Youth Shows But Half
From where I’d sit on the porch nights, I could see everything. They’d move from room to room like cats. One would retreat, the other would follow, then they’d switch – arms waving, faces turning red. Pretty soon I’d hear their voices, loud enough to carry through the windows and clear across the street. Then, if it was a real bad one, things would start flying: lamps and glasses and the like. Somehow with all the broken windows they replaced, they never did manage to put up curtains. I used to call them the Richters. Nan said it wasn’t right to make light of other people’s troubles. But it just happened to come out one night, what must have been three or four months after they moved in. By then we’d seen it happen enough times not to be surprised anymore, but still not so many that we’d lost interest. Nan had brought some iced tea out to the porch and sat down next to me on the loveseat. It was a balmy summer night, with a breeze to make the trees out front whisper. We sat sipping the iced tea, not saying much as is our habit. We no longer needed to say much, Nan and me, to get by. Then they started up. This time it was her chasing after him. From the living room to the kitchen, upstairs to where we couldn’t follow them, and then back down. I felt Nan tense up next to me, waiting. She would wait for the worst, that was Nan. Forty years of sitting beside someone at movies, theatre plays and the like, it’ll teach you a lot about a person’s tendencies. Nan would tense up and wait for the worst. That night, though, it seemed to pass quickly. Shortly they went upstairs and the lights went out. “That looked to be about a four on the Richter scale,” I said then, relieved to feel Nan’s body relax into mine. And we both let out a little chuckle. So from then on they were the Richters, even though I said it without a bit of malice. It wasn’t long before we grew accustomed to them, and they became a feature of the landscape, like any other. Volatile perhaps, but familiar, like a volcano that smokes and spews from time to time but that we otherwise took for granted. They were the furthest thing from my mind, anyway, the afternoon I stopped into the Booksmart. I was on my way home from an Organizing Committee meeting for the Arts Center fundraiser (it would be a benefit auction this year). It occurred to me I might offer Nan the book I’d seen her glancing at the last time we were to town. It had been a collection of poetry, Browning, that she’d leafed through in that way she had that meant she wanted it but wouldn’t buy it for herself. “Why that?” she might even ask me when I gave it to her. “I can find that at the library. You shouldn’t have spent the money.” As if she hadn’t printed a fragment of Browning on our wedding program, and the same one on our 25th Anniversary album: Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first is made... But there was no Browning to be had on the poetry shelf. The girl at the desk punched some keys on the computer and told me they could have the book re-ordered within the week. “Are you a Browning fan?” she asked as I filled out the form. “No, it’s for my wife,” I said. “I saw her skimming a copy here the other day. I thought I’d surprise her with it.” “My God,” she exclaimed, “that is so romantic. I hope there’s someone to buy books of poetry for me when I get old.” I looked up in time to catch her blushing a deep burgundy. She brought her hands to her face the way some people do when they’re embarrassed. “I can’t believe I just said that,” she gasped. “I am so sorry.” Of course, young people always imagine that the worst thing they can say to an old person is that they’re old. “It’s alright, young lady. Just between you and me,” I looked from side to side and whispered behind my hand conspiratorially, “I really am old. So you see, it’s OK to say so.” She laughed, her face draining back to a flesh color. “Put a note there to ask for me when you call,” I said before I turned to go. “I’d like to surprise her.” The first time I laid eyes on Nan I was twenty-two and still in uniform, just back from Korea. I’d taken a small piece of mortar in the leg at Wonju. Nothing serious, just enough to send me home and leave me with something to remember Korea by on humid nights. I spent a week in a field hospital, three more in Japan, and shipped Stateside. I was home for two weeks leave before serving out the last six months of my hitch at an Army base in Florida. I wasn’t complaining. One afternoon I was sitting at the soda fountain at Grandy’s drugstore, leafing through a pulp detective book and letting a hamburger grow cold on my plate (these were the sorts of luxuries one looked forward to in the deep of a Korean winter), when Nan walked in with her sister. There were no trumpets or violins or anything like that, but she was pretty enough to look twice at. I smiled and found a reason to talk to her. Nan says that if I hadn’t looked so sharp in the uniform I insisted on wearing, even on leave, I wouldn’t have stood a chance with her. But she smiles when she says it. I saw her a few times before I left for Florida, a B-movie matinee and an evening at the taxi-dance hall. The times were not as innocent as some my age would like to recall. We left each other with pleasant memories. I don’t know that either of us anticipated our life together, but we cared enough to write once or twice a week while I served out my hitch. She even came to visit me once in Florida. We spent a weekend at Miami Beach, sunbathing and taking cool afternoon baths. We got along just fine together. When I discharged, I came back home and took a job at Forson’s mill as a machinist. Nan and I saw more of each other. By the time I decided to go to college on my GI benefits, we were a steady thing. My life, it seemed, had gathered a certain momentum. I proposed to her because I couldn’t imagine starting from scratch. We were more than a little in love. How do you describe forty-odd years of marriage? It seems like such a hard thing to grab hold of. I could start with the early years, how pleasant it was getting to know each other’s habits and patterns, which we found to be agreeable. I could gloss over the next few, but it would be dishonest to suggest we were Ozzie and Harriet. I was a young man with a college degree and a decent job, and no saint. There were other women; I’m not proud of it but I was discreet. Once Nan found a gift, a pair of earrings that were so far from her taste as to be obviously for someone else. She spent a week with her sister and returned home with me when I came for her. It was the closest I’ve come to despising myself, but Nan was gracious enough to let it pass. There were never kids, which I can’t explain. It’s not that we didn’t want them. Just that we didn’t think to try until our patterns were too established to easily change. We marked time in the usual way: birthdays, holidays, anniversaries. Some I remember more than others, some less, but I couldn’t single any one of them out as particularly significant. Truth be told, the twenty-first Christmas we celebrated together wasn’t all that different from the thirty-sixth. Looking back it’s the regularity of it all, the methodical unfolding of time, that I can make sense of. But I’m older now, and so I might have a tendency to make it sound boring. From the other end, with no guarantee of health or home, each day was as much an adventure as it ought to have been. Overall, it turned out to be pretty charmed. I suppose that’s why I felt lucky each time I watched the Richters go at it. “Maybe we should talk to them,” Nan said once. “Take them aside for a moment.” But I didn’t know what I would have said to them, what secrets I would have shared. I had no answers other than the ones you get from seeing your way through to the end. Which is to say that things turning out well is no proof of having done anything right. A few days after I had ordered the collection of Browning for Nan, I put on my old machinist’s jumpsuit and some worn tennis shoes, and headed down to the Arts Center to help paint some signs for the fundraiser. There were about a half-dozen people there when I arrived, all of them bent over worktables in one of the studios. I grabbed a brush and some paint and looked for someone pleasant to chat with. But the only person I recognized was Letta Josephson, a horrible bore and the town gossip, so I took an empty table on the other side of the room. I passed a quarter of an hour or so painting signs and letting my thoughts wander, until I was interrupted by the sound of someone saying my name. “Mr. Broder?” I looked up at a young woman with straw-colored hair, freckles and green eyes. “Melinda. From Booksmart,” she explained in response to my puzzled expression. “I ordered the collection of poetry for you the other day.” I apologized for not recognizing her and helped her unload the armful of paints and brushes she was carrying. “I hope I’m not disturbing you,” she said. She wore a rib-length t-shirt beneath denim overalls. I couldn’t help but notice how attractive she was. “Don’t be silly,” I assured her, and waited for her to settle into her chair. “I’ve never seen you here before.” “It’s my first time,” she admitted. “As a volunteer, that is. I figured with all the free exhibitions and performances I’ve enjoyed, it was time to help out a little bit.” “Civic duty,” I said, shaking my head gravely. “One of the first signs of aging.” Her smile danced in a tomboyish way, and that’s all it took to break the ice. For the rest of the afternoon we laughed and chatted and daubed paint on cardboard placards. We started playing with each other’s signs, passing them back and forth to see how many exciting ways we could come up with to say, ‘Benefit Auction, Saturday, September 22.’ Of course there weren’t many, and so we ended up wasting a lot of paint but enjoying ourselves. It wasn’t until she had smeared a drop on her cheek and I said, “Hold it!” and brought out my kerchief to wipe it away, that I realized we’d been flirting. She couldn’t have been twenty-five, I suppose. “I’ll call you just as soon as that book comes in,” she said before she left. Then she smiled and added, “Mrs. Broder is a very lucky woman.” Which was good for a grin for about the next fifteen minutes. “Look at you, you’re a mess,” Nan said when I got home. “Did a grenade go off down there?” I looked down at my jumpsuit with a twinge of schoolboy guilt, as if the paint-stains were somehow incriminating, and made my way to the stairs. “Don’t you get paint on my bedspread, Zeke,” she called out after me. “I just had it dry-cleaned.” The livingroom set, the dresser with the portraits and snapshots arranged on top, the bed with the handwork lace bedspread: these were the tangible artefacts of our marriage. They testified to the soundness of the life we had made together, and they were Nan’s by convention. I thought of this with some satisfaction just then, glancing around the bedroom, but also with some wistfulness. There were, you see, no witnesses. Perhaps we had been mistaken about the children after all. I changed clothes and cleaned a small daub of red paint that had marked the carpet. The following evening I brought the crossword puzzle out to the porch and sat beside Nan in the loveseat. Her body was stiff. “They’re at it again tonight,” she said. “The Richters?” “Of course. Who else?” Lights went on in one room after another, followed closely by the racket of clattering objects. “My lord, the amount of time that woman must spend putting that house back together,” Nan sighed, shaking her head. “Yes, well,” I said, perusing the puzzle. “Gives them something to do, I suppose.” “It wouldn’t surprise me to see the paramedics roll one of them out in a body bag one of these days.” “It’s unlikely,” I said. “People tend to stick to the patterns they’ve established.” She was about to say something, but the phone rang and she went inside to answer it. By the time she came back, the Richters had escalated to about a six or seven. If they kept it up for much longer, we’d more than likely see him bolt out the front door, jump in the car and tear out the driveway like a racecar driver. “Who was it?” I asked absent-mindedly. “Hang-up call,” she said. “Third one today.” She sat propped on the front edge of the loveseat. “How do these prank-callers decide who they’ll pick on, anyway?” she went on. “Just once I’d like to understand the logic in it.” “Maybe it’s a secret admirer who’s too shy to talk to you,” I said, poking a finger playfully into her ribs. She arched her back and shook her shoulders sharply. “Zeke, please,” she said. “Not tonight. I’m agitated.” Looking up from the puzzle, I saw her face drawn in the lamplight. Her eyes darted from window to window of the Richters’ house, and the corners of her mouth pinched downwards in a tight frown. I put the puzzle down and reached my arm around her. Nan turned her head in to my shoulder then and stayed there, her body suddenly soft and fragile against my frame. I suppose that’s how I liked to picture us together. My arm around Nan’s shoulders, like a castle wall. We were eating a late breakfast the next morning when Melinda called to let me know the book had arrived. “I tried a few times yesterday,” she confessed, “but your wife answered, so I hung up each time.” I thanked her for calling and told her I’d drop by that afternoon. When I hung up the phone, Nan was glancing at me curiously. “The Arts Center,” I explained. She was shelving books when I got to the store. I stood watching her for a moment before approaching: the way she chewed absent-mindedly on the pencil she was using to mark off her inventory list, the way she brushed the same strand of hair behind her ear each time it fell. How was it, I asked myself, that I’d barely noticed her the first time I came in? “Mr. Broder!” she said when she saw me. “It’s so nice to see you again.” “Please, my name’s Zeke,” I told her. “The only people that call me Mr. Broder are insurance salesman and bill collectors.” She giggled and touched me gently on the forearm. We had picked up right where we’d left off, and judging by her wide smile, we both seemed to be enjoying it. She went to gift-wrap the book, and as I waited at the counter, I noticed Letta Josephson standing nearby at the magazine rack. She had one eye on the magazine in her hands, the other fixed quite obviously on me. I wondered how long she had been standing there, and whether she had noticed me observing Melinda when I first came in. “Buying something, Zeke?” she asked when she realized I’d spotted her. “Yes, Letta,” I said. “A poetry collection for Nan. Browning.” “Browning?” she repeated. “Is he new?” “No, Letta. He’s old, like us.” By now Melinda had returned. She heard my last remark and laughed. “Oh, it’s nothing to laugh at, dear. You’ll be old too, one day,” Letta sniffed. “God willing,” she added ominously. I paid for the book and turned to go, but Melinda stopped me. “You know, I’m just about due for my lunch hour,” she said. “Would you care to join me?” In all likelihood I would have refused her invitation, but I just then happened to notice Letta’s ears burning over by the magazine rack. What the hell, I figured, give the old she-goat something to talk about. “Sure,” I said to Melinda. “That sounds swell.” She brought me to a cafe down the street, where I sat with her and enjoyed making her laugh for the time it took her to eat a large salad. She was in no hurry, playing with each forkful before finally bringing it to her mouth, as if she wanted to make the meal last as long as possible. I took it to mean she enjoyed my company, which was just fine by me. Just before she had finished her plate, she asked me about Nan and how we had managed to stay married for so long, and I suddenly realized – feeling somewhat silly for not having caught on sooner, and sillier still for the way it bruised my til-now flattered vanity – that I only interested her inasmuch as I made Nan possible. Because more than anything else, she wanted to picture herself, in some far-off and distant future, in Nan’s place. For Melinda, Nan was a fairy-tale ending, a happily-ever-after that she dreamed about but didn’t dare believe in. “A marriage is like a crapshoot,” I shrugged. “Nan and I just happened to get lucky, I suppose.” “But you’re happy, right?” she persisted. I asked her what she meant by happy, and she said having no regrets. I shook my head. “To live means to make choices,” I told her. “And to choose something means you’ve got to renounce something else. It’s simply not possible to live without regrets.” “I’m not sure I understand,” she said, putting her fork down. “You’re still in love, still surprising your wife with little gifts after all these years. Surely that means something.” “You’re looking for some sort of certainty, Melinda. But life doesn’t come with a money-back guarantee,” I said, thinking of Nan, but also of the Richters. “You make your choices. And then you live with them.” It was less than she was hoping for from me, I could tell. But I couldn’t sell her a bill of goods, even if that’s what she was looking to buy. Nan was working on her flower beds when I got home. She looked up at me with a spot of dirt on her cheek. “Hold it!” I said, wiping it away with a finger. Then I kneeled beside her and kissed her lips. “What’s got into you?” she laughed. I smiled and handed her the wrapped book. “You devil, you,” she said once she had opened it. “How’d you know?” “I pay attention.” “Spying on me, more like it.” But she was pleased. She kissed me again in a pleasant way, her blue eyes flashing. That really is something, a woman in all the beauty of her years. Not just a woman, but Nan: her fine, square jaw and high cheekbones, her noble nose, all settled gracefully into gentle age lines. I’d seen that face in all the flush of youth and I’d never found it more beautiful than it was just then. It occurred to me that maybe I’d been wrong to discourage Melinda the way I had. Maybe she was better off with her fairy-tale, not knowing that the road might fork at any time, with no indication of which turn-off leads to the happy ending. The next time we were to town, Nan dropped me off at the Arts Center. She had some errands to run while I stuffed some last-minute envelopes for the fundraiser, after which we’d agreed to meet back at the Booksmart. To my great dismay, the only other person in the Arts Center office when I got there was Letta Josephson. “Morning, Zeke,” she smiled. Letta never smiled and the sight of it made me wary. I did my best to ignore her, busying myself with the mailings I had planned to send out. But I could sense Letta calculating something, like a stormcloud getting ready to burst. “Tell me, Zeke,” she finally asked suggestively. “How’s your young… friend?” “Oh, Letta. What a dirty mind you’ve got,” I sneered. “You ought to know better, at your age.” The truth was I hadn’t much thought of Melinda since I’d last seen her. “Sure the same can’t be said for you?” Letta asked maliciously, before turning away with a slight toss of her head. I dismissed her and finished stuffing envelopes, but the damage had been done. I found myself regretting having arranged to meet Nan at the bookstore. What did I fear? Letta’s gossip? My guilty conscience? But guilty of what? I asked myself. Flirting with a young woman who flattered my old man’s vanity? Hardly an indiscretion. Still my nerves were on edge as I approached the bookstore, and I was downright ill-at-ease as I entered it. I gave a quick glance around: Nan was over by the gardening section; there was no sign of Melinda. Feeling somewhat relieved, I made my way over to join Nan. Just as I reached my arm out for her waist, a figure appeared from behind one of the bookshelves, nearly colliding into me. “Zeke!” Melinda’s voice danced out. “Where have you been? I thought you were avoiding me!” Nan turned around just in time to catch me flushing deep red. I glanced back and forth between the two of them, my brain slipping gears, my voice caught somewhere deep in my throat. Nan’s eyes, registering my loss of composure, clouded in confusion. Her waist had already stiffened by the time I placed my arm around it. “Hello, dear,” I finally managed. To the girl, I mumbled, “Melinda, meet my wife, Nan.” “You’re Mrs. Broder?” she gasped. “It’s so nice to meet you.” She was perfectly oblivious to the impression I had created. “Did you like the collection of Browning?” Nan has the dignity of a Windsor. In all our years together she never once made a scene. Even when she ran away to her sister’s all those years ago, she had simply packed a suitcase and gone. When I came for her a week later she kissed me and climbed into the car as if nothing had happened. “Yes, I did,” she said now, smiling stiffly. “I just hadn’t realized it was a regular conspiracy.” Melinda must have sensed something was wrong, because she suddenly turned demure. “I’m sorry. It just seemed so romantic.” Turning to go, she smiled politely. “It was nice to meet you, Mrs. Broder. I’ll see you at the auction Zeke… I mean, Mr. Broder.” Nan didn’t say a word the entire ride home. I knew better than to bring it up. In the routine we’d arrived at through years of practice, she controlled the tempo of our reconciliations. It would never do for me to rush her. At home she busied herself straightening the house, dusting the tabletops and re-positioning any furniture that had been moved from its rightful place. I tried to stay one room ahead of her until she had finished and began preparing dinner. We ate in silence, which was not unusual for us. But it was not the ordinary silence we often enjoyed. There was something new and terrifying about it, and I was thankful when she rose and began clearing the table. “Let me help with that,” I offered. “I’ve got it.” “Nan, please…” “I’ve got it!” she said, and I didn’t argue. I went outside and sat on the porch, watching the last traces of blue twilight bleed to black. Before long I heard the noise of something breaking and looked over to the Richters’. They were sitting at the dinner table peacefully. I heard the same noise again, and this time recognized it as the sound of dishes shattering. It had come from our kitchen. I rose hurriedly and rushed inside. Nan stood in the kitchen surrounded by ceramic shards. In her hands she held two plates of our best china. “Nan, what are you doing?” She smashed the plates to the floor. The shattering peal rang out in the small kitchen. “What does it look like?” she said, reaching for two more plates from the cabinet. She hurled them to the floor and the clash of shattering china rang out again. “Nan, really. Stop that.” “Don’t you tell me what to do!” Two more dishes shattered. She looked up at me, her eyes rimmed red by rage and sheer terror. She reached for the coffee cups. “Nan, please. Let me explain.” A coffee cup flew by me and shattered against the wall, raining splinters of ceramic over my shoulders and legs. “What will you explain, Zeke?” She raised her arm to hurl the second cup, held it in mid-air for a moment, then dropped it limply back to her side. “How could you, Zeke? How could you?” Her rage had spent itself. Her shoulders stooped and began to shake, and she wept. I moved towards her and put my arms around her. “Nan, you don’t believe for a second that girl would think twice about an old geezer like me, do you?” “Oh, Zeke. It’s not the girl,” she whispered. “Not that girl.” Then she pushed me away and straightened herself. She crossed the shard-covered floor and stopped in the doorway. “How could you have, Zeke?” I stood shattered like the china beneath our feet, shattered and dumb. I could find no words to answer her. She turned then and climbed slowly upstairs to our bedroom. In the stillness that followed, I could feel some sort of scar tissue tear apart, delivering me to the open wound of our home. When I had collected myself, I set about sweeping the fragments of broken china from the floor. Then I went outside to the porch, waiting for the courage to face her. In the Richters’ house, all the lights were out. I wondered if they’d heard anything. It seemed only fair that they should after all the nights we’d spent chuckling at their expense. Or maybe they had already seen what I’d missed all these years. That we, too, in our own way had gone from room to room, unmaking each and leaving only time to mend the damage. Nan was asleep when I finally entered the bedroom, her arm draped across the empty side of the bed where I should have been. I lay down next to her, comforted by the familiar rise and fall of her breathing. I would explain to Melinda, I told myself, when I saw her at the art auction. That a marriage is neither a fairy tale, nor a crapshoot. That all is never lost or won, so much as only partially revealed.
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