Natural Order by Brian Francis Read Free Book Online

back porch, his hands in his pockets, rocking back and forth, the swirl of his growing bald spot like the eye of a hurricane. “We made a good decision with this house.”
    “When do you think the basement will be ready?” I’ve been anxious for him to finish the rec room. No one else we know has one, not even Helen, who seems to have everything under the sun, even though Dickie can’t make that much as an electrician. I’m desperate to have a party. I think of laughter and music, a passed plate of hors d’oeuvres, tinkling ice. I imagine myself in a dress that I’ll never be able to afford, pearl-drop earrings that I don’t own, a trail of perfume on my neck. Who is this woman? I sometimes wonder. Where did she come from? How could she possibly fit into this landscape of shift-working husbands and exhausting six-year-old boys?
    “Soon,” Charlie will say. “We’ll have everything soon enough. Maybe another baby, too.”
    “Don’t talk like that. You know what the doctor said.”
    “Doctors don’t know everything. You just need a little faith.”
    I’ll be sad to see the trees go. There’s something peaceful and hypnotic about the dark pockets between their trunks. I once saw a deer step out from the trees so matter-of-factly that I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I watched it walk towards the edge of the backyard. I would’ve called for John, but he was at school, and Charlie was working days. The deer cocked its head and paused. I held my breath. Then, as quickly as it appeared, it slipped back into the trees.
    I think about that deer often. I wonder what will happen to it once the dump trucks and bulldozers and chainsaws move in. Who will protect it? Where will it go?
    We moved here five years ago, when John was just a toddler. Before that, we lived in the apartment on Cecil Street. It was small and dark and I hated smelling what strangers were having for supper. Charlie was working overtime shifts whenever he could and I did some sewing on the side until I got pregnant. We used to drive by the areas we wanted to live in, wondering what it would be like to have a backyard. A porch. Our own driveway. Charlie wanted a workroom more than anything else. He can build or repair just about anything. He’s quite the handyman, Charlie Sparks. Born and raised in the Prairies. When the work out there dried up, he bought a car and drove east.
    “You didn’t know anyone?” I asked him once.
    He shook his head.
    “But how could you leave like that, without knowing what might happen?”
    “You take your chances in life,” he said. “Things usually work out for the best.”
    I wanted him to talk about me in that moment; about how fate drew us together. I wanted him to use the word love . But he has trouble talking about those sorts of things.
    “Most men aren’t good with emotions,” Helen said once with an authoritative nod. She’s always making pronouncements like this. Grand overviews. Hard-and-fast rules about life and men and marriage. I think she feels it’s her responsibility to set me straight. She wants to teach me.
    I met Charlie at the dance pavilion one summer night. He was shy and I was lonely. By that point, I believed what Helen had told me—that my expectations were too high; that love wasn’t some kind of explosion. And even if it were, it wouldn’t endure. Life was moving steadily along, so what was the point in chasing after the idea of something that didn’t even exist?
    Charlie and I were married six months later. Helen was my maid of honour. Dickie was the best man. I remember walking down the aisle on my father’s arm and seeing Charlie waiting at the altar in the suit he’d borrowed from a friend at work. I was thinking about the luncheon menu, my parents, my dress. I wasn’t thinking about him. It was only in the months after, once all the commotion died down and a silence settled in between us, that I began to wonder what we had in common.
    Not that he’s a bad man.