Awinita sits up in bed and rings for the nurse.
“I’m clean,” she tells her.
• • • • •
2. —What c’n I get ya?
3. —Can I take your order?
4. —What?. . A chin?
5. —Well, with those words you’d be better at the tailor’s than in a coffee shop. Wanna coffee?
VII. MALANDRO
Delinquent, bandit, bad boy. In the early twentieth century, the malandro was an individual whose way of life was based entirely on improvisation.
Milo, 1967–70
UPON RETURNING TO the farm after Oscar’s death, Milo goes into a black hole and stays there. Weeks, months maybe — he loses track of time. Goes through chores and homework, robotlike. No one can reach him.
Neil is worried—Won’t you come up and read with me, Milo? — no, he will not, not yet. He needs to swathe his being in protective robes of silence and shadow, plunge into somber splendor, the closets of his early childhood, the blackout screen at the end of TV movies, and also, when summer finally rolls around again, the deepest, darkest water at the center of Lac des Piles. .
(I’m seeing more and more clearly that what you love when you love somebody are that person’s loves. Loving you, Milo, means loving your love for Oscar. Neil. Lac des Piles. .)
On the far side of the lake is an Anne of Green Gables sort of house — Milo has swum across to it several times. A cushy green-and-white summer cottage with a glassed-in porch, property of a wealthy gay movie producer by the name of Sherman Dyson. As wealthy gay movie producers were an exotic species in rural Quebec back in the mid-1960s (and who could have guessed that you yourself would one day fall in love with just such a creature?), every aspect of Dyson’s identity was an inexhaustible source of gossip in the area. His wealth aroused people’s envy, his homosexuality their sarcasm, his profession their reverence. . and no one knew what to make of the fact that, the previous spring, he’d gotten married. The bride was rumored to be a good deal younger than he, and a model, and a looker, so it may not be far-fetched to suggest that Milo’s powerful crawl- and breast-strokes across Lac des Piles, that summer after Oscar’s death, took him with perhaps unwonted frequency in the direction of this particular summer cottage.
And indeed, one day. . there she was.
A dream scene. The young woman has her back to him when, approaching shore, he first catches sight of her. Her skin is tan, her hair blond and wavy to mid-back, and she is clad in a mere idea of a white bikini. Arriving in shallow water, Milo takes great splashing steps to conceal the rise of desire between his legs. Hearing the swoosh of water, the young woman turns and appraises him with a smile. She doesn’t flinch or blush or flee. At fifteen he is fully formed, and what she sees coming toward her is not a tall, skinny, gangly teenager but a solid, sturdy, brown young man, water running down his chest and thighs as he advances, rilling over his shoulders from his black-auburn hair (long and thick in summertime).
“That was quite a swim,” she says when he’s within hearing range. “I’m Kim.”
At once, to Milo’s ears, Kim is the sexiest name in the world. Its resonance vibrates with crème and chrème6 and whim and brim and sperm, all the way to his balls.
“I’m Milo,” he says.
And the dream continues, the dream continues, Kim takes his hand and leads him across the patio and into the elegant green-gabled cottage. By the time his eyes grow accustomed to the penumbra, the two of them have already floated through the kitchen into the bedroom, the young woman is already helping him remove his trunks and guiding him onto the bed and taking his astoundingly outstanding member in her hands. . Close-up on the boy’s expression, surprise then deeper delight as a woman’s mouth voyages him toward a new universe of pleasure, and when, not much later, his virginity gets lost in a rush of joy manyfold richer than anything he’d concocted with the help of Sophia Loren or Edith or the cows, Kim kisses him tenderly on the lips.
“Thank you, baby,” she says breathily. “You’re as marvelous as you look. . I needed that. You wanna meet my husband?”
Ever willing to deal with what life chooses to dish up to him, be it rape at the hands of a lumberjack cousin or enchantment in the arms of a blond model, Milo slips his swimming trunks back on and pads after her. Dyson’s office is next to the bedroom and the man has been there all along in a big leather working chair, reading a magazine and puffing on a cigar. Kim makes the introductions with graceful arm movements.
“Sherman, Milo. Milo, Sherman.”
“You speak English?” Dyson asks as he shakes hands with the strapping boy, and then, when Milo nods, “Know anything about gardening?”
“I know vegetables better dan flowers, but I learn quick.”
“He learns quick,” Kim confirms, repressing a giggle.
“Okay, you’re hired.”
CUT to a series of scenes from the remainder of that unforgettable summer of 1967 in which, day after day, Milo acquires the basics of horticulture and eroticism in languorous alternation: we see him trimming hedges, sculpting rosebushes, mowing the lawn, adding fertilizer to flower beds, and learning all about patience and perseverance in his amorous acrobatics with the older woman. Kim teaches him that there are heavens beyond the first, and that even the seventh is not the last. .
(I must say I’m profoundly grateful to Kim Dyson. Sexually speaking, your kindergarten was pretty atrocious but your grade school was top-notch. Few men are so lucky as to have had a kind, skillful, affectionate professor to initiate them into the subtleties of physical love. After a few weeks, the professorship turned into a tandem: Sherman joined the two of you in bed. And your luck back then, Astuto darling, has been mine these three decades. .)
Marie-Thérèse is incensed at what she divines is going on across the lake. . but every time she opens her mouth to light into him about it, Régis stares her down and she clamps it shut again, for Milo is suddenly making a significant contribution to the household finances.
Having few outlets for her fraught feelings toward her nephew, Marie-Thérèse goes back to (bong) hitting him over the head with the (bong, bong) telephone receiver. He lets it happen. He doesn’t much care. The world is rife with dangers. There are aunts who wield telephones, bears whose powerful arms and chests can crush the air from your lungs, snakes whose venom can stop your heart, wolves whose teeth can tear you limb from limb. You need to know about the world’s dangers and protect yourself. Milo covers his ears to prevent Marie-Thérèse from doing further damage to his hearing.
One day, though, her words pierce through the cotton fleece of fog in his brain and hit him in the heart:
“You ungrateful brat! You evil seed, you good-for-nothing! I wish I’d never agreed to take you in! You love the gutter, it’s in your blood, your grandfather should have left you there.” (Bong!) “I was going to have a house built next door just for you, a nice place you could live in when you grow up. But if you wanna fritter your time away, all right, fine, no point my breaking my back to make something out of you! Go join your slut of a mother and your delinquent of a father on Saint Catherine Street! That’s where they made you! Go ahead, go back where you belong, no skin off my back!” (Bong!)