Our Souls at Night

  You’re still in love with her.

  No. But I think I’m in love a little with the memory of her. Of course it got bad in the end. One night her husband came over when we were eating supper in the kitchen. Tamara and her little girl and me. We sat there at the table talking with her husband like we were all advanced and sophisticated and that we were people who would just break up marriages and go on like free people. But I couldn’t go on. I was sick of myself. Her husband there at the table and she and the little girl. I got up and left the house and drove out in the country, the stars were all shining and there were the farmlights and yardlights all looking blue in the dark. Everything looking normal, except nothing was normal anymore, everything was at some kind of cliff’s edge, and late that night I came back. She was in bed reading. I can’t do this, I said.

  Are you leaving?

  I have to. This is going to hurt too many people. It has already. And here I am trying to be a father to your daughter while my own is growing up without me. I have to go back because of her, if for no other reason.

  When are you leaving?

  This weekend.

  Then come to bed now, she said. We have two more nights.

  I remember those nights. How it was.

  Don’t tell me about them. I don’t want to know.

  No. I won’t tell about them. When I was leaving I just cried. She did too.

  Then what?

  I went back to Diane and Holly and moved back in the house and lived downstairs and slept on the couch. Diane was pretty quiet about it. She was never vindictive or nasty or mean about any of it. She could see I felt like hell. And I don’t think she wanted to lose me or lose the life we had.

  Then in the summer one of my old college friends came out from Chicago and wanted to go fishing and I drove him up to the White Forest above Glenwood Springs, but he didn’t like it, he wasn’t used to the mountains. When I took him down a steep trail to a creek, he was afraid we were lost. We caught some nice fish too, but it didn’t matter. We drove back to Holt and Diane met me at the door. Holly was sleeping, taking her afternoon nap, and we went to bed immediately, it just caught us that way, maybe the best time of any, that kind of unthinking urgency, while my friend was waiting for us downstairs to eat supper. And that was it.

  You never saw her again?

  I didn’t. But she came back to Holt. She’d moved to Texas at the end of the school year and taken a job down there. Then she came back to Holt and called me. Diane took the call. She said, Someone wants to talk to you. Who is it? She didn’t say anything, just handed me the phone.

  It was her. Tamara. I’m here in town. Will you see me?

  I can’t. No. I can’t do that.

  You won’t see me again?

  I can’t.

  Diane was out in the kitchen listening. But it wasn’t that. I’d made up my mind. I had to stay with her and our daughter.

  Then what?

  Tamara went back down to Texas and started teaching where she had accepted the job. And Diane let me stay.

  Where is she now?

  I don’t know where she is. She and her husband never got back together. So there was that too. I don’t like to think about my part in that. She was from back east. Massachusetts. Maybe she’s back there.

  You’ve never talked to her?

  No.

  I still think you’re in love with her.

  I’m not in love with her.

  It sounds like you are.

  I didn’t treat her right.

  No, you didn’t.

  I regret that.

  What about Diane?

  She never said much afterward. She was hurt and angry when it was starting. More then than later—more crying, I mean. I’m sure she felt rejected and mistreated. She had good reason to feel that way. And that was picked up by our little girl from her mother and probably is a part of her feeling now about men, including me. She has the feeling she has to be a certain way or she’ll be abandoned. But I think I regret hurting Tamara more than I do hurting my wife. I failed my spirit or something. I missed some kind of call to be something more than a mediocre high school English teacher in a little dirt-blown town.

  I’ve always heard you were a good teacher. People in town think so. You were a good teacher for Gene.

  A good one, maybe. But not a great one. I know that.

  11

  You said you remember it, Addie said.

  Some of it. This was in the summer, wasn’t it?

  August seventeenth. A clear blue hot summer day.

  They were playing out in the front yard. Connie had the hose running with an old-fashioned sprinkler head screwed onto the end, the kind that sprays up a cone of water, so they could run through it. She and Gene. He was five years old then. She was eleven, still just young enough to play with him. They had their swimming suits on and ran back and forth through the sprinkler and jumped over it, screaming, and she grabbed his hand and pulled him through it on his seat, and held him over the water. I watched all that, then he unscrewed the head and was chasing her around in the yard, spraying her, they were yelling and laughing, and I went back to the kitchen to check on dinner, I was cooking some soup, then I heard a squeal of car tires and a terrible scream. I ran out to the front door, a man was standing out of his car, and Gene was crying, wailing, looking at the street in front of the man’s car. I ran out. Connie was flung out in the street in her swimming suit, bleeding from her ears and mouth and the gash on her forehead, her legs wrenched up under her, her arms spread out at weird angles. Gene kept screaming and crying, the worst kind of desperate sound I’d ever heard.

  The man who was driving the car—he’s moved away now—kept saying, Oh God. Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.

  You don’t have to say any more, Louis said. You don’t have to tell me. I remember now.

  No. I’m going to say this. Somebody called the ambulance. I never did know who it was. They came and put her on a stretcher and I climbed in with them. Gene was still crying, I told him to get in with me. They didn’t want that, but I said, Goddamn it, he’s coming. Now go.

  She had a terrible gash on her head, already swollen and dark, and blood kept running from her ears and mouth. They gave me towels to wipe at her. I held her bloody head in my lap and we drove, the terrible siren whining, and at the hospital they took her into the back entrance from the parking lot. The nurse said, In there, that way, but I don’t think it’s a good place for this little boy. I’ll get somebody to take him to the waiting room. He started screaming again, the receptionist took him away and we went into the emergency room. They laid her down on the bed and the doctor came. She was still alive then. But she was unconscious. Her eyes were closed and she was having trouble breathing. One of her arms was broken and she had broken ribs. They didn’t know what else yet. I told them to call Carl at his office.

  I stayed with her. After a while Carl went home with Gene, to take care of him, and I stayed the night with her. About four in the morning she woke up for a few minutes and stared at me. I was crying and she just stared, she didn’t speak, then she took a couple of breaths and that was all. She was just gone. I cradled her in my arms and rocked her and cried and cried. The nurse came in. I told her to tell Carl.

  The rest of that day is a confusion of things. We arranged for her burial and in the evening we went to the funeral home. After she was embalmed we let Gene come in and see her. He didn’t touch her. He was too afraid.

  I don’t know why he wouldn’t be.

  Yes. They’d put heavy makeup on her face to cover up the bad bruises and they’d closed the gash on her forehead and she was wearing one of her blue dresses. Two days later she was buried, I mean her body was buried, out at the cemetery. I sometimes feel I can still talk to her. Her spirit. Or her soul, if you want to say that. But she seems okay now. She once said to me, I’m all right. Don’t worry. I want to believe that.

  Of course, Louis said.

  Carl wanted us to move to a differen
t house in town but I said I wouldn’t—I didn’t want to leave this place. It was right out in front of this house. This is where she died, I said. This is sacred to me. So we didn’t move. Maybe we should have, for Gene’s sake.

  He never got over it.

  None of us has. But he was the one who caused her to run out in the street ahead of the car. He was just a little boy chasing his sister with a water hose. Afterward, your wife came over a number of times to check on me. That was kind of her. I appreciated it. I was grateful to her. Most people felt too uncomfortable to say anything at all.

  I should’ve come with her.

  That would have been good.

  Sins of omission, Louis said.

  You don’t believe in sins.

  I believe there are failures of character, like I said before. That’s a sin.

  Well, you’re here now.

  This is where I want to be now.

  12

  I won’t be coming over here for a few days, Louis said.

  Why won’t you?

  Holly’s coming out for Memorial Day weekend. I think she wants to kick my butt.

  What do you mean?

  I think she’s got wind of you and me. I think she wants me to behave.

  What do you think about that?

  Of behaving? I am behaving. I’m doing what I want and it isn’t hurting anyone. And I hope it’s good for you too.

  It is.

  I’ll have to hear her out. But it won’t change anything. I won’t do any more what she wants me to than she does what I want her to do about the guys she goes out with. She keeps finding these guys who need propping up. They lean on her. She takes care of them for a year or so then she gets tired of it or something blows up and she’s alone for a while. Then she finds another one to take care of. She’s between guys right now.

  Will you call me when you can come back?

  13

  The next day Holly drove out to Holt from Colorado Springs and Louis met her at the door and kissed her. They had supper sitting at the picnic bench in the backyard. And afterward they washed the dishes together and sat in the living room drinking wine.

  I’m thinking of going to Italy for a couple of weeks this summer, she said. To Florence, for a class in printmaking.

  I think you should. That sounds good.

  I made the flight arrangements already. They’ve accepted me in a printing workshop.

  Good for you. Do you need help paying for it?

  No, Daddy. I’m all right. She looked at him for a moment. But I’m worried about you.

  Oh? Is that so?

  Yes. What are you doing with Addie Moore?

  I’m having a good time.

  What would Mom say?

  I don’t know, but I think your mom might understand. She was a lot more capable of forgiveness and understanding than people knew. She was wise, in many ways. She saw things in a bigger way than people do.

  But, Daddy, it’s not right. I didn’t know you even cared for Addie Moore. Or even knew her that well.

  You’re right. I didn’t. But that’s the main point of this being a good time. Getting to know somebody well at this age. And finding out you like her and discovering you’re not just all dried up after all.

  It just seems embarrassing.

  To whom? It’s not to me.

  But people know about you.

  Of course they do. And I don’t give a damn. Who told you? It must’ve been one of your tightass friends in town here.

  It was Linda Rogers.

  She would.

  Well, she thought I should know.

  And now you do. And you want me to stop, is that it? What good would that do? People would still know we’d been together.

  But it wouldn’t have to be the same thing. In your face every day.

  You worry too much about people in this town.

  Somebody has to.

  I don’t anymore. I’ve learned that.

  From her?

  Yes. From her.

  But I never thought of her as being progressive or loose either.

  It’s not loose. That’s ignorant.

  What is it, then?

  It’s some kind of decision to be free. Even at our ages.

  You’re acting like a teenager.

  I never acted like this as a teenager. I never dared anything. I did what I was supposed to. You’ve done too much of that yourself, if I can say so. I wish you would find somebody who’s a self-starter. Somebody who would go to Italy with you and get up on a Saturday morning and take you up in the mountains and get snowed on and come home and be filled up with it all.

  I hate it when you talk like this. Let me be, Daddy. I’ll live my own life.

  That goes for both of us. Can we make a pact on that? A peace.

  I still think you should think about this.

  I have, and I like it.

  Hell, Daddy.

  —

  The next day a call came for Holly. She told Louis about it.

  It was Julie Newcomb. Just like Linda Rogers, she had to tell me about you. I said I already knew. I said, But I’m glad you called. I was thinking about you the other day. I was out in a restaurant and ordered lamb. It made me wonder if your husband’s still fucking sheep. She said, Fuck you, bitch, I was doing you a favor. Then she hung up.

  That was pretty fast thinking on your part.

  Oh, I never could stand her. But it’s still embarrassing.

  Well, honey, that’ll have to be your problem, not mine. I told you, I’m not embarrassed. Neither is Addie Moore.

  14

  In the end I came to admire some of her qualities, Louis said. She was a good person, with a definite inner direction. She wouldn’t do what others expected of her. We were pretty poor some of those years in the beginning, but she never wanted a career. She had her own ideas. She wanted her independence. I don’t know if it made her happy, though. People talk about life being a journey now, so you could say that was what she was doing. She had a number of women friends here. They would get together at someone’s house and talk about their lives and what women wanted. She talked about us, I’m sure. Women’s liberation was just coming on big then. But we had some other problems too. And it was at least interesting to me that I would be taking care of Holly at night while her mother was at somebody else’s house complaining to her friends about me. It seemed a little ironic. And there was that time with Tamara.

  I thought you said she forgave that, Addie said.

  I think she did. I think she wanted me back at the time. But I’m sure it came up in their talks. I could tell her friends thought differently about me. But she loved Holly. From the beginning. They were very close. Diane confided in her at an early age. I thought it wasn’t right, talking to her that way, telling everything. But she did anyway. She kept Holly drawn in to her.

  You haven’t said how you met.

  Oh. Well, we met like you say you and Carl did. We met in college in Fort Collins. We got married after we both graduated. She was a beautiful young woman. We didn’t know anything about making a home or setting up a house. She’d never done any cooking growing up or much housework, her mother did all that. I grew up here in Holt.

  Yes, I know that.

  For a couple years after we graduated, I was teaching in a little school on the Front Range and when a job opened up in the high school here they hired me and I came back home and have been here ever since. Forty-seven years now. We had Holly, and as I say Diane didn’t go to work when she might have after Holly started school.

  I didn’t really have a career either.

  You worked. I know you did.

  But not at a career like you’ve had. I was a secretary and receptionist in Carl’s office for a year or so but we got on each other’s nerves being together all day and then again at home at night. It was too much time together so I worked at the bank for a while and then in the city offices as a clerk. I’m sure you know that. It was the longest job I had. I saw and hea
rd all kinds of things there. What people will do. What kind of trouble they get into. It was boring and tedious except for those stories you learned about people.

  Well, Diane stayed herself anyway, Louis said. Throughout. As I say I can appreciate that now. I didn’t then, at the time. But we didn’t know anything in our twenties when we were first married. It was all just instinct and the patterns we’d grown up with.

  15

  On a night in June Louis said, I had an idea today. Do you want to hear it?

  Of course.

  Well, I told you about Dorlan Becker at the bakery who said something about us and I’ve told you about Holly’s old high school friends calling her.

  Yes, and I told you about going to the grocery store with Ruth and what the clerk said. And what Ruth said.

  So here’s my idea. Just to make a virtue out of a necessity. Let’s go downtown in the middle of broad daylight and have lunch at the Holt Café, and walk right down Main Street and take our time and enjoy ourselves.

  When do you want to do it?

  This Saturday noon when they’re the busiest at the café.

  Okay. I’ll be ready.

  I’ll call for you.

  I might even put on something bright and flashy.

  That’s the ticket, Louis said. I might wear a red shirt.

  —

  On Saturday he came to her house a little before noon and she came out in a yellow bare-backed summer dress and he had on a red and green western short-sleeved shirt, and they walked from Cedar over to Main Street and down the sidewalk four blocks and then past the stores on that side of the street, the bank and the shoe store and the jewelry shop and the department store, walking along all the old-fashioned false storefronts. They stood at the corner of Second and Main in the bright noon sun waiting for the light to change and looked straight back at the people they met and greeted them and nodded and she had her arm entwined with his and then they walked across the street to the Holt Café where he opened the door for her and followed her inside. They stood waiting to be seated. People inside looked at them. They knew about half of those sitting in the café, or at least knew who they were.