Friend of My Youth

Morris felt that Matilda’s body was heavier and stiffer than it had been—her responses were tardy, then overdone. It was odd that her body should seem unwilling when she was smiling and talking to him with such animation, and moving her head and shoulders with every sign of flirtatious charm. This, too, was new—not at all what he was used to from her. Year after year she had danced with him with a dreamy pliancy and a serious face, hardly talking at all. Then, after she had had a few drinks, she would speak to him about her secret concerns. Her concern. Which was always the same. It was Ron, the Englishman. She hoped to hear from him. She stayed here, she had come back here, so that he would know where to find her. She hoped, she doubted, that he would divorce his wife. He had promised, but she had no faith in him. She heard from him eventually. He said he was on the move, he would write again. And he did. He said that he was going to look her up. The letters were posted in Canada, from different, distantcities. Then she didn’t hear. She wondered if he was alive; she thought of detective agencies. She said she didn’t speak of this to anybody but Morris. Her love was her affliction, which nobody else was permitted to see.
    Morris never offered advice; he never laid a comforting hand on her except as was proper, in dancing. He knew exactly how he must absorb what she said. He didn’t pity her, either. He had respect for all the choices she had made.
    It was true that the tone had changed before the night at the Valhalla Inn. It had taken on a tartness, a sarcastic edge, which pained him and didn’t suit her. But this was the night he felt it all broken—their long complicity, the settled harmony of their dancing. They were like some other middle-aged couple, pretending to move lightly and with pleasure, anxious not to let the moment sag. She didn’t mention Ron, and Morris, of course, did not ask. A thought started forming in his mind that she had seen him finally. She had seen Ron or heard that he was dead. Seen him, more likely.
    “I know how you could pay me back for that heater,” she teased him. “You could put in a lawn for me! When has that lawn of mine ever been seeded? It looks terrible; it’s riddled with creeping Charlie. I wouldn’t mind having a decent lawn. I’m thinking of fixing up the house. I’d like to put burgundy shutters on it to counter the effect of all that gray. I’d like a big window in the side. I’m sick of looking out at the nursing home. Oh, Morris, do you know they’ve cut down your walnut trees! They’ve levelled out the yard, they’ve fenced off the creek!”
    She was wearing a long, rustling peacock-blue dress. Blue stones in silver disks hung from her ears. Her hair was stiff and pale, like spun taffy. There were dents in the flesh of her upper arms; her breath smelled of whiskey. Her perfume and her makeup and her smile all spoke to him of falsehood, determination, and misery. She had lost interest in her affliction. She had lost her nerve to continue as she was. And in her simple, dazzling folly, she had lost his love.
    “If you come around next week with some grass seed and show me how to do it, I’ll give you a drink,” she said. “I’ll even make you supper. It embarrasses me to think that all these years you’ve never sat down at my table.”
    “You’d have to plow it all up and start fresh.”
    “Plow it all up, then! Why don’t you come Wednesday? Or is that your evening with Ruth Ann Leatherby?”
    She was drunk. Her head dropped against his shoulder, and he felt the hard lump of her earring pressing through his jacket and shirt into his flesh.
    The next week, he sent one of his workmen to plow up and seed Matilda’s lawn, for nothing. The man didn’t stay long. According to him, Matilda came out and yelled at him to get off her property, what did he think he was doing there, she could take care of her own yard. You better scram, she said to him.
    “Scram.” That was a word Morris could remember his own mother using. And Matilda’s mother had used it, too, in her old days of vigor and ill will. Mrs. Buttler, Mrs. Carbuncle.
Scram out of here
. Deadeye Dick.
    He did not see Matilda for some time after that. He didn’t run into her. If some business had to be done at the courthouse, he sent Ruth Ann. He got word of changes that were happening, and they were not in the direction of burgundy shutters or house renovation.
    “Oh, what