“You don’t want to talk about him,” she said.
“No.”
“Why? I think it’s better.”
“He looks too much like you.”
“That isn’t it,” she said. “Tell me. Is he dead?”
“Sure.”
“Please hold me tight. I am ill now.” He felt her shaking and he knelt by the chair and held her and felt her tremble. Then she said, “And poor you. Poor, poor you.”
After a time she said, “I’m sorry for everything I ever did or said.”
“Me, too.”
“Poor you and poor me.”
“Poor everybody,” he said and did not add, “Poor Tom.”
“What can you tell me?”
“Nothing. Just that.”
“I suppose we’ll learn how to take it.”
“Maybe.”
“I wish I could break down but I’m just hollow sick.”
“I know.”
“Does it happen to everybody?”
“I suppose so. Anyway it can only happen to us once.”
“And now it’s like in a house of the dead.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you when I saw you.”
“That’s all right,” she said. “You always put things off. I’m not sorry.”
“I wanted you so damned much and I was selfish and stupid.”
“You weren’t selfish. We always loved each other. We only made mistakes.”
“I made the worst ones.”
“No. We both made them. Let’s not fight any more ever, though.” Something was happening to her and then finally she cried and said, “Oh, Tommy, all of a sudden I just can’t stand it.”
“I know,” he said. “My sweet good lovely beauty. I can’t stand it either.”
“We were so young and stupid and we were both beautiful and Tommy was so damned beautiful—”
“Like his mother.”
“And now there’ll never be any visible evidence.”
“My poor dearest love.”
“And what will we do?”
“You do what you’re doing and I’ll do what I’m doing.”
“Couldn’t we be together for a while?”
“Only if this wind keeps up.”
“Then let it blow. Do you think making love is wicked?”
“I don’t think Tom would disapprove.”
“No. Surely no.”
“Do you remember skiing with him on your shoulders and how we’d sing coming down through the orchard behind the inn in the dusk?”
“I remember everything.”
“So do I,” she said. “And why were we so stupid?”
“We were rivals as well as lovers.”
“I know it and we shouldn’t have been. But you don’t love anyone else, do you? Now that that’s all we have?”
“No. Truly.”
“I don’t either really. Do you think we could take each other back?”
“I don’t know whether it would work. We could try it.”
“How long will the war be?”
“Ask the man who owns one.”
“Will it be years?”
“A couple, anyway.”
“Are you liable to be killed too?”
“Very.”
“That’s not good.”
“And if I’m not?”
“I don’t know. Now Tom’s gone we wouldn’t start being bitter and bad again?”
“I could try not to. I’m not bitter and I’ve learned how to handle the bad. Really.”
“What? With whores?”
“I guess so. But I wouldn’t need them if we were together.”
“You always did put things so prettily.”
“See? Let’s not start it.”
“No. Not in the house of the dead.”
“You said that once.”
“I know,” she said. “I’m sorry. But I don’t know how to put it any other way and mean the same thing. It’s started to get numb already.”
“It will get number,” he said. “Numb is as bad as at the start. But it will get number.”
“Will you tell me every bad thing you know about it so mine will get numb quicker?”
“Sure,” he said. “Christ, I love you.”
“You always did,” she said. “Now tell me.”
He was sitting at her feet and he did not look at her. He looked at Boise the cat, who was lying in a patch of sunlight on the matting. “He was shot down by a flak ship in a routine sweep off Abbeville.”
“Did he bail out?”
“No. The kite burned. He must have been hit.”
“I hope he was,” she said. “I hope so much he was.”
“It’s almost sure he was. He had time to bail out.”
“You’re telling me the truth? His chute didn’t burn?”
“No,” he lied, thinking that was enough for today.
“Who did you hear it from?”
He told her the name of the man. “Then it’s true,” she said. “I don’t have a son any more and neither do you. I suppose we can learn about that. Do you know anything else?”
“No,” he told her, as truly as possible.
“And we just go on?”
“That’s it.”
“With what?”
“With nothing,” he said.
“Couldn’t I stay here and be with you?”
“I don’t think it would be any good because I have to go out as soon as the weather is possible. You never talk and you bury anything I tell you. So bury that.”
“But I could be with you until then and I could wait until you’re back.”
“That’s no good,” he said. “I never know when we’ll be back and it would be worse for you not working. Stay if you want until we go.”
“Good,” she said. “I’ll stay until you go and we’ll think of Tom all we want. And we’ll make love as soon as you think it’s right.”
“Tommy never had anything to do with that room.”
“No. And I’ll exorcise anyone who ever did.”
“Now we really should eat something and drink a glass of wine.”
“A bottle,” she said. “Wasn’t Tom a lovely boy? And so funny and good.”
“What are you made of?”
“What you love,” she said. “And steel added.”
“I don’t know what’s become of the house boys,” Thomas Hudson told her. “They didn’t expect me back today. But one boy is supposed to be on the telephone. I’ll get the wine. It’s cold now.”
He opened the bottle and poured two glasses. It was the good wine he saved for coming-homes, after he had cooled out, and it bubbled small and neat and faithfully.
“Here’s to us and all our mistakes and all our losses and the gains we’ll make.”
“Made,” he said.
“Made,” she said. Then she said, “The one thing you were always faithful to was good wine.”
“Admirable of me, wasn’t it?”
“I’m sorry I said it about the drinking this morning.”
“Those things are good for me. It’s funny, but they are.”
“You mean what you were drinking? Or the criticism?”
“What I was drinking. The tall frozen ones.”
“Maybe they are. And I don’t make any criticism now except that it is awfully hard to get something to eat in this house.”
“Be patient. You’ve told me that enough times.”
“I’m patient,” she said. “I’m just hungry. I know now why people eat at wakes and before funerals.”
“Be as rough with it as is good for you.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll be. Are we going to go on saying we’re sorry for everything? I said it once.”
“Listen, you,” he said. “I’ve had this thing three weeks longer than you and maybe I’m in a different phase.”
“You’d have a different and more interesting phase,” she said. “I know you. Why don’t you just get back to your whores?”
“Wouldn’t you like to stop it?”
“No. It makes me feel better.”
“Who was it said, ‘Mary, pity women’?”