills the biggest suitcase with books. It is so heavy he cannot lift it. He rearranges the contents of the suitcases to achieve a more even distribution of weight. He sets them on the back porch and calls a taxi. He kisses me goodbye. We do not discuss where he is going. We are all talked out.