descended from a long line of hearty farmers who picked up their axes and guns when necessary and made do the rest of the time, not pill-poppers and crybabies. His was a vigorous soul that had always possessed joy, not sorrow. Anyway, Hayden despised doctors. They certainly hadn’t done much to help his poor Mary with her heart condition, telling her to get on a treadmill, following which she had a stroke right there in the doctor’s office. Yet they always managed to send out their bills, whether they saved a body or killed it.
“Of course you’re lonesome, darling.” Her eyes widened with understanding and continued to gaze into his, as if waiting for him to blink as some sort of a signal. “It’ll get easier as time goes by. Just keep telling yourself that, even though I know that right now it’s impossible to believe.”
He’d heard such sentiments before, but her gentle manner and languorous drawl made the words sound natural and comforting, and not as if she pitied him. For a moment Hayden considered using the argument that had become his favorite for the well-meaning but nonetheless annoying advice-mongers, which was that
no one
could comprehend the magnitude of his loss. But then he remembered that Bobbie Anne had also lost her spouse, and that she must have loved her husband very much to have broken with her family in order to marry him. Perhaps she did understand.
“After Derek died I used to pretend I was acting in a play to get through the long days and even longer nights,” she continued. “And then one morning life just suddenly became real again.”
What happened next was not at all what Hayden had intended. He started to sob. All the grief he’d kept inside since the day of Mary’s death suddenly exploded to the surface. Hayden wiped his eyes with his shirtsleeves but it was no use, his chest was shaking and he was sputtering. The storm was just beginning to brew. He wept all the tears that had been locked away in his heart since the previous spring.
Bobbie Anne took a step closer and put her arms around him and Hayden put his around her and was relieved that she couldn’t see his face, only feel him heave up against her. They stood like that for a long time while he wept. Then they sat on the couch and he explained how he still expected Mary to show up, to appear out of the shower with a white towel wrapped around her soft sheet of black hair. And how both his daughters had invited him to come and live with them. Only he didn’t want to leave the neighborhood and his friends of the past twenty years since they were all that he had left of Mary. They still included her in the old familiar stories that they recounted and the memories they held dear. One might say, “Ah, now this is a good pudding but Mary’s was a better one.” In that way the private language of old companions served to keep her spirit alive, and thus was a comfort to him.
Then as swiftly as the emotional tempest had arrived it moved on, a prairie swept by a tornado. Hayden took a deep breath and actually smiled at the thought of coming over to make love to a woman less than half his age and ending up crying and having her counsel him. Normally it was Hayden the insurance agent who was called upon to act as minister to distraught policyholders right after tragedy struck, or else to comfort one of his own daughters after Mary’s tenderness could perform no further healing.
However, Bobbie Anne spoke in a way that didn’t leave him feeling embarrassed. “You’d be surprised how many of my friends,” which was how she graciously referred to her customers, “get the intimacy over quickly and spend most of the time discussing their wives and jobs,” she’d assured him. “In fact, one psychiatrist talks the
entire
visit, and only stays for fifty minutes instead of the full hour. I don’t even have to tell him when it’s time to leave. He just automatically looks down at his watch at the exact right moment and
“Of course you’re lonesome, darling.” Her eyes widened with understanding and continued to gaze into his, as if waiting for him to blink as some sort of a signal. “It’ll get easier as time goes by. Just keep telling yourself that, even though I know that right now it’s impossible to believe.”
He’d heard such sentiments before, but her gentle manner and languorous drawl made the words sound natural and comforting, and not as if she pitied him. For a moment Hayden considered using the argument that had become his favorite for the well-meaning but nonetheless annoying advice-mongers, which was that
no one
could comprehend the magnitude of his loss. But then he remembered that Bobbie Anne had also lost her spouse, and that she must have loved her husband very much to have broken with her family in order to marry him. Perhaps she did understand.
“After Derek died I used to pretend I was acting in a play to get through the long days and even longer nights,” she continued. “And then one morning life just suddenly became real again.”
What happened next was not at all what Hayden had intended. He started to sob. All the grief he’d kept inside since the day of Mary’s death suddenly exploded to the surface. Hayden wiped his eyes with his shirtsleeves but it was no use, his chest was shaking and he was sputtering. The storm was just beginning to brew. He wept all the tears that had been locked away in his heart since the previous spring.
Bobbie Anne took a step closer and put her arms around him and Hayden put his around her and was relieved that she couldn’t see his face, only feel him heave up against her. They stood like that for a long time while he wept. Then they sat on the couch and he explained how he still expected Mary to show up, to appear out of the shower with a white towel wrapped around her soft sheet of black hair. And how both his daughters had invited him to come and live with them. Only he didn’t want to leave the neighborhood and his friends of the past twenty years since they were all that he had left of Mary. They still included her in the old familiar stories that they recounted and the memories they held dear. One might say, “Ah, now this is a good pudding but Mary’s was a better one.” In that way the private language of old companions served to keep her spirit alive, and thus was a comfort to him.
Then as swiftly as the emotional tempest had arrived it moved on, a prairie swept by a tornado. Hayden took a deep breath and actually smiled at the thought of coming over to make love to a woman less than half his age and ending up crying and having her counsel him. Normally it was Hayden the insurance agent who was called upon to act as minister to distraught policyholders right after tragedy struck, or else to comfort one of his own daughters after Mary’s tenderness could perform no further healing.
However, Bobbie Anne spoke in a way that didn’t leave him feeling embarrassed. “You’d be surprised how many of my friends,” which was how she graciously referred to her customers, “get the intimacy over quickly and spend most of the time discussing their wives and jobs,” she’d assured him. “In fact, one psychiatrist talks the
entire
visit, and only stays for fifty minutes instead of the full hour. I don’t even have to tell him when it’s time to leave. He just automatically looks down at his watch at the exact right moment and
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