She's still beautiful, even after everything, that round heart-face and deep eyes, the perfect, fleshy, short-girl ass that would of course have become fat if she had married you, the hint of sadness in her face that you'd loved as if it were your own sadness, your self-pity made honest and real, and it does break your heart to see her as she opens the door and climbs out. You might have grown old with her, but now, this might be the last time you see her. Okay, insert yourself calmly into the scene: the clunk of the car door shutting, her tennis shoes scrunching on the gravel driveway, her eyes hooking into you.
"Hey," she says, and the syllable hangs in the air. You walk across the grass to meet her, and you recall that once there had been a babble of easy conversation between you, schoolbooks and gossip and future plans, all meaningless.
"Hey," you say, and the two of you face each other. Oh, please: if only you could give her what she wants, if only you knew what it was. Then it would be over and you could go.
"How are you doing?" you say.
"Okay," she says, and gives you a kind of smile - the kind of smile she might give _____, famously gullible _____, with his quotable dumb questions. You recall, out of nowhere, a _____-question the two of you used to laugh about: "Do fish freeze in the ice in the winter?" he'd asked, and she knew how to smile at such things. It is probably true, as you've often thought, that girls are wiser than boys, and having her smile at you like that makes you feel sorry for everything all over again.
"Sorry," you say.
"Don't be," she says. "I'm sick of people being sorry. I don't even know how I feel about it anymore."
"I know," you say, and you do understand, at least a little bit. "Me, neither."
"I just came over to see how you were doing," she says. She shudders a little. "I was worried."
"Why?" you say. You try to touch her for a moment, and she lets you, she lets you put your hand on her arm, but you can see that she really doesn't want you to; she moves back after a second: off-limits. She looks at you again, sighing heavily.
"People were saying that you died last night, did you know that?" she says. She waits a minute, seeing that you didn't know, then shrugs. "That's what was going around. They said you killed yourself. You got drunk and drove into a tree. You know how it goes."
"Jesus," you say. "Who told you that? That's just sick! Who said that?"
"Oh, come on," she says, and flinches irritably. "I'm sure all your friends heard the story, and all my friends heard the story, and I'm sure they all passed it around among themselves. Like whispering down the lane. I mean, I don't even care where it started. They can't help themselves. It's all one big TV show to people."
"Well," you say. You let this sink in for a moment. What do people really think of you? "Well, I guess I'm still alive," you say at last. "Are you glad?"
"I don't know," she says. And that's not what you want to hear. But she only shrugs, doesn't look at you. "You know, the first thing I thought when I heard it was, like, 'Good for him.' I mean, I thought - at least you did
something. Do you know what I mean? I guess I always thought it would be bigger, when a terrible thing happened. Didn't you think so? Doesn't it seem like the houses ought to be caving in, and lightning and thunder, and people tearing their hair in the street? I never - I never thought it would be this small, did you?" She wipes a hand over her nose, shutting her eyes tight. She looks small and fierce standing there, though everything in the neighborhood is quiet. A car passing in the distance is playing Top 40 music loudly, and sprinklers are ticking away on lawns, and an airplane is drawing a white line across the sky. She is not crying. "I'm glad you're all right," she says. She looks up at you as you stand stupidly. "I mean, you
are, aren't you? You aren't going to kill yourself, are you?"
"Not unless you want me to," you say, and it's only half a joke - you don't know what the rest of it is. But she doesn't answer anyway, only puffs out her cheeks in a tired sigh.
"So," she says at last, "what are you going to do now?"
You notice, of course, that she doesn't say "we." That can't be helped, though it also tends to make your reply pretty much meaningless. You wave your hand vaguely. "Haven't decided yet," you say, and she nods.
What if you said, "We could still get married"? What if you said, "I still love you. We could have other kids." There was a time, before _____ died, when you could have said it. You prayed to God, actually. Dear God, you said, please don't take my baby. I'm sorry that I ever bitched about ___ getting pregnant, I truly repent every negative thought I ever had, and I swear that I'll be a good father and a good husband and I'll be happy with my life. Please, God, you said, hunched outside the glass case of _____, his poor little monkey body drawing another breath, please, God, I made a mistake. I take it all back.
But you can't tell her this, either - your maudlin prayers would only hurt her, would only draw you both back to the baby's eyes, opening, raking across the incomprehensible world. That empty, terrible look: She knows it, too, though she never went to look at him like you did. You can see it in her expression as she shifts from foot to foot. There will be no more marriage, no more babies.
"Well," you say, "I would have married you, you know. I would have been happy."
"I know," she says. She is quietly thoughtful for a moment, but she is leaning away from you. You won't touch her again, or kiss her, and it's even hard to look her in the eye.
"Do you think we'll always be sort of in love with each other?" she says, and smiles at a sad thought she's thinking. She doesn't blame you, exactly, though she knows you should have been a different person. "Do you think we'll always be connected?"
You just shrug. "I don't know," you say. "I haven't lived that long."
