Free Architects Are Here by Michael Winter Page B

trying to encourage herself. Big lives, she said, depend on finding those sorts of women.
    Arthur looked beyond rescue. He looked drowned. But what if you ruin them, he said.
    You believe too much in the self, Helen said. And governing one’s emotions.
    And he knew that was true. I tend, he said, to cut losses even when it means severing love.
    Neither of them knew if splitting up would help them get over Zac. They both thought probably not.
    H ELEN WORKED LATE at the office on Main Street. There was much wrangling over jurisdiction of inland coastline and she lost herself in the wrangling. The mill had dams through a chain of lakes, and Helen had secured ninety-nine-year leases on a quarter of the timberlands of the entire island. She needed access to power from the Deer Lake hydro station, and Bowater required laws that were already on the books be observed by cabin owners. Now she was having to visit dams and take photos of the water-level meters for court hearings, to supply evidence of the pulp mill’s solid management of the water supply. Building codes were being ignored, she argued, and properties flooded and lawsuits filed when the mill raised or lowered the level of water for its tugs and pulp-log booms.
    When she went home she had to turn on the lights just for herself. Sasha wasnt home much these days. She was staying a lot at her boyfriend’s. They had agreed that Sasha could do what she wanted. But now Helen wanted her daughter here to make it less lonely. She was in the house where her husband had been sleeping with a student in their dead son’s room. She ate a cold leg of chicken with salt. She liked the idea of eating one thing at a time. Richard Text would be back soon. Could she live in the house with Richard. Could she tell him to live somewhere else. Did she need the money for the mortgage. Why was she so unhappy and would moving away help. Her parents in Michigan, what to say. David was coming home for Christmas. My god Christmas, they’d have to tell him.
    She went up to Zac’s old bedroom and looked at the bed. She saw them there, her husband and Nell, and it bothered her. She was hot to it. She refused to become her husband. That men can do that. She was not impressed with the callous behaviour of men.
    She stripped her own bed and looked at the mattress. She decided he at least hadnt been with her here. She tried turning the mattress and the next day she felt a pain in her lower back. She felt like that girl was jumping on her tailbone.
    For three weeks Helen worked and grew less happy. She lost nine pounds. A colleague, Lisa Tremblay from Trois-Rivières, was looking for a roommate. If you know of anybody.
    Arthur came by to pick up more things.
    I dont want to stay in this house, she said.
    He hadnt known she was unhappy about the house. She told him about Lisa Tremblay. She could share a house in townsite with Lisa. You can have the house.
    Arthur:What about Sasha. What about when David is here.
    I can’t look at things in the house, she said, it makes my heart too heavy.
    How do things spiral into mad behaviour. Arthur called his son to warn him of the separation. Should he come home or just stay in St John’s. No, come home. Your mother. We both love you.
    David hated the fact that his Christmas was ruined. Sasha was going to her boyfriend’s for Christmas, so it would be just him and them. He swam laps at the university pool, and while he was underwater and in the rhythm of the crawl, he understood that he was a little scared of the new situation. He loved going home to the peace of his room for ten days and relaxing out of schoolwork and driving his father’s Audi in the snow and seeing his friends who had returned to Corner Brook for the holidays. He realized he was not comfortable in the house alone with his father. They needed his mother as a buffer. They were not used to direct communication. They were both good at talking, but somehow the presence of the other made them feel