Friend of My Youth

and investments and legacies that Morris sees underlying every humanlife—that interests her. It’s still more or less incomprehensible to her, but its existence no longer seems to be a sorry delusion. It reassures her in some way. She’s curious about how people believe in it.
    This lucky woman, Joan, with her job and her lover and her striking looks—more remarked upon now than ever before in her life (she is as thin as she was at fourteen and has a wing, a foxtail, of silver white in her very short hair)—is aware of a new danger, a threat that she could not have imagined when she was younger. She couldn’t have imagined it even if somebody described it to her. And it’s hard to describe. The threat is of a change, but it’s not the sort of change one has been warned about. It’s just this—that suddenly, without warning, Joan is apt to think:
Rubble
. Rubble. You can look down a street, and you can see the shadows, the light, the brick walls, the truck parked under a tree, the dog lying on the sidewalk, the dark summer awning, or the grayed snowdrift—you can see all these things in their temporary separateness, all connected underneath in such a troubling, satisfying, necessary, indescribable way. Or you can see rubble. Passing states, a useless variety of passing states. Rubble.
    Joan wants to keep this idea of rubble at bay. She pays attention now to all the ways in which people seem to do that. Acting is an excellent way—she has learned that from being with Geoffrey. Though there are gaps in acting. In Morris’s sort of life or way of looking at things, there seems to be less chance of gaps.
    As they drive through the streets, she notices that many of the old houses are reëmerging; doors and porches that were sensible modern alterations fifteen or twenty years ago are giving way to traditional verandas and fanlights. A good thing, surely. Ruth Ann points out this feature and that, and Joan approves but thinks there is something here that is strained, meticulous.
    Morris stops the car at an intersection. An old womancrosses the street in the middle of the block ahead of them. She strides across the street diagonally, not looking to see if there’s anything coming. A determined, oblivious, even contemptuous stride, in some way familiar. The old woman is not in any danger; there is not another car on the street, and nobody else walking, just a couple of young girls on bicycles. The old woman is not so old, really. Joan is constantly revising her impressions these days of whether people are old or not so old. This woman has white hair down to her shoulders and is wearing a loose shirt and gray slacks. Hardly enough for the day, which is bright but cold.
    “There goes Matilda,” says Ruth Ann. The way that she says “Matilda”—without a surname, in a tolerant, amused, and distant tone—announces that Matilda is a character.
    “Matilda!” says Joan, turning toward Morris. “Is that Matilda? What ever happened to her?”
    It’s Ruth Ann who answers, from the back seat. “She just started getting weird. When was it? A couple of years ago? She started dressing sloppy, and she thought people were taking things off her desk at work, and you’d say something perfectly decent to her and she’d be rude back. It could have been in her makeup.”
    “Her makeup?” says Joan.
    “Heredity,” Morris says, and they laugh.
    “That’s what I meant,” says Ruth Ann. “Her mother was across the street in the nursing home for years before she died—she was completely out of it. And even before she went in there, you’d see her lurking around the yard—she looked like Halloween. Anyway, Matilda got a little pension when they let her go at the courthouse. She just walks around. Sometimes she talks to you as friendly as anything, other times not a word. And she never fixes up. She used to look so nice.”
    Joan shouldn’t be so surprised, so taken aback. People change. They disappear, and they don’t all die to do it. Some die—John Brolier has died. When Joan heard that, several months after the fact, she felt a pang, but not so sharp a pang aswhen she once heard a woman say at a party, “Oh, John Brolier, yes. Wasn’t he the one who was always trying to seduce you by dragging you out to look at some natural marvel? God, it was uncomfortable!”
    “She owns her house,” Morris says. “I sold it to her about five years ago. And she’s got that bit of pension. If she can hold on till