Love or Honor by Joan; Barthel Page B

not even within the family. He’d never told his mother he loved her, and certainly he’d never told his father. In a romantic relationship, he just couldn’t seem to get the words out. He hated the way people said “I love you,” so loosely, sometimes so falsely: At the station he heard guys on the phone, talking to their wives, saying they were working late, don’t wait supper, just go on to bed, see you tomorrow, I love you, then hanging up and heading out to meet their girlfriends.
    So Chris went to the other extreme and never said it. He assumed that people who knew him would know how he felt and, if he loved them, they would know it without him saying so. When Liz asked him, “Do you love me?” he was embarrassed and mumbled, “Well, yeah.” He knew certainly that he’d never met anyone so talented and glamorous, while still being so nice and so easy to talk to. He’d never known anyone like her. “Why are you interested in me?” he asked her. “I’m just a cop.” While the question was a trifle disingenuous—by now he was no longer oblivious to his masculine charm—he really did want to know. “I don’t meet many straight, normal people in my line of work,” Liz told him. So maybe she hadn’t known anyone like him, either.
    Chris liked being married. He no longer needed to spend so much time after hours at McSherry’s, now that he had a wife to come home to, share his day with. Shortly before he met Liz, he’d had the bout of hepatitis that the doctor blamed on alcohol. Getting married and settling down was a good way to straighten out, Chris thought. And as long as he’d stopped drinking, he thought he might as well go one step further, and he’d stopped smoking.
    Liz seemed content, too. She’d had a couple of roommates, each of whom had married and moved away. With the instability built into her profession, she welcomed some emotional and social security, too. She was understanding of Chris’s irregular schedule, because hers was. When she got a part in the road company of a Broadway musical, Chris flew out to Cleveland to see her.
    At home in Forest Hills, Chris discovered a domestic streak in himself that surprised him. When he was living with his mother, he’d been accustomed to not lifting a finger. Now, when he had a day off, he enjoyed doing the laundry. Liz liked to sleep late; he liked to bring her breakfast in bed. He could whip up a fine Greek salad. He especially enjoyed their trips to Massachusetts. Every year since they’d met, they’d gone there at Christmastime. Chris would spend Christmas Eve with his mother, then, very early on Christmas morning, he and Liz would pile into his car, loaded with gifts, and set off for the country, lighthearted as children, singing. Chris couldn’t match his wife’s trained voice, but he managed to hold his own. He thought that the more he sang, the better he sounded.
    There was always snow in the country. Liz’s parents didn’t have a farm, but they had a lot of ground, with birch woods stretching behind the house. Sometimes Chris got up very early, the morning after Christmas, and walked in the woods alone. He never chopped wood—as a city kid, he was sure he’d cut off a foot had he tried to wield an ax—but he learned to make a good long-lasting fire, poking and stoking it late into the night. The rambling old Victorian house smelled gloriously of pine, of roasting turkey, and pies in the oven. He liked to lie on the floor in front of the fire, listening to the murmur of voices all around him, sometimes dozing, sometimes just dreaming. He liked the way he and Liz seemed to laugh a lot, in the country. At home, in the city, there didn’t seem to be as much time to laugh. They had busy schedules. Sometimes they met in the city for dinner, then went to a club to hear jazz. Chris could never persuade Liz to go to