Free Vanishing and Other Stories by Deborah Willis Page B

here.” Peter had moved on from the newspaper and the Bible was open on his lap.
    â€œThe Bible?”
    â€œResearch.” He uses either too many or two few words. There is no in-between.
    â€œApril’s that woman I went swimming with. She suggested dinner at her place, since we haven’t unpacked yet.” I tried to hide that I felt giddy, being the first to make a new acquaintance.
    â€œApril? She sounded Québécoise. I wouldn’t be surprised if she changed her name from the French.”
    â€œShe expects us by six. We don’t have to knock.”
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    APRIL COULD HANDLE PETER , his initial silences and then, later in the evening, his lectures, his educated anecdotes. She fed us pasta with seared scallops in a dill sauce (dill from the garden, of course) and poured wine into preposterously huge and heavy glasses that she had hand-painted. She told us never to buy blackberries, since she had more than she could eat in a year. Though we didn’t know the names she mentioned, she fed us island gossip (apparently, everybody fucks everybody else) and Peter, like any academic, was enraptured by her tales of scandal. April pointed to the clumsy realism on her walls and explained that, though her income came from selling bread at Jana’s Bakery and the Saturday market, her real love was painting.
    â€œPainting anything. Walls, houses, canvas, wood. I’m just colourful.” She laughed too loudly, and shook her long, grey-streaked hair. Her eyes folded shut in a blissful, childish way, wrinkling her temples.
    â€œI can tell,” said Peter, not altogether kindly.
    April wore a loose olive tank top that showed her body of contradictions: soft but tanned shoulders, hard, knotted knuckles, and red fingertips. At fifty-three, she is thirteen years older than me but seems younger, bustling. Peter was right: she came from a small town in Quebec, but left at sixteen.
    â€œMais je peux encore faire une tourtière fantastique—la recette de ma mère.”
She had a harsh accent that clashed with Peter’s Parisian French, one of three languages he knows inside out.
    She buzzed about exhibiting her work at a hole-in-the-wall gallery in Fulford, how ferry tourists loved her Island Houses. I told her about Toronto: the agents, grants, shows, reviews. Peter complimented the wine.
    â€œSo you’re a linguist,” April said as we ate tiny dark chocolates from a glass bowl. “If it’s not too boring, doctor, tell me about your work.”
    â€œIt is too boring,” he answered, sternly but in good humour, though he rarely spares me from discussion of his latest class, chapter, lecture, or the thoughts that cram themselves into his days. He was, I assume, bored by her.
    â€œDo you sell these?” he asked, and held up his wineglass. “We would love to have a set.”
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    WHEN WE RETURNED (overfull) to our small house of unfamiliar smells and furniture, Peter didn’t go to the narrow room that would serve as his office. We went to the bedroom and I flicked on the dim bedside lamp.
    â€œI had fun,” I said, though I meant it as a question. I wondered if he had enjoyed himself.
    â€œYes,” Peter answered, and sat on the other side of the double bed, a bed much smaller than our own queen-sized. “She has character, I suppose.”
    I kicked off my sandals and began to unbutton my shirt. “And she’s a marvellous cook. Sometimes I wish I could cook—though not often.” I was chattering. For the first time in years, in this strange room, his eyes on me felt new. In Toronto, we rarely wentto bed at the same hour. Before sleep, I was used to seeing the light of his study shine through the crack in the door.
    â€œYou’re burnt.” Peter touched his finger to my shoulder and I felt a pulse of pain.
    â€œWe were at the beach all day.” I went to the suitcases we’d left open in the living