Free Architects Are Here by Michael Winter Page A

marry early, but Helen was never in doubt. It wasnt cavalier and, even though she’d been a wild teenager with liberal parents who encouraged her to go to university and not entertain marriage, Helen could think of nothing more correct than marrying Arthur Twombly. She was immediately pregnant and that made them think about raising children in the States. What about Canada. Helen saw everyone as both insecure and entitled. But Arthur Twombly was the opposite: confident and humble.
    They felt Canadian already, in that Canadians surrounded them. Michigan is very Canadian. They applied for work all over Canada and she had Zac in Ann Arbor. It was easy then to emigrate, and they received bright pamphlets about small towns in Ontario and British Columbia and Newfoundland. The Newfoundland one was hilarious. The ambition of the government and a colour photograph of the premier holding the five hundred thousandth Newfoundlander in his arms. In front of a new hospital. As if hospitals were factories. The hospital was in Grand Falls.
    They went for an interview and landed at the military base of Gander. There was a college in Grand Falls where Arthur could teach classes in English and history. The concierge at the hotel said that Fidel Castro had just spent the weekend. Fidel likes to go rabbit hunting, the man said, handing them their room key. At the interview Arthur asked about that. When Fidel’s missing for a few days in Havana, the college administrator said, you can be guaranteed he’s here in Grand Falls.
    But they had seen nothing as bleak as Grand Falls. It wasnt on the ocean. The trees were spruce and fir, grown for the pulp mills. Perhaps Fidel likes to snowmobile and set snares, but the biblical phrase of seed thrown on arid ground came to mind.
    In their hotel room, Helen found an ad in the Gander Beacon for a legal position at the air base in Stephenville. She called, made an appointment for Monday afternoon, they rented a car and drove there. That’s when they first saw Corner Brook. A fjord, my god the city is built on a fjord. And a mountain range. There were birch trees and hills and the sun shone well even though the city was facing north. Hector Martin at the interview agreed with Helen and said the Appalachians fell into the ocean off Maine and then pulled up again to form the west coast of Newfoundland.
    Now she felt like the mountains had fallen into the gulf. Her knees were sinking. She wanted to be the one to collapse, but if they were both on the floor they’d laugh and she wasnt about to let Arthur laugh. She shouted at him for five days. She beat on his neck and a hardness, like a fold of aluminum, rose over her shoulders. Then he’d see her soft and sorry for herself. Once she let him hold her and Arthur knew it would be okay. But then the aluminum rose again and cut through his hands. One day she tore the plug heads out of the power bar, as if the connections made him do it. A chair was thrown and a leg went clean through the drywall. Arthur was afraid to turn his back on her, he saw her coming at him from out of the dark and felt the plunge of a carving knife in his kidneys. Then she recovered, or at least returned to a calm pool, and in that calmness she announced in a dead tone that she was leaving him. I will debit whatever it costs, she said. You’ll keep the joint accounts open and filled. The voice was the same instructional tone she used when reminding him to get a haircut. But the new plan was to construct a fork in the river. She was through with the vast promise she had trusted was there. Helen Crofter fell into a hatred for her own amateur romanticism.
    Arthur had woken up in his son’s bed. Helen was in the doorway. At first it looked like she was forgiving him. But then it was a stare of desperation.
    We have beautiful things, she said.
    Youre the strongest woman, Arthur Twombly said, I’m ever likely to meet.
    She sat on the edge of the bed and stroked her own shoulders. She was