Spaghetti alla Puttanesca
2 tbls. olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped
pinch dried herbs
anchovy fillets
2 tsp. capers
black olives, pitted
small can tomatoes
red wine
spaghettini
grated parmesan cheese
Simmer all sauce ingredients.
Pour sauce over al dente pasta. Top with cheese.
Serve with a hearty red wine.
I open the tin of anchovy fillets, half of which I consume on crackers with my first glass of vino rosso.
I have spent the afternoon pouring myself into my large artwork. It is now off of the stretcher frame, being removed as I do dinner prep.
Before dark, it will be rolled, tied, and stowed in the canoe.
I’m happy with it.
Having said that, I know that I really won’t be able to tell if my work on it is complete until it is hanging on the wall of my studio.
It is always the final judgment.
But the addition of the thin red tentative unsure marks has made a huge difference – taking the artwork from a landscape,
an abstract landscape,
to a work which tells the story of my nine-day solo canoe trip, with all of the memories, joys and sadness.
And loss.
August 1974
I really just wanted to be alone.
My mother was big on mending relationship problems, and after my initial collapse into tears, she snapped questions at me, the answers to which I was not prepared to discuss.
She meant well but it only made things worse.
My memory of the hour after Wren, then Bud left,
was of my mother’s unrelenting efforts to ‘solve’ the troubles,
(“Time heals all wounds!”)
and of my dear father,
pacing in the doorway, hands deep in his pockets, every now and then gently saying, “Aw, Diannie”,
the name he called me as a little girl when I was sad or afraid.
In the end, the facts my parents knew were these:
1. I was in love with Bud.
2. I felt betrayed by Bud.
3. I felt betrayed by Wren.
4. I’d likely never see Wren again.
The facts they did not know, were these:
1. I had made love with Bud.
2. Bud had had some sort of intimate relations with Wren.
3. I had (in the past) had some sort of intimate relations with Wren.
4. I loved them both.
As it was the Friday of the Labour Day weekend, my brothers, not having seen my parents, (or me for that matter), in two months, were due to begin arriving at the cottage in the early evening. I’d had a few hours to compose myself, had taken the canoe for a long slow solo paddle, and had made it clear that I wanted no one to know anything about anything.
In spite of having said that, it was the appearance of Dennis that was almost too much to bear. He arrived about 8:30 as the sun was going down, saying that Arthur, Mark and John were heading up early Saturday morning. Dennis was so closely intertwined with Bud, perhaps really Bud’s best friend, and with the bond we had as twins, he intuitively sensed that something was amiss.
For starters, he expected Bud to be there.
My parents took themselves off to bed relatively early for them, exhausted I imagine from the drama of the afternoon. Dennis grabbed two beers from his cooler and motioned for me to join him at the campfire pit.
It was easy to talk to Dennis, as it has always been, around a campfire in the near complete darkness.
The two beers soon became two more, and then two more, and we talked it all out – no tears, just that age-old question:
“What do I do now?”
My main memory of that time around the fire was how incredibly supportive Dennis was. He took everything in stride, in his calm analytical way. He mentioned, what came as a shock to me, that Bud had shown interest in me way way back, and that he had known before phoning that I was at the cottage alone.
This changed things for me.
I had imagined that perhaps it was me pushing for a physical encounter that night with the skinny-dip and Bud, but as it turned out, Bud had had a plan.
It was well after midnight when we finally turned in. I felt calm and in control, and had a bit of a game plan.
That Saturday morning my brothers arrived quite early, bringing with them Ginny.
This too came as a surprise, though not, as I soon discovered, to anyone else. It didn’t take Ginny long, who knew my heart so well, to figure out that some girl-time was in order, and once she’d settled in and had a cup of coffee with my parents, we took ourselves off for a long meandering paddle.
Ginny was fair, as Ginny had always been.
Fair, and neutral.
She acknowledged that she had her suspicions about Bud’s feelings for me.
But that wasn’t particularly what she wanted to tackle.
She wanted to talk about Wren.
We landed on an island in our bay, a tiny island with a couple of pine trees and a floor covered in pine needles, a place my family called Spindle Island, a place where we had picnicked when we were small. I hadn’t lain in the pine needles of Spindle Island for years, and the scent of pine and the view of the sky through a network of tree limbs took me back to the comfort and safety of being a small child.
We talked about Wren.
Ginny didn’t ask questions.
It wasn’t her way.
I talked, and like a psychologist, Ginny stated back to me what she took from my ramblings.
“That last year at camp, you had a relationship with Wren.”
“You were in love with her.”
“She’s hurt you badly.”
I was that angst-ridden twelve-year-old in a ragged red hoodie again.
I heard my voice quaver, and stopped to gather myself.
Ginny moved an inch closer and enclosed my hand in hers.
“I’ll bet you know what attracted you to Wren in the first place.”
“I wonder if you can imagine anyone else being attracted to her for the same reasons.”
Something twigged then, a clarity, as it seemed to make perfect sense
that Wren and Bud and I
would find the same things, the same people, attractive.
Perhaps what we needed was time.
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