She chattered the half hour up there in the car. She wasn’t one who chattered, but one whose only time for small talk was with her father-in-law one meal a week. He was a man of no words at all except for World War II and army life. No words about his long-dead wife, her husband’s mother. A word perhaps about great gas mileage for a week or two after each new car, but that was all.
Her husband’s curtness brought her to attention. They both were teetering atop a wall, afraid to reach out for help. Each knew his own as well as the other’s thoughts because they were alike and focused. She stopped trying to find anything to say.
They stopped the car once and he got out and went inside a store. She waited patiently for fifteen minutes, then impatiently for five more. A quick smile as he emerged to cover her annoyance, but he stood waiting at the door as a friend drove up, got out and greeted him. She knew this friend, and just before she’d married, he’d known her. Her husband knew this too. Awkwardly she unleashed herself from seatbelts and emerged to say hello, trying to forget the past association, trying to forget the words she had just heard them exchange. “A month.” “Less than that, I think,” they’d said. Then pleasantly, they parted.
They went inside and she hugged the woman of the house. Her husband did the same and held on longer. “Not too hard,” she warned and worried, but she knew his gentle side and saw it shining wetly in his eyes just then again.
A good afternoon and hopefully the evening. The man came home from work and seemed pleased to see his friends. They sat and soon were laughing. Laughing hard, as if everything would always be this good.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology