Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage

around our feet, and the crushed plants and our soaked shoes. And even this had to be seen through the waterfall that was running down our faces.
    Mike released my wrists and clamped his hands on my shoulders. His touch was still one of restraint, more than comfort.
    We remained like this till the wind passed over. That could not have been more than five minutes, perhaps only two or three. Rain still fell, but now it was ordinary heavy rain. He took his hands away, and we stood up shakily. Our shirts and slacks were stuck fast to our bodies. My hair fell down over my face in long witch’s tendrils and his hair was flattened in short dark tails to his forehead. We tried to smile, but had hardly the strength for it. Then we kissed and pressed together briefly. This was more of a ritual, a recognition of survival rather than of our bodies’ inclinations. Our lips slid against each other, slick and cool, and the pressure of the embrace made us slightly chilly, as fresh water was squished out of our clothing.
    Every minute, the rain grew lighter. We made our way, slightly staggering, through the half-flattened weeds, then between the thick and drenching bushes. Big tree branches had been hurled all over the golf course. I did not think until later that any one of them could have killed us.
    We walked in the open, detouring around the fallen limbs. The rain had almost stopped, and the air brightened. I was walking with my head bent—so that the water from my hair fell to the ground and not down my face—and I felt the heat of the sun strike my shoulders before I looked up into its festival light.
    I stood still, took a deep breath, and swung my hair out of my face. Now was the time, when we were drenched and safe and confronted with radiance. Now something had to be said.
    “There’s something I didn’t mention to you.”
    His voice surprised me, like the sun. But in the opposite way. It had a weight to it, a warning—determination edged with apology.
    “About our youngest boy,” he said. “Our youngest boy was killed last summer.”
    Oh.
    “He was run over,” he said. “I was the one ran over him. Backing out of our driveway.”
    I stopped again. He stopped with me. Both of us stared ahead.
    “His name was Brian. He was three.
    “The thing was, I thought he was upstairs in bed. The others were still up, but he’d been put to bed. Then he’d got up again.
    “I should have looked, though. I should have looked more carefully.” I thought of the moment when he got out of the car. The noise he must have made. The moment when the child’s mother came running out of the house. This isn’t him, he isn’t here, it didn’t happen.
    Upstairs in bed.
    He started walking again, entering the parking lot. I walked a little behind him. And I did not say anything—not one kind, common, helpless word. We had passed right by that.
    He didn’t say, It was my fault and I’ll never get over it. I’ll never forgive myself. But I do as well as I can.
    Or, My wife forgives me but she’ll never get over it either.
    I knew all that. I knew now that he was a person who had hit rock bottom. A person who knew—as I did not know, did not come near knowing—exactly what rock bottom was like. He and his wife knew that together and it bound them, as something like that would either break you apart or bind you, for life. Not that they would live at rock bottom. But they would share a knowledge of it—that cool, empty, locked, and central space.
    It could happen to anybody.
    Yes. But it doesn’t seem that way. It seems as if it happens to this one, that one, picked out specially here and there, one at a time.
    I said, “It isn’t fair.” I was talking about the dealing out of these idle punishments, these wicked and ruinous swipes. Worse like this, perhaps, than when they happen in the midst of plentiful distress, in wars or the earth’s disasters. Worst of all when there is the one whose act, probably an uncharacteristic act, is singly and permanently responsible.
    That’s what I was talking about. But meaning also, It is not fair. What has this got to do with us ?
    A protest so brutal that it seems almost innocent, coming out of such a raw core of self. Innocent, that is, if you are the one it’s coming from, and if it has not been made public.
    “Well,” he said, quite gently. Fairness being neither here nor there.
    “Sunny and Johnston don’t know about it,” he said. “None of the people know, that we met