The Progress of Love

came into the bedroom one afternoon—”
    Then Trudy did start yelling and screaming. She clawed through a cushion cover. “You stop telling me about your sweet fucking Genevieve and her sweet fucking bedroom and her asshole kids—you shut up, don’t tell me anymore! You’re just a big dribbling mouth without any brains. I don’t care what you do, just shut up!”
    Dan left. He packed a suitcase; he went off to Richmond Hill. He was back in five days. Just outside of town, he had stopped the car to pick Trudy a bouquet of wildflowers. He told her he was back for good, it was over.
    “You don’t say?” said Trudy.
    But she put the flowers in water. Dusty pink milkweed flowers that smelled like face powder, black-eyed Susans, wild sweet peas, and orange lilies that must have got loose from old disappeared gardens.
    “So you couldn’t stand the pace?” she said.
    “I knew you wouldn’t fall all over me,” Dan said. “You wouldn’t be you if you did. And what I came back to is you.”
    She went to the liquor store, and this time bought champagne. For a month—it was still summer—they were back together being happy. She never really found out what had happened at Genevieve’s house. Dan said he’d been having a middle-aged fit, that was all. He’d come to his senses. His life was here, with her and Robin.
    “You’re talking like a marriage-advice column,” Trudy said.
    “Okay. Forget the whole thing.”
    “We better,” she said. She could imagine the kids, the confusion, the friends—old boyfriends, maybe—that he hadn’t been prepared for. Jokes and opinions that he couldn’t understand. That was possible. The music he liked, the way he talked—even his hair and his beard—might be out of style.
    They went on family drives, picnics. They lay out in the grass behind the house at night, looking at the stars. The stars were a new interest of Dan’s; he got a map. They hugged and kissed each other frequently and tried out some new things—or things they hadn’t done for a long time—when they made love.
    At this time, the road in front of the house was being paved. They’d built their house on a hillside at the edge of town, past the other houses, but trucks were using this street quite a bit now, avoiding the main streets, so the town was paving it. Trudy got so used to the noise and constant vibration she said she could feel herself jiggling all night, even when everything was quiet. Work started at seven in the morning. They woke up at the bottom of a river of noise. Dan dragged himself out of bed then, losing the hour of sleep that he loved best. There was a smell of diesel fuel in the air.
    She woke up one night to find him not in bed. She listened to hear noises in the kitchen or the bathroom, but she couldn’t. She got up and walked through the house. There were no lights on. She found him sitting outside, just outside the door, not having a drink or a glass of milk or a coffee, sitting with his back to the street.
    Trudy looked out at the torn-up earth and the huge stalled machinery. “Isn’t the quiet lovely?” she said.
    He didn’t say anything.
    Oh. Oh.
    She realized what she’d been thinking when she found his side of the bed empty and couldn’t hear him anywhere in the house. Not that he’d left her, but that he’d done worse. Done away with himself. With all their happiness and hugging and kissing and stars and picnics, she could think that.
    “You can’t forget her,” she said. “You love her.”
    “I don’t know what to do.”
    She was glad just to hear him speak. She said, “You’ll have to go and try again.”
    “There’s no guarantee I can stay,” he said. “I can’t ask you to stand by.”
    “No,” said Trudy. “If you go, that’s it.”
    “If I go, that’s it.”
    He seemed paralyzed. She felt that he might just sit there, repeating what she said, never be able to move or speak for himself again.
    “If you feel like this, that’s all there is to it,” she said. “You don’t have to choose. You’re already gone.”
    That worked. He stood up stiffly, came over, and put his arms around her. He stroked her back.
    “Come back to bed,” he said. “We can rest for a little while yet.”
    “No. You’ve got to be gone when Robin wakes up. If we go back to bed, it’ll just start all over again.”
    She made him a thermos of coffee. He packed the bag he had taken with him before. All Trudy’s movements seemed skillful and perfect, as