Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You

their names and moved to new addresses so that the numerical values of the new letters will bless them. These are the ideas people live with in this world. And I can see why.
    “What do you want to bet you were there too?”
    “In Spain?”
    “In Spain. I thought as soon as I saw you. You were a Spanish lady. You probably stayed behind, too. That explains what I see. When I look at you—and I don’t mean any offense, you’re a very attractive woman—I see you younger than you are now. That is probably because when I left you behind in Spain you were only twenty, twenty-one years old. And I never saw you again in that life. You don’t mind me saying that?”
    “No. No, it’s very pleasant, really, to be seen like that.”
    “I always knew, you know, there has to be something more to life. I’m not a materialistic person. Not by nature. That’s why I’m not much of a success. I’m a real estate salesman. But I guess I don’t give it the attention you’ve got to give it, if you want to be a success. It doesn’t matter. I’ve got nobody but myself.”
    Me too. I’ve got nobody but myself. And can’t think what to do. I can’t think what to do with this man except to make him into a story for Hugh, a curiosity, a joke for Hugh. Hugh wants life seen that way, he cherishes a dry tone. Bare feelings he must pass over, like bare flesh.
    “Do you love me, do you love Margaret, do you love us both?”
    “I don’t know.”
    He was reading a magazine. He reads whenever I speak to him. He said those words in a bored, exhausted, barely audible voice. Blood from a stone.
    “Will I divorce you, do you want to marry her?”
    “I don’t know,”
    Margaret approached on the subject managed to turn the conversation to some ceramic mugs she had just bought us, as a present, and to hope that I would not throw them out, in my rage, because she, Margaret, would find them useful should she ever move in. Hugh smiled to hear that, he was grateful. If we make jokes we can all survive. I wonder.
    The happiest moment in our marriage I have no trouble deciding on. It was in Northern Michigan, on a trip when the children were small. A shoddy carnival, under gray skies. They rode on a miniature train. We wandered off together and stopped in front of a cage with a chicken in it. A sign said that this chicken could play the piano. I said that I wanted to hear it play the piano, and Hugh dropped a dime. What happened was that when the dime dropped, a trap door opened, a kernel of corn descended on the keys of the toy piano, and the chicken, pecking at the corn, produced a tinny note. I was shocked and called it a fraud; for some reason I had believed the sign, I had believed that the chicken would actually play the piano . But it was Hugh’s act, his dropping the dime, such uncharacteristic frivolity, that seemed so amazing, an avowal of love, more than anything he did or said at any other time, any high point of need or satisfaction. That act was like something startling and temporary—a very small bird, say, with rare colors—sitting close by, in a corner of your vision, that you dare not look at openly. In that moment our kindness to each other was quite unclouded, not tactical, our struggles seemed unreal. A gate had opened, very likely. But we did not get past.
    The unhappiest moment I could never tell you. All our fights blend into each other and are in fact re-enactments of the same fight, in which we punish each other—I with words, Hugh with silence—for being each other. We never needed any more than that.
    He is the one person I would not mind seeing suffer. I would not mind seeing him drawn out, beads of pain on his face, so that I could say, Now you know, don’t you, now you see . Yes. In his extremest pain I would show him my little, satisfied, withdrawing smile. I would show it.
    “When I came to understand about this it was like I had been given a fresh start.”
    People believe in fresh starts, nowadays. Right up to the end of their lives. It has to be allowed. To start again with a new person, your old selves known only to yourself; nobody can stop anyone from doing that. Generous people throw the doors open and provide blessings. Why not? It will happen anyway.
    The train is beyond Revelstoke, in the gradually diminishing mountains. The coffee car is empty and has been empty for some time, except for me and the Rosicrucian. The waiters have cleaned up.
    “I must go back.”
    He does not try to stop