K Kapuskasing

There are four bedrooms in the house. Since Nicole left, I sleep in the small one on the main floor. Upstairs is the master bedroom, our old room, the one with the bathroom. Now I use it to plan for my period one class, Grade Eleven Physical Geography. There is an impressive stack of reference books on the bed: North America and Its Landforms. Glaciation. The Hidden World Beneath. Not that I have opened any of them recently, but if ever I needed to look something up, I'm sure I would find my answers. The thick binder on the desk is where my lesson plans are filed. Each day, in order: handouts, overheads, quizzes, all there, ready to be photocopied. I have been teaching this course since 1996, and little has changed in the world of Physical Geography. Except a little erosion, but that is hardly noticeable.

Jenny's room could use some redecorating. It still looks like a kid's bedroom with its pink wallpaper border and stuffed animals on the shelf but I'm sure I could fix it up if it helps sell the house. Staging, I think they call it. I could stage all this, for show. In the meantime, I'll use Jenny's room to prep for my second-period class, Human Geography. The course description states, 'Students will explore the interdependent connections between the land and its people.' Settlement patterns, industrial development, demographics. The kids find it boring, but it counts for one of two mandatory credits for Social Science, so the course runs every year. The curriculum has done away with the textbook and now only refers to online resources, but I still have photocopies of the old book. I write notes on the blackboard and the students copy. The exam questions come right out of these notes, so it should be easy to get a good mark. That's what I tell the kids.

Down the hall there are three doors: the middle one is the bathroom, to the left is my fourth-period prep room. (Period three is my spare. I don't need to set aside a room in my house for my prep time at school, which is taken up by meeting with the principal, returning calls to angry parents or covering the class for a teacher who is away coaching a team.) Fourth Period Geography is called Issues in a Changing World. It's a senior course, supposedly a preparation for university in which students are challenged to take a position on global issues and defend their point of view. The kids enroll in the class, all dreamy, thinking they can make a difference.

The bedroom on the right? There isn't much to see in there. I use it to store old files, photos—that kind of stuff. Before I move out I'll go through it and throw away what I don't need anymore. I still need to box up some of it for Nicole. She said she wants the photos of Jenny as a baby. There is other stuff in there too, things from my past, before we were married. The locked file cabinet in the corner is for those. I don't need to open it very often to look at the old photos or read the letters. I remember what she looked like, I know what the letter says. But, imagine if one day I were to forget? It is comforting to know that if I needed to, I could open the second drawer and flip to the letter K, and there, between my fingers, would be the photo I took of Layla with her old Pentax. I remember: I have the camera propped up on her work boots, trying to keep it from moving as I hold the shutter open for twenty seconds. The print is blurred and grainy, but it is all I have left of her. The remains of the evening sun burn ochre speckles into her skin, the curves between her hip and her shoulder dip like the rolling hills on the horizon. But the lines are blurry, especially when I first wake up. Kapuskasing doesn't have hills. Peru does, Ecuador too. The hills must have come from the dream, the one where she sits beside me and our knees touch as she wipes my cheek like a mother and tells me everything is as it should be. I awake fulfilled for a moment, certain she visited me in my sleep until the awareness of my place in the world settles. So I keep these files to remind me of the truth. This cabinet, these drawers, hold in alphabetical order all of which I am certain. The documents ground me to reality and some mornings, after the dream, I find comfort in opening the files and pulling out this old photo. The red June sky and the contour lines of her skin, as she lay on her side, turned away from me—I know it happened.