The Orange Fish by Carol Shields

Author:Carol Shields
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US

He loved his writer’s block. Back home he found that the affliction fit him perfectly, the way a chestful of air fills a baritone’s lungs. This was a silence that could be settled into. Some of life’s essence stirred in it. He embraced it wholly, though for Maybelle’s sake he put on a stricken face, especially in the mornings, meeting her agitated concern over the coffee pot.

“Have a second cup,” Maybelle cried. “Have a third.” Buoyancy was what she tried for on these mornings. Her large handsome bony face composed itself into vital lines, wifely empowerment. She was learning how to put on a good show of bustle. She trilled and sang. She exhorted, at first subtly, then openly. The day was ready to be packed with accomplishment; the morning hours especially squeaked their need. “More toast,” she warbled. “Try this high fiber stuff, today just may be the day.” She passed butter, jam, honey, seeing in the melting calories the fuel for creation. On the way out the door, all shine and forward motion, she beamed back a smile. “A breakthrough’s on the way. I feel it in my bones.”

Three days a week she drove off to Toronto where she worked for a large publishing house. All spring she’d been toiling over several manuscripts simultaneously, one of them a thousand pages long. This particular extravaganza she was trimming down to size, but it grieved her to throw words in a wastebasket when at home they were in short supply, had dried up completely, in fact; six months since she and Meershank had returned from Portugal and not a single paragraph written. “Anything?” she would ask briskly, coming home at the end of the working day. Meershank might be reading the paper on the side veranda or brushing down the dog or clipping a hedge.

“Nothing today.” His voice was cheerful. Ordinary. Life going on.

“How about trading up to a new word processor?” Maybelle suggested, a fishy shine on her face. “That monster of yours is positively antiquated.”

Another day, she sprang more wildly. “Have you ever thought of a pen?” she said. “Remember pens?”

Workmen arrived one morning and installed a new skylight in his study. “Surprise!” Maybelle said. “An early birthday present.”

Accustomed to Meershank’s activity, she found its cessation worrying. She connected it with depression, and being a woman, particularly the woman she was, she linked his depression with herself, some failing on her part, some act omitted.

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