Peas porridge hot,
Peas porridge in the pot,
Nine days old.
Some like it hot,
Some like it cold,
Some like it in the pot,
Nine days old.
-Traditional nursery rhyme
My eighth night is uneventful.
So much for the celebratory last evening.
Although, it had everything I wanted – Spaghetti alla Puttanesca, red wine, and one bone-weary body
from a day spent enveloped in art.
After dinner and another glass of wine, I had climbed into the tent to organize my gear.
The slanting rays of the evening sun made the light peach-coloured and warm. It was beyond cozy.
And the next thing I knew, 5:48 a.m.
An hour before sunrise, but enough light to see,
to get the fire going.
I make tea and a pot of oatmeal. It’s a cool morning and the dew, chilly.
The idea of oatmeal and maple syrup is all-consuming.
I am really in no great rush today, my last day.
The plan was, on Day 9 to meet Bud at the landing at 6 p.m., and go out to dinner at ‘The Cabin’,
a small but quite good restaurant ten kms into our journey home.
I have all day.
I have just about made it.
I am feeling ecstatic.
As the pot of oatmeal sits, I lay out bowl, spoon, syrup.
There’s usually quite a chatter of birds and small creatures as everything starts to lighten.
But even with this, I pick out a sound over the water – distant and gentle.
Dip dip and swing.
Fall, 1974
And time, as it does, passed.
I immersed myself in my art studies at U of T after that disastrous summer’s end.
And listened to a lot of Neil Young.
I heard from Bud about two weeks into September,
asking if he could come to see me in Toronto sometime.
I agreed, but wanted time. I felt that I needed to talk to Wren, to get a sense of where we were,
and what to expect.
With trepidation, I phoned.
She was disinterested in speaking to me, but agreed.
She said that she and Bud had had a bit of a fling that last night, but did not elaborate.
She said that it meant nothing to her, that it had been a matter of too much wine,
that she had met someone at the publishing firm earlier that summer,
that they were now seeing each other, and basically, that she wanted to put both me and Bud
in the past, out of her life.
With a voice that betrayed my emotions, I told her that I loved her.
There was a long silence, and then:
“Diana, I can’t do this.
I need to find my own way.
I wish you all the best.”
On the Thanksgiving weekend, Bud and I walked the boardwalk, walked for hours.
We had a slow stilted beginning, conversation-wise. He tried to start saying something, then stopped.
I could see that he was deeply conflicted.
I waited.
We marched our way along the old boardwalk, the grey boards warm and comforting.
After about twenty minutes, he came out with a long disjointed stream of words,
mumbled in a way that I missed a good deal of what he said, mumbled like the thirteen year old boy
I had first met.
And yet, I got the gist.
We went to sit on a bench near the shore, off the beaten path.
I was stunned to see tears as he turned to look at me.
He was pouring out his heart in the only way he could.
Bud was staying with Ginny and Margie that weekend
I was sure that Ginny had been the driving force behind Bud –
the Bud who was actually doing something about that last Loop night, and not letting it ride,
waiting to see what happened.
We agreed that we wanted to see each other, that we wanted to give our relationship -
our relationship that was in the premature infancy stage –
a chance.
We talked about Wren, but only Wren as part of our past.
What I really wanted was space and time. I wanted to concentrate on my art.
I felt like the Bud-Wren-Me triangle were pressing it on me, fencing me in, keeping me from focusing on
my university work. I realize now that I was, in many ways, mourning the loss of Wren.
Sometimes in the night, I would convince myself that I could make things work,
that she could still be part of my life,
our life.
But with the cold Ontario dawn, I knew that this wasn’t going to happen.
Bud and I waited until classes were over the following Spring to see each other again.
We had spoken on the phone now and then that winter, but apart from that, Bud abided by my wishes
and left me alone.
Left me alone, with the promise that in the Spring, we would try again.
As far as Wren went, I had sent her a Christmas card, my only communication with her since
the phone call.
She replied, sending a formal business card with the typed message:
“Happy Holidays,
Wren and David”
And then, during my reading week a terse note, (without much happiness), saying that
on February 1, 1975,
she and David had married.
I wrote to her when my mother died that Fall, having had a stroke and dying in hospital two weeks later,
at the age of fifty-nine.
I thought, as she was fond of my mother, that she would want to know.
However, I received no reply.
And that, for me, was the end of Wren.
I heard nothing more from or about her.
That is, until three weeks ago.
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