The plates are icy cold, there are no other diners, there is no radio music but only the clink of our cutlery as we try to separate parts of the stringy chicken. I am sure he is thinking that we might have done better in the restaurant he suggested in the first place.
Nonetheless I have the courage to ask about the ladies’ room, and there, in cold air even more discouraging than that of the front room, I shake out my green dress and put it on, repaint my mouth and fix my hair.
When I come out Alister stands up to greet me and smiles and squeezes my hand and says I look pretty.
We walk stiffly back to the car, holding hands. He opens the car door for me, goes around and gets in, settles himself and turns the key in the ignition, then turns it off.
The car is parked in front of a hardware store. Shovels for snow removal are on sale at half price. There is still a sign in the window that says skates can be sharpened inside.
Across the street there is a wooden house painted an oilyyellow. Its front steps have become unsafe and two boards forming an
X
have been nailed across them.
The truck parked in front of Alister’s car is a prewar model, with a runningboard and a fringe of rust on its fenders. A man in overalls comes out of the hardware store and gets into it. After some engine complaint, then some rattling and bouncing in place, it is driven away. Now a delivery truck with the store’s name on it tries to park in the space left vacant. There is not quite enough room. The driver gets out and comes and raps on Alister’s window. Alister is surprised—if he had not been talking so earnestly he would have noticed the problem. He rolls down the window and the man asks if we are parked there because we intend to buy something in the store. If not, could we please move along?
“Just leaving,” says Alister, the man sitting beside me who was going to marry me but now is not going to marry me. “We were just leaving.”
We. He has said we. For a moment I cling to that word. Then I think it’s the last time. The last time I’ll be included in his we.
It’s not the “we” that matters, that is not what tells me the truth. It’s his male-to-male tone to the driver, his calm and reasonable apology. I could wish now to go back to what he was saying before, when he did not even notice the van trying to park. What he was saying then had been terrible but his tight grip on the wheel, his grip and his abstraction and his voice had pain in them. No matter what he said and meant, he spoke out of the same deep place then, that he spoke from when he was in bed with me. But it is not so now, after he has spoken to another man. He rolls up thewindow and gives his attention to the car, to backing it out of its tight spot and moving it so as not to come in contact with the van.
And a moment later I would be glad even to go back to that time, when he craned his head to see behind him. Better that than driving—as he is driving now—down the main street of Huntsville, as if there is no more to be said or managed.
I can’t do it, he has said.
He has said that he can’t go through with this.
He can’t explain it.
Only that it’s a mistake.
I think that I will never be able to look at curly S’s like those on the Skates Sharpened sign, without hearing his voice. Or at rough boards knocked into an
X
like those across the steps of the yellow house opposite the store.
“I’m going to drive you to the station now. I’ll buy your ticket to Toronto. I’m pretty sure there’s a train to Toronto late in the afternoon. I’ll think up some very plausible story and I’ll get somebody to pack up your things. You’ll need to give me your Toronto address, I don’t think I’ve kept it. Oh, and I’ll write you a reference. You’ve done a good job. You wouldn’t have finished out a term anyway—I hadn’t told you yet but the children are going to be moved. All kinds of big changes going on.”
A new tone in his voice,
Nonetheless I have the courage to ask about the ladies’ room, and there, in cold air even more discouraging than that of the front room, I shake out my green dress and put it on, repaint my mouth and fix my hair.
When I come out Alister stands up to greet me and smiles and squeezes my hand and says I look pretty.
We walk stiffly back to the car, holding hands. He opens the car door for me, goes around and gets in, settles himself and turns the key in the ignition, then turns it off.
The car is parked in front of a hardware store. Shovels for snow removal are on sale at half price. There is still a sign in the window that says skates can be sharpened inside.
Across the street there is a wooden house painted an oilyyellow. Its front steps have become unsafe and two boards forming an
X
have been nailed across them.
The truck parked in front of Alister’s car is a prewar model, with a runningboard and a fringe of rust on its fenders. A man in overalls comes out of the hardware store and gets into it. After some engine complaint, then some rattling and bouncing in place, it is driven away. Now a delivery truck with the store’s name on it tries to park in the space left vacant. There is not quite enough room. The driver gets out and comes and raps on Alister’s window. Alister is surprised—if he had not been talking so earnestly he would have noticed the problem. He rolls down the window and the man asks if we are parked there because we intend to buy something in the store. If not, could we please move along?
“Just leaving,” says Alister, the man sitting beside me who was going to marry me but now is not going to marry me. “We were just leaving.”
We. He has said we. For a moment I cling to that word. Then I think it’s the last time. The last time I’ll be included in his we.
It’s not the “we” that matters, that is not what tells me the truth. It’s his male-to-male tone to the driver, his calm and reasonable apology. I could wish now to go back to what he was saying before, when he did not even notice the van trying to park. What he was saying then had been terrible but his tight grip on the wheel, his grip and his abstraction and his voice had pain in them. No matter what he said and meant, he spoke out of the same deep place then, that he spoke from when he was in bed with me. But it is not so now, after he has spoken to another man. He rolls up thewindow and gives his attention to the car, to backing it out of its tight spot and moving it so as not to come in contact with the van.
And a moment later I would be glad even to go back to that time, when he craned his head to see behind him. Better that than driving—as he is driving now—down the main street of Huntsville, as if there is no more to be said or managed.
I can’t do it, he has said.
He has said that he can’t go through with this.
He can’t explain it.
Only that it’s a mistake.
I think that I will never be able to look at curly S’s like those on the Skates Sharpened sign, without hearing his voice. Or at rough boards knocked into an
X
like those across the steps of the yellow house opposite the store.
“I’m going to drive you to the station now. I’ll buy your ticket to Toronto. I’m pretty sure there’s a train to Toronto late in the afternoon. I’ll think up some very plausible story and I’ll get somebody to pack up your things. You’ll need to give me your Toronto address, I don’t think I’ve kept it. Oh, and I’ll write you a reference. You’ve done a good job. You wouldn’t have finished out a term anyway—I hadn’t told you yet but the children are going to be moved. All kinds of big changes going on.”
A new tone in his voice,
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