Note # 65 – The Spaghetti Supper Sangha

Lovely people of the internet!

My latest novel, the third book in the Stafford Falls trilogy, is now available for purchase in print and ebook on Amazon.

If you’re in Canada, you can go here to buy: The Spaghetti Supper Sangha

In the US, you can go here to buy: The Spaghetti Supper Sangha

More nostalgic thoughts later, but in the meantime here’s the first chapter.

Enjoy!

P.

P.S. Thanks for waiting!

*******

The Spaghetti Supper Sangha

Chapter One: Dearly Beloved

I am sitting at the end of a wooden dock, watching every known shade of pink and orange bleed over the horizon and into the dawn sky, trying to figure out how on earth you could ever render something so miraculous and perfect into paint. My paintbox is open beside me and I have a tiny canvas propped up against the lid and I am trying to capture the landscape before me — all of it, the crescent of sun that’s peeking over the horizon, the mirror surface of the lake, the silent trees that stand on the mainland, but mostly the sky.

There is just so much sky here.

Ophelia sits beside me, her chin on her paws, her eyes closed in peaceful repose. She is the very picture of relaxation, testament to the healing powers of a proper vacation — which is what we’re on, a proper vacation, the first one in a very long time.

Because even though I’m painting on this fine summer morning, it’s really not like working, it’s much more like playing. I don’t usually do landscapes and I never work on such small canvases so that in itself is a change of pace, but mostly this is playing because I’m just painting these little pieces for the sheer joy of it and also to somehow record this vacation. This is my version of holiday snapshots, I suppose, and I’ve been sneaking away every chance I get to just churn out two or three very small canvases of whatever is in front of me to paint — the trees, the shore, the cottage, the view. I don’t even bother listening to the niggling voice in my head, which sounds a lot like Bianca Wren, my gallerist and agent, who would no doubt be telling me that “such small landscapes are not hot at all right now, darling! Think bigger, think expansive, think about your brand!”

But honestly, I’m quite happy not to think about my brand for a little while. I’m happy just to paint.

Come to think of it, I’m just happy.

The sun creeps a little further over the horizon and it is molten lava. I reach for a tube of cadmium red.

This proper vacation that we are enjoying is at a lovely, remote cottage on a rocky island in the middle of a great expanse of deep blue water, an hour’s boat ride from Stafford Falls. The “we” in question is quite a group and includes my best friend Pam, her two hilarious kids, my Nana, my Nana’s dogs and of course, Julia, my fiancée, (or, ‘The Woman Formerly Known As Your Girlfriend’ as Pam has called her a few times now.) It was a bit of a surprise that we (and all our baggage) could all fit into the boat that we hired to ferry us up to this little hideaway but we did, all of us (dogs included) happily donning our PFDs for the duration.

 Pam suggested this whole group vacation idea — she and Jason splurged and got the place for a month, through a friend of Jason’s family I think — but Jason could only come for the last two weeks and so, to thank us for having her and the girls at our house during a difficult spell last year, Pam invited us all to share this little Shangri-La with them until Jason arrived.

The island is essentially an enormous, tree-covered series  of rocks that jut out of the water with a big A-frame cedar cottage at one end and a little bunkhouse down by the dock. It’s only accessible by boat and is what a real estate agent would probably describe as “charmingly rustic” in that there is running water, but no flush toilet, electricity only some of the time and absolutely no cell signal. (Julia tried for the first two days then happily gave up.)  At night we have candles and lanterns, and the girls wear little headlamps and are constantly managing to blind each other and all of us with them. 

There’s a little aluminum fishing boat with a motor that putts along happily and might be able to get us back to the mainland in a pinch if it was a calm day, but Pam has scheduled grocery and supply drop offs from the caretaker, so we haven’t had to try to pilot it back to civilization yet. There’s been no actual fishing in this fishing boat because not a single one of us can bear to put a worm on a hook, so mostly we use it to amble around the bay and look at the sunset. It’s all a little bit like going to the edge of the world and jumping off which, coincidentally, was exactly what we all needed.

Since arriving, Martha and Rose have gone a bit feral and they are somehow even more beautiful for it, like fields of wildflowers that have been allowed to run riot. Their hair is long and unkempt, they barely get out of their bathing suits and they climb trees and scrape their knees and throw themselves off the dock and into the water over and over until one of us drags them out and makes them eat a sandwich.

Nana is also thriving. She brought a suitcase of books and has a spot on the deck with an umbrella for shade and she and the dogs pass long afternoons reading, napping and watching the girls play. I’m not sure she’s ever looked happier.

It did take Julia a few days to unwind, though. Drew was very serious about taking on the role of Replacement Manager while she was away, so there is zero chance that things are going wrong, but Julia worries a bit anyway. After two days — about the time she’d given up on getting any cell signal —  something came over her, like she realized that this is where she was and she should just relax and enjoy it and then she embraced it wholeheartedly. She swims with the girls and lays in the sun and, after a little while, I notice that she has a sprinkling of freckles on her nose that somehow make her look even more beautiful.

We all take turns cooking and we eat lavish brunches; we lounge about, swim, read, nap and then the next day, we get up and do it all over again.

This particular morning, the one on which I find myself sitting at sunrise on a dock with a snoozing Labrador, is August 15^th. I know this because Nana made sure to record the date that the Perseid meteor shower would show to its best advantage and she had determined that the night of the 14^th was the big night. So last night, we all trekked out here to the end of the dock with lawn chairs and sleeping bags and blankets, set up a sort of cocoon/observation nest, then turned our eyes to the heavens. 

Nana was in her element, telling us how the Perseid meteors were actually due to particles ejected from a comet and that the shower was named as it was since, in the sky, the meteors appear to come from the constellation of Perseus. Then, because she had a captive audience, she gave a colourful retelling of the story of the aforementioned Greek mythological hero, including a particularly grisly description of how he cut off the head of the Gorgon Medusa. (Martha seemed enthralled by the slaying of the bad snake-haired lady, but I noticed that Rose kept moving closer to Pam during that part of the story.) Mostly though, we drank hot chocolate, looked up at the stark night sky and marvelled as the universe set off its cosmic fireworks just for us.

So now, this morning, I am here by myself, because everyone else is still asleep, a by-product of staying up way past all of our bedtimes. Nana has the fancy bedroom in the main house with Pam and the girls — well, the girls are there in theory, but a lot of the time, they sneak down to the tiny bunkhouse where Julia and I are set up and we’ve had quite a few sleepovers, which is how I know that Martha talks in her sleep and Rose, who barely weighs forty pounds, snores like a lumberjack. Last night, though, Pam insisted the girls sleep in the big cottage and so this morning when I woke up, it was just Julia and me in the bed and I lay there for a while watching her sleep, and marvelling at the way the world can surprise us. I do that sometimes — I just look at her and study the curve of her neck, the shape of her face, those eyes — and every single time, she steals my breath.

She is mine.

And I have absolutely no idea what I could have possibly done to deserve her.

It’s been a bit of a whirlwind since the end of June when we announced our engagement and I don’t think I was quite prepared for just how excited everybody would be upon hearing the news.

The first person we told, as soon as we got back from the dog park proposal, was of course Nana, who immediately folded us both into a long and fierce embrace, and who then tried, not very successfully, not to let on that she was all weepy over our news. 

“Nana,” I said, “why are you crying?”

She kissed each of us on the cheek, then dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. “I’m crying because you’ve given me something that I didn’t even know I needed,” she said. 

“What’s that?” Julia asked.

Nana smiled through her tears. “Another granddaughter.” 

So then we all had a good cry.

Julia’s parents, who had been waiting since Christmas for some movement on the proposal front, were equal measures delighted, relieved and excited when Julia called them.

“A wedding!” her mother had exclaimed so loudly that Julia had to hold the phone away from her ear. “Bill, we’re going to have a wedding!” I guess in addition to her general happiness about the whole thing, perhaps it had awakened all of her dormant event planner instincts.

The next day, Julia told Drew and Sam the news at the café, so then every single person who came in for a cappuccino or a date square stopped to congratulate one or both of us and we had to ask Wee Gordie Lambert to please, please not write a front page article about it in The Bungle, as we were hoping to keep it all a bit more low-key than that.

It took a couple of days to track my mother down (she was in Vietnam) and then a couple more to get her to answer her phone, but when she did, she was characteristically equal parts inscrutable and truculent.

“Yes, well, I figured as much,” she said, “so I suppose congratulations are in order. But we’re going to have to coordinate on the date because I am completely booked through all of next spring and most of the summer.”

So, same old same old, but honestly, I was too busy being happy (and kissing my brand new fiancée) to even care much aboutwhat she thought.

The sun is above the horizon now and it is spectacular. The greens of the trees on the mainland are changing under the rising sun, mutating from their nightshirts of viridian and emerald to something warmer and more golden. I dab at the blob of cadmium yellow and the forest comes to life but I don’t know if I can capture the quality of the light as it changes. I’m working wet-on-wet here, alla prima as the Italians named it, applying the wet paint to a layer that is not yet dried, racing a bit to try to capture the scene. To execute a really good alla prima piece, you have to paint quickly, but not too quickly, loosely, but not out of control, and you have to plan for the unpredictable nature of the paint.

So, pretty much like the rest of life, now that I think about it.

Pam was especially excited to hear the news of our engagement and the day we met her and the girls on the dock there was a little something extra in the way she hugged me —  a long, heartfelt squeeze, something in her smile and the way she looked at me. “I’m just so happy for you,” she said and I could tell that she really meant it. 

I think she might just be happy that there’s going to be a wedding, because there’s been no end of wedding talk while we’ve been here at the cottage. Martha and Rose, who pretty much unilaterally declared themselves flower girls, want to talk about their dresses and exactly what shade of princess pink they will be, but there is also talk of Julia’s nephews Angus and Alexander being (pint-sized) attendants and wearing kilts, which the girls find both intriguing and mysterious. I officially ask Pam to be my maid of honour/best person — so then she instantly wants to start planning dresses and food and venues and music and a double bachelorette party. In fact, she brings up about a thousand things that neither Julia nor I have even thought of yet and for one terrible moment, I think that I am possibly going to have to buy bridal magazines. But then I realize that it’s all so far away and theoretical and, honestly, doesn’t seem real somehow. Anyway, there is a sunbeam beating down on the hammock and it’s so inviting that all of it — life, work and the myriad details of rings and venues and colours and save the dates —  seem impossibly far off.

I hear footsteps on the dock behind me, steady little thumps whose rhythm I recognize without looking up.

“I wondered where you’d gotten to,” Julia says and I feel a sweet kiss on the back of my neck.

“I woke up early and I didn’t want to wake you,” I say, but I suddenly find it a little harder to concentrate on my painting.

She sits down beside me, wraps her arms around my waist, then turns her face to the sun and sighs. “Let’s just live here forever,” she says.

“Sounds great,” I say. “But what about the café?”

She shrugs. “I’m sure Drew will be fine.”

I glance over at her, take in the tousled blond halo of hair and the beatific face.

“I really like this super-relaxed version of you,” I say.

She turns away from the sun to look at me and she smiles and there is mischief there.

“What?” I say.

But instead of answering, she stands up, peels off the tank top and boxer shorts that she slept in and drops the clothing beside me, then walks to the end of the dock and dives into the water. The splash shatters the stillness of the newborn morning.

Ophelia lifts her head from her paws and looks vaguely concerned but a moment later, Julia surfaces and flicks her wet hair back off her beautiful face

“Well?” she says. “Are you coming?”

I drop my paintbrush and I follow.

Best. Vacation. Ever.

***

The rest of the day is just another day in paradise. Martha and I paint some lily pads and flowers we spot in a little cove, Nana and Rose play several hundred games of Crazy Eights and Pam and Julia lay in side by side lounging chairs, sunning and reading and talking about such vitally important issues as off the shoulder necklines and cheese courses.

Later, after supper (grilled salmon for the grown ups and hot dogs for the littles) Julia and I offer to take Martha and Rose for an amble around the island while Nana and Pam do the washing up. Of course the dogs come too and we all end up on the western side of our little rocky hideaway where there are some shallows for the girls and the dogs to wade in. Rose decides to teach Martha how to skip stones, which is quite entertaining because Rose has no idea how to do this. Julia and I help for a bit, but finally we retreat to the shore to sit and watch them play. 

“So Pam has a lot of opinions about our wedding,” I say. 

“Does she?” Julia says.

“Yes, she wondered what my position on sweetheart necklines was, but it was hard to tell her what my position was because I don’t really have any idea what a sweetheart neckline is.”

Julia laughs. “It’s a style of neckline for a dress that’s sort of heart-shaped — usually quite low cut, and meant to accentuate one’s…well, décolletage.”

I suddenly feel much more interested. “Well, I enjoyed your décolletage this morning,” I say. “But, did we even decide on whether or not we were wearing fancy dresses? I mean, do we want it all to be formal or casual?”

“We haven’t really decided on anything, yet,” Julia says. “Even a date really, which will inform a lot of the other decisions we have to make.”

“Are there a lot of decisions to make?” I ask.

“Oh yes, tons of them, actually. There’s the invitation list and the invitations themselves. And then there’s booking the venue, and deciding on the meal, and the music and the decorations,” she says. “And there’s the cake, of course, but I can’t imagine anyone but Angie doing that.”

“Oh yeah, it has to be Angie,” I say.

“And then there’s the wedding party and the flower girls and the groomsmen. Or would they be bridesmen since there’s two brides? I’m not sure.”

“And do we want a church and the Reverend Archie Lewis?” I ask.

“Or Tenzin and something outside? Like Six Perfections,” Julia says. “There’s also the photographer and the seating charts and the rehearsal dinner and probably my parents will want to throw us an engagement party…” Her voice trails off a bit and I can’t tell if she’s finding this all very heavy or if she’s starting to make checklists in her head.

“Or, we could, you know, elope,” I say and this elicits the exact smile that I hoped it would.

“We could,” she says. “But I think we’d be disappointing half of Stafford Falls, not to mention my parents and your Nana.”

“That’s true,” I say and I watch Lucy Boxer bounding through the shallows, chasing the rock that Martha has just thrown. The sun is kissing the horizon now and the clouds are exploding in purples and pinks.

“Do you mind Nana?” I say, suddenly. “I mean, do you mind that we live with her, still? Do you want to move out into our own place?” 

 She looks out at the setting sun and the girls who are totally immersed in their rock throwing project for a while before she answers.

“I suppose the arrangement is a bit unorthodox, but actually I really like the way things are,” she says. “Living with your Nana makes me feel like I have more family and I love that feeling. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think a person can ever have too much family.” This reminds me again of how she’s lost a sister, but before I can say anything, she adds, “Well, except for your mother. That might be too much family, even for me.”

I nod knowingly, happy that we are in complete agreement on that point.

“You know another thing we have to plan?” I say. 

“What’s that?”

“A honeymoon.”

“Oh, you’re right,” she says and it is clear that this idea pleases her.

“What are your thoughts on that topic?” I say.

She looks dreamily out at the water. “You know what I’d really like? I’d like to go someplace where we can ride a Vespa. Preferably a red one.” 

This makes me unaccountably happy. “Okay, I say. A red Vespa. Rome, maybe? Amalfi? Do they have Vespas in Tuscany?”

She turns to face me and takes a long look, then kisses me. “I don’t really care,” she says. “I just want you. Some sun would be nice. And definitely a Vespa. But mostly you.”

“You’re not hard to please,” I say.

“I am a woman of very simple needs,” she says, but just then Rose accidentally beans her sister with a rock and there is a fair bit of yelling and teary recriminations, but after a great deal of comforting and some rather damp hugs, we round up the dogs and head back up through the dusk to the glowing cottage.

***

They say all good things must come to an end — although I’d like to know who the particular spoilsport who first said this was, because I personally am a big fan of ‘good things’ and would happily take way more than that guy was willing to dole out. Sadly though, our time on the Island of Wild Girls does come to an end. There are teary goodbyes on the dock and it really is hard to leave because this has been such a reprieve and escape from the world. We see one last spectacular sunset in the boat on the way home, and there’s a moment that embeds itself in my memory, like a mental snapshot — Julia and Nana, sitting together in the back of the boat, the wind in their hair, faces rosy and golden from the setting sun. 

Happiness, preserved forever in amber light.

At the marina, Julia loads our luggage into the Second Chance Café van while I help Nana and the dogs navigate the floating docks to dry land. It’s a short ride home, but on the way, Julia’s phone starts to ping insistently with texts. She passes me her phone to see what the commotion is and I discover a series of texts from Drew, sent in the last few hours.

Before I can even open the texts to read them, my own phone starts to buzz and ding and announce a whole cascade of texts as well. I sit there in the shotgun seat, a phone in each hand and feel momentarily paralyzed.

“What is it?” Julia says. “Is something wrong?”

I scan the texts on my phone —  one is from Drew and seven are from Bianca Wren.

I tap on Bianca’s texts first since there are so many and as usual there are no words, just a parade of seemingly disconnected little emojis. I scan them looking for a theme but it’s not immediately apparent to me: a cute little skunk, a thunderstorm, a crying face (one tear), an alarm clock, a couple of hearts that are broken in half, a yellow cab, a sobbing face (waterfalls for tears,) and what I think is the flag of Turkey.

I switch to Julia’s phone – all the texts are from Drew. 

The last one says:

Olivia’s friend Bianca is here at the café. Probably be good if you guys came here. Like, ASAP.

“Oh shit,” I say.