Away from Her

blue than Fiona’s, a flat robin’s-egg or turquoise blue—slanted by a slight puffiness. And a good many wrinklesmade more noticeable by a walnut-stain makeup. Or perhaps that was her Florida tan.
    He said that he didn’t quite know how to introduce himself.
    “I used to see your husband at Meadowlake. I’m a regular visitor there myself.”
    “Yes,” said Aubrey’s wife, with an aggressive movement of her chin.
    “How is your husband doing?”
    The “doing” was added on at the last moment. Normally he would have said, “How is your husband?”
    “He’s okay,” she said.
    “My wife and he struck up quite a close friendship.”
    “I heard about that.”
    “So. I wanted to talk to you about something if you had a minute.”
    “My husband did not try to start anything with your wife, if that’s what you’re getting at,” she said. “He did not molest her in any way. He isn’t capable of it and he wouldn’t anyway. From what I heard it was the other way round.”
    Grant said, “No. That isn’t it at all. I didn’t come here with any complaints about anything.”
    “Oh,” she said. “Well, I’m sorry. I thought you did.”
    That was all she was going to give by way of apology. And she didn’t sound sorry. She sounded disappointed and confused.
    “You better come in, then,” she said. “It’s blowing cold in through the door. It’s not as warm out today as it looks.”
    So it was something of a victory for him even to get inside. He hadn’t realized it would be as hard as this. He had expected a different sort of wife. A flustered homebody, pleased by an unexpected visit and flattered by a confidential tone.
    She took him past the entrance to the living room, saying, “We’ll have to sit in the kitchen where I can hear Aubrey.” Grant caught sight of two layers of front-window curtains, both blue, one sheer and one silky, a matching blue sofa and a daunting pale carpet, various bright mirrors and ornaments.
    Fiona had a word for those sort of swooping curtains—she said it like a joke, though the women she’d picked it up from used it seriously. Any room that Fiona fixed up was bare and bright—she would have been astonished to see so much fancy stuff crowded into such a small space. He could not think what that word was.
    From a room off the kitchen—a sort of sunroom, though the blinds were drawn against the afternoon brightness—he could hear the sounds of television.
    Aubrey. The answer to Fiona’s prayers sat a few feet away, watching what sounded like a ball game. His wife looked in at him. She said, “You okay?” and partly closed the door.
    “You might as well have a cup of coffee,” she said to Grant.
    He said, “Thanks.”
    “My son got him on the sports channel a year ago Christmas, I don’t know what we’d do without it.”
    On the kitchen counters there were all sorts of contrivances and appliances—coffeemaker, food processor, knife sharpener, and some things Grant didn’t know the names or uses of. All looked new and expensive, as if they had just been taken out of their wrappings, or were polished daily.
    He thought it might be a good idea to admire things. He admired the coffeemaker she was using and said that he and Fiona had always meant to get one. This was absolutely untrue—Fiona had been devoted to a European contraption that made only two cups at a time.
    “They gave us that,” she said. “Our son and his wife. They live in Kamloops. B.C. They send us more stuff than we can handle. It wouldn’t hurt if they would spend the money to come and see us instead.”
    Grant said philosophically, “I suppose they’re busy with their own lives.”
    “They weren’t too busy to go to Hawaii last winter. You could understand it if we had somebody else in the family, closer at hand. But he’s the only one.”
    The coffee being ready, she poured it into two brown-and-green ceramic mugs that she took from the amputated branches of a ceramic tree trunk that sat on the table.
    “People do get lonely,” Grant said. He thought he saw his chance now. “If they’re deprived of seeing somebody they care about, they do feel sad. Fiona, for instance. My wife.”
    “I thought you said you went and visited her.”
    “I do,” he said. “That’s not it.”
    Then he took the plunge, going on to make the request he’d come to make. Could she consider taking Aubrey back to Meadowlake maybe just one day a week, for a visit? It was only a drive of a few