Friend of My Youth

Joan remembers saying to the friend who was with her in the bookstore. “My brother is
crazy about machinery.” Crazy about machinery—that was what she said.
Now she wonders what Morris really thought of this book. Would he like it at all He
wouldn’t actually dislike it. He might be puzzled by it, he might discount it. For it wasn’t
true that he was crazy about machinery. He used machinery—that was what machinery
was for.
Morris takes her on drives in the long spring evenings. He takes her around town and
out into the countryside, where she can see what enormous elds, what vistas of corn or
beans or wheat or clover, those machines have enabled the farmers to create, what vast
and parklike lawns the power mowers have brought into being. Clumps of lilacs bloom
over the cellars of abandoned farmhouses. Farms have been consolidated, Morris tells
her. He knows the value. Not just houses and buildings but elds and trees, woodlots
and hills appear in his mind with a cash value and a history of cash value attached to
them, just as every person he mentions is dened as someone who has got ahead or has
not got ahead. Such a way of looking at things is not at all in favor at this time—it is
thought to be unimaginative and old-fashioned and callous and destructive. Morris is not
aware of this, and his talk of money rambles on with a calm enjoyment. He throws in a
pun here and there. He chuckles as he tells of certain chancy transactions or extravagant
debacles.
While Joan listens to Morris, and talks a little, her thoughts drift on a familiar,
irresistible underground stream. She thinks about John Brolier. He is a geologist, who
once worked for an oil company, and now teaches (science and drama) at what is called
an alternate school. He used to be a person who was getting ahead, and now he is not
getting ahead. Joan met him at a dinner party in Ottawa a couple of months ago. He
was visiting friends who were also friends of hers. He was not accompanied by his wife,
but he had brought two of his children. He told Joan that if she got up early enough the
next morning he would take her to see something called “frazil ice” on the Ottawa
River.
She thinks of his face and his voice and wonders what could compel her at this time to
want this man. It does not seem to have much to do with her marriage. Her marriage
seems to her commodious enough—she and her husband have twined together,
developing a language, a history, a way of looking at things. They talk all the time. But
they leave each other alone, too. The miseries and nastiness that surfaced during the
early years have eased or diminished.
What she wants from John Brolier appears to be something that a person not heard
from in her marriage, and perhaps not previously heard from in her life, might want.
What is it about him She doesn’t think that he is particularly intelligent and she isn’t
sure that he is trustworthy. (Her husband is both intelligent and trustworthy.) He is not
as good-looking as her husband, not as “attractive” a man. Yet he attracts Joan, and she
already has a suspicion that he has attracted other women. Because of his intensity, a
kind of severity, a deep seriousness—all focussed on sex. His interest won’t be too
quickly satised, too lightly turned aside. She feels this, feels the promise of it, though so
far she is not sure of anything.