Where I'm Calling From

the pages of the letter once more.
    But now here’s the curious thing. Instead of beginning to read the letter through, from start to finish, or even starting at the point where I’d stopped earlier, I took pages at random and held them under the table lamp, picking out a line here and a line there. This allowed me to juxtapose the charges made against me until the entire indictment (for that’s what it was) took on quite another character—one more acceptable, since it had lost its chronology and, with it, a little of its punch.
    So. Well. In this manner, going from page to page, here a line, there a line, I read in snatches the following—which might under different circumstances serve as a kind of abstract:… withdrawing farther into… a small enough thing, but… talcum powder sprayed over the bathroom, including walls and baseboards… a shell… not to mention the insane asylum… until finally… a balanced view… the grave. Your “work”… Please! Give me a break… No one, not even… Not another word on the subject!… The children… but the real issue… not to mention the loneliness… Jesus H. Christ! Really! I mean…
    At this point I distinctly heard the front door close. I dropped the pages of the letter onto the desk and hurried to the living room. It didn’t take long to see that my wife wasn’t in the house. (The house is small—two bedrooms, one of which we refer to as my room or, on occasion, as my study.) But let the record show: every light in the house was burning.
    A heavy fog lay outside the windows, a fog so dense I could scarcely see the driveway. The porch light was on and a suitcase stood outside on the porch. It was my wife’s suitcase, the one she’d brought packed full of her things when we moved here. What on earth was going on? I opened the door. Suddenly—I don’t know how to say this other than how it was—a horse stepped out of the fog, and then, an instant later, as I watched, dumbfounded, another horse. These horses were grazing in our front yard. I saw my wife alongside one of the horses, and I called her name.
    “Come on out here,” she said. “Look at this. Doesn’t this beat anything?”
    She was standing beside this big horse, patting its flank. She was dressed in her best clothes and had on heels and was wearing a hat. (I hadn’t seen her in a hat since her mother’s funeral, three years before.) Then she moved forward and put her face against the horse’s mane.
    “Where did you come from, you big baby?” she said. “Where did you come from, sweetheart?” Then, as I watched, she began to cry into the horse’s mane.
    “There, there,” I said and started down the steps. I went over and patted the horse, and then I touched my wife’s shoulder. She drew back. The horse snorted, raised its head a moment, and then went to cropping the grass once more. “What is it?” I said to my wife. “For God’s sake, what’s happening here, anyway?”
    She didn’t answer. The horse moved a few steps but continued pulling and eating the grass. The other horse was munching grass as well. My wife moved with the horse, hanging on to its mane. I put my hand against the horse’s neck and felt a surge of power run up my arm to the shoulder. I shivered. My wife was still crying. I felt helpless, but I was scared, too.
    “Can you tell me what’s going on?” I said. “Why are you dressed like this? What’s that suitcase doing on the front porch? Where did these horses come from? For God’s sake, can you tell me what’s happening?”
    My wife began to croon to the horse. Croon! Then she stopped and said, “You didn’t read my letter, did you? You might have skimmed it, but you didn’t read it. Admit it!”
    “I did read it,” I said. I was lying, yes, but it was a white lie. A partial untruth. But he who is blameless, let him throw out the first stone. “But tell me what is going on anyway,” I said.
    My wife turned her head from side to side. She pushed her face into the horse’s dark wet mane. I could hear the horse chomp, chomp, chomp. Then it snorted as it took in air through its nostrils.
    She said, “There was this girl, you see. Are you listening? And this girl loved this boy so much. She loved him even more than herself. But the boy—well, he grew up. I don’t know what happened to him.
    Something, anyway. He got cruel without meaning to be cruel and he—”
    I didn’t catch the rest, because just then a car appeared out of the fog,