The Mechanic's Daughter

The Mechanic's Daughter Part 22: Frog song

I had a quarrel with Andrew just before he left for the summer over something he said about Barbara. We were having lunch together the day before he headed back to Toronto.

"Barbara, what a ball-buster. She has Carl shitting bricks."

"Andrew, she's my friend. You can't talk about her like that."

"Yeah. I just hate to see the guy squirm. "

"She's pushing him to make a commitment."

"That's between them. I'm sure Carl can stand up for himself."

"That woman scares the hell out of me," he said. I looked at him in astonishment – soft-hearted Barbara, rescuer of strays, scared him. What on earth did he see? "I'm glad you're not like that. Tough like that."

"Who says I'm not tough?"

He laughed. "I do."

It occurred to me then that I have been too undemanding, that another woman would have asked something of him as he went off for the summer, a more confident woman who knew what she wanted, or one not so concerned about repeating the mistakes she'd made with Paul. We haven't answered the obvious questions. Does he expect some sort of fidelity – was he offering any? What will we be to each other when he comes back? I should have posed those questions, but instead we were having a pointless argument about Barbara and Carl. It charged the atmosphere between us until we ended up at Andrew's apartment, ripping each other's clothes off. We were in bed for half the day, our bodies slick in the heat.

"That's how I meant to say goodbye," Andrew said, wrapping locks of my hair around his long fingers.

"It's too bad you can't save up that kind of sweetness."

He smiled and kissed me. "I love your hair. Don't ever cut it." It sounded like a non-sequitur, but it made me happy.

What I felt for Andrew was a mass of contradictions: The physical attraction and the need to keep a distance so I was sure of my own independence; the admiration for his intelligence and exasperation at his occasional obtuseness; the confidence I drew from being near him and the insecurity of not knowing what the future held. I didn't want to be trapped by my own emotions, nor did I want Andrew to feel trapped. What I felt when I had my legs around him was not to be relied on. It was the rush the female body was programmed to feel on lowering its defences. It was the way the body betrayed us – calling on the heart to respond -- the head, with its ceaseless chatter of warnings, temporarily silenced.

"I'll call you," he said as I got dressed to go home. "You can come see me."

I cried a little in the car on the way home. It felt private, sitting in that comfortable space, while the long shadows of spring stretched out from the trees at the roadside. As I drove up the hill toward home, I could hear the song of the frogs, floating through Magda's window. They begin singing like that every year at this time from the stream that makes a little meander through a low patch just behind the house. They sat submerged among the bullrushes but for their mouth and eyes and filled the quiet evening hours with their love song. Why should it be so tuneful when it was just a line of froggy suitors saying "Hey, baby. Come on over. We could have a good time."

The next day, I started the job at the Research Commission. I had to type reports in the office or clean pipettes in the lab. Either way, I was a happy camper.