Dear Life

purposeful athletic outfit and had gained a fair amount of weight.
    “I thought I might run into you sometime,” she said. “How is Isabel?”
    It was a bit of a surprise to hear her call Isabel by her first name, or to speak of her at all, as if she’d known her.
    He told her briefly how Isabel was. No way to tell it now except briefly.
    “Do you talk to her?” she said.
    “Not so much anymore.”
    “Oh, you should. You shouldn’t give up talking to them.”
    How did she come to think she knew so much about everything?
    “You’re not surprised to see me, are you? You must have heard?” she said.
    He did not know how to answer this.
    “Well,” he said.
    “It’s been a while since I heard that you were here and all, so I guess I just thought you’d know about me being down here, too.”
    He said no.
    “I do recreation,” she told him. “I mean for the cancer patients. If they’re up to it, like.”
    He said he guessed that was a good idea.
    “It’s great. I mean for me, too. I’m pretty much okay, but sometimes things get to me. I mean particularly at suppertime. That’s when it can start to feel weird.”
    She saw that he didn’t know what she was talking about and she was ready—maybe eager—to explain.
    “I mean without the kids and all. You didn’t know their father got them?”
    “No,” he said.
    “Oh, well. It’s because they thought his mother could look after them, really. He’s in AA and all, but the judgment wouldn’t have gone like that if it wasn’t for her.”
    She snuffled and dashed away tears in an almost disregarding way.
    “Don’t be embarrassed—it isn’t as bad as it looks. I just automatically cry. Crying isn’t so bad for you, either, so long as you don’t make a career of it.”
    The man in AA would be the sax player. But what about the minister and whatever had been going on there?
    Just as if he had asked her aloud, she said, “Oh. Then. Carl. That stuff was such a big deal and everything? I should have had my head examined.
    “Carl got married again,” she continued. “That made him feel better. I mean because he’d sort of got past whatever it was he had on me. It was really kind of funny. He went and married another minister. You know how they let women be ministers now? Well, she’s one. So he’s like the minister’s wife. I think that’s a howl.”
    Dry-eyed now, smiling. He knew that there was more coming, but he could not guess what it might be.
    “You must have been here quite a while. You got a place of your own?”
    “Yes.”
    “You cook your own supper and everything?”
    He said that that was the case.
    “I could do that for you once in a while. Would that be a good idea?”
    Her eyes had brightened, holding his.
    He said maybe, but to tell the truth there wasn’t room in his place for more than one person to move around at a time.
    Then he said that he hadn’t looked in on Isabel for a couple of days, and he must go and do it now.
    She nodded just slightly in agreement. She did not appear hurt or discouraged.
    “See you around.”
    “See you.”
    They had been looking all over for him. Isabel was finally gone. They said “gone,” as if she had got up and left. When someone had checked her about an hour ago, she had been the same as ever, and now she was gone.
    He had often wondered what difference it would make.
    But the emptiness in place of her was astounding.
    He looked at the nurse in wonder. She thought he was asking her what he had to do next and she began to tell him. Filling him in. He understood her fine, but was still preoccupied.
    He’d thought that it had happened long before with Isabel, but it hadn’t. Not until now.
    She had existed and now she did not. Not at all, as if not ever. And people hurried around, as if this outrageous fact could be overcome by making sensible arrangements. He, too, obeyed the customs, signing where he was told to sign, arranging—as they said—for the remains.
    What an excellent word—“remains.” Like something left to dry out in sooty layers in a cupboard.
    And before long he found himself outside, pretending that he had as ordinary and good a reason as anybody else to put one foot ahead of the other.
    What he carried with him, all he carried with him, was a lack, something like a lack of air, of proper behavior in his lungs, a difficulty that he supposed would go on forever.
    The girl he’d been talking to, whom he’d once known—she had spoken of her children. The