handy man with a sense of humus.
—E. B. White
I agreed to moving to the burbs, but a house in the country was not part of the equation...until it was, because frankly, I married a country girl who could never adjust to life in the city.
Quinn and I aren't especially unique people—we're actually part of the American dream.
If I tell our story it’ll be full of tropes from popular culture and Harlequin romances—she the student, I the professor—May and December—every romantic cliché… and yet, it was real.
Let me amend that—she was real, and I was the caricature. Anyway, enough of that—it’s over now, and we’ve both moved on.
Twenty years is a long time in a marriage—a life sentence—and yet the small cube van in the drive is all I’m taking away.
She wanted the house in the country—well, she got it. I hate small towns.
It was a comic opera from the get-go, a contemporary remake of Green Acres, but it fast became a problem play that ended in tragedy—our divorce.
“You could at least try, Gray.”
“I tried, Quinn—but they’re bloody Morlocks.”
Yep, that's how I viewed my new neighbours.
“Jim Kerr is not a Morlock—he’s a cool guy—you said so yourself, when he towed you out of the field last week.”
The memory was all too vivid—my SUV mired up to the hubcaps in thick, oozing mud.
“What were you thinking of Gray?”
Jim stared at me with an uncomprehending expression.
He took off his Stetson and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and jerked a thumb in the direction of the monster F150 pickup rumbling ominously in the road.
“Hell, my beast would have a hard time navigating that field.”
I was defensive. “I bought an SUV for this purpose, so I could get to lectures through any type of weather. I thought it could manage a bit of mud.”
He just smiled wryly. “Your SUV is a rich boy’s toy—it isn’t even 4-wheel drive—just a sporty box on a car chassis. Driving over that field you would have ruptured the oil pan.”
“Great!” I groaned. Fifty thousand dollars wasted.
He slapped me on the back and chuckled good-naturedly. “Don’t worry, pal—that’s what neighbours are for.”
See what I mean? Standing next to my muddy ‘toy’ on that country lane was a kind of turning point for me.
Don’t get me wrong—I’m not a snob—and Quinn had her problems too.
“So, how was the women’s group?” I enquired casually.
“Don’t ask!” Her eyes were flashing a semaphore even I could read.
“That bad, huh? Why not sit down and tell me all about it—I made coffee.”
She wavers, caught between sulking in a warm bath, or doing what she really wants to do—unburdening her heart.
I hand her a mug of steaming coffee and she succumbs. Sometimes the men get one back from the Garden.
“I just don’t know why I bother going,” she wails. “ It’s supposed to be a discussion group, but all the women do is sit around knitting.”
“Knitting, huh? You might like that.”
She gives me a look meant to kill.
:Um, maybe not," I concede.
“Do I look the type to knit?”
Looking at her in her jeans and soft leather cowboy boots I’d have to say no. Maybe line dancing at some campy upscale Toronto bar, but knitting? Definitely, no.
“I hate to say it, but they’re Morlocks, Quinn.”
It was the wrong thing to say.
“Like I’m from Venus, and you’re from Mars?” The flash is back in her eyes.
“Maybe I better finish working on my lecture notes for tomorrow.”
“Oh sure,” she pouts, “run off like you always do. Arghh! I don’t know why I thought moving to the country would work.”
I continue up the stairs to the study. I could go back and do damage control, but she’s right—I hate it here, and I’m hoping she gets frustrated enough to see it too.
Yeah, country life—it ain't the heaven she imagined it would be.