A Boy at the Edge of the World by David Kingston Yeh

Author:David Kingston Yeh
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781771832496
Publisher: Guernica Editions
Published: 2018-10-10T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

Your Ex-Lover is Dead

I met David’s mother a week before Thanksgiving. She was an art critic for the Globe & Mail, and lived on her own in a elegant, Victorian semi-detached. I’d come over one Sunday morning to help clean out her rain gutters. Afterwards, she had us move the piano in the sitting room, and rearrange some furniture in the guestroom which had been David’s old bedroom. She was a petite, severe-looking woman with impeccable make-up. Of course, I was obligated to stay for Sunday lunch. Three of her neighbours joined us, bringing over a plate of antipasto, fresh-baked focaccia and dessert. We ate with silverware off fine china, beneath a gold-framed portrait of Pope John Paul II. Mrs. Gallucci remarked how my parents must be proud I was applying to med school (I didn’t mention this was my second go at it) and that I would make a good husband one day. Then someone asked me what I thought of Italian girls, and I replied I thought they were very beautiful and wonderful cooks. David had warned me not to mention his sister, so I didn’t. I also remembered to twirl the spaghetti on my fork and not to put Parmesan on my fish, and to let the women clear my plates. We had a little wine and a lot of water. By the time we were finishing dessert and fruit and coffee, it was mid-afternoon and we managed to excuse ourselves with just a moderate amount of fuss, with some cannelloni and roasted lamb and tiramisu in separate sets of Tupperware.

“Ma thinks I’m a Don Giovanni,” David said as we cycled south side by side down the tree-lined street, “which is why I don’t have any steady girlfriend. She likes to tell me I’m just like my pa.”

The sunlight flickered through the boughs. “How long were your mom and your dad married?”

“Two years. He was her third husband. My sister remembers him. I was still a baby when he died. We had a nanny who home-schooled us for a while. You know that framed print of Michelangelo’s David in the front hallway? I used to imagine he was my pa. Then when I got older, I used to think of him as a big brother.”

“That’s nice.”

“Yeah, well, after a couple more years, I’d think about that print whenever I whacked off.”

“How old were you then?”

“Ten, eleven maybe. Sometimes I’d do it right at the dinner table, at least until my sister caught on. I’d get off on all those Greco-Roman and Renaissance male nudes: Ganymede, Antinous, Saint Sebastian, you name it. Ma kept art books and magazines right in the washroom. We went through a lot of toilet paper.”

“Your mom mentioned a lot of the girls you dated. Did you actually date them?”

David laughed. “Of course, I did. I’d take them out dancing, buy them stuff. I even had sex with them. I was a horny little bastard. Didn’t you?”

“No.”

“So you’ve never slept with any girl before?”

“Um.

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