her eyes, he shrank from them, and from her, and from himself. Then he blamed himself for all of it, and pleaded for forgiveness, and the chance to live with her in peace as man and wife, and her eyes and her closed lips told him he understood too little about how far they had gone. Then she told him: You take too much credit. Or blame. I liked it. I like it. I could do it right now, with you standing there watching. Her eyes left his and he watched them move about the living room and settle on the couch before they looked at him again. This isn’t our home anymore, she said. It isn’t anybody’s. Or it’s too many people’s. Then he grieved and so could not think, not for weeks, then months, as he lived alone and worked for his father and at night rehearsed dances or plays and then went home and wondered, with fear and pain and nothing else, what she was doing that moment, and with whom.
They had lived apart for over a year and were amicably divorced (he did not even have to go to court) and still all he knew, or thought, was that somehow it had to do with his youth: that had he been older (as my father is, he thought, driving now past a salt marsh, nearing the sea; as my father is ) he would not have been so awed and enslaved by her passion, and his too; but without hers his own was ordinary, as it had been before her, as it was since he lost her. So her passion. Older, he believed, he would not have explored it; he would have left it in her depths, like a buried, undetonated bomb. That was all he knew now, and perhaps that had been the source of his fear on those nights, as he lay waiting.
Ahead of him was a bridge over a tidal stream, beyond it was the junction with the road that paralleled the sea; then he saw a farm stand on his side of the bridge, and he slowed and signaled and turned onto the dirt and gravel in front of the stand, a simple place: a rectangular roof resting on four posts and only one wall, at the rear, and in its shade were the boxes of fruit and vegetables, and an old woman behind a counter whose surface was just wide enough to hold a scale and cash register. She spoke to him as he chose tomatoes; she told him they were good, and the corn was picked fresh this morning. He praised the tomatoes and they talked about the long dry spell, and how so much of last summer was cool and rainy, and last fall was more like summer than summer was. He took three large tomatoes that Brenda could eat today and tomorrow, then nine more with graduated near-ripeness that she could place in the kitchen window, to ripen in the sun, and he imagined each of them red on a new day. In his heart he sang: My true love brought to me three red tomatoes, nine tomatoes ripening, then he remembered as a boy hunting grouse, which some natives here called partridges, with his father; and seeing him and his father walking armed into woods made him pause, holding the last tomato above the crisp paper bag. Then he started talking to the woman again, asked how her stand was doing, and she said Pretty well, and weighed the tomatoes and punched the register and said You know how it is, and he said he did, and paid her, and left.
So he did not go to the sea, but back to 495, and to Brenda’s, sadly now, the stage fright gone at some time he did not remember. She came to the door barefoot and wearing white shorts and a red tee shirt, and he could not speak. He wanted to hold her very tightly, in silence, then move her backward, with the grace of a dance, to the couch, pull her shirt up past her shoulders and hair and above her head and raised arms, and fumble at her shorts. The couch was a new one; that is, it was a year old. They had sold all the furniture in their apartment, and left it like a box that had contained their marriage.
“I brought you some tomatoes,” he said, and handed her the bag; she took it at its top, and the weight lowered her hand.
“Come in the kitchen,” she said, and her voice was all right, not
They had lived apart for over a year and were amicably divorced (he did not even have to go to court) and still all he knew, or thought, was that somehow it had to do with his youth: that had he been older (as my father is, he thought, driving now past a salt marsh, nearing the sea; as my father is ) he would not have been so awed and enslaved by her passion, and his too; but without hers his own was ordinary, as it had been before her, as it was since he lost her. So her passion. Older, he believed, he would not have explored it; he would have left it in her depths, like a buried, undetonated bomb. That was all he knew now, and perhaps that had been the source of his fear on those nights, as he lay waiting.
Ahead of him was a bridge over a tidal stream, beyond it was the junction with the road that paralleled the sea; then he saw a farm stand on his side of the bridge, and he slowed and signaled and turned onto the dirt and gravel in front of the stand, a simple place: a rectangular roof resting on four posts and only one wall, at the rear, and in its shade were the boxes of fruit and vegetables, and an old woman behind a counter whose surface was just wide enough to hold a scale and cash register. She spoke to him as he chose tomatoes; she told him they were good, and the corn was picked fresh this morning. He praised the tomatoes and they talked about the long dry spell, and how so much of last summer was cool and rainy, and last fall was more like summer than summer was. He took three large tomatoes that Brenda could eat today and tomorrow, then nine more with graduated near-ripeness that she could place in the kitchen window, to ripen in the sun, and he imagined each of them red on a new day. In his heart he sang: My true love brought to me three red tomatoes, nine tomatoes ripening, then he remembered as a boy hunting grouse, which some natives here called partridges, with his father; and seeing him and his father walking armed into woods made him pause, holding the last tomato above the crisp paper bag. Then he started talking to the woman again, asked how her stand was doing, and she said Pretty well, and weighed the tomatoes and punched the register and said You know how it is, and he said he did, and paid her, and left.
So he did not go to the sea, but back to 495, and to Brenda’s, sadly now, the stage fright gone at some time he did not remember. She came to the door barefoot and wearing white shorts and a red tee shirt, and he could not speak. He wanted to hold her very tightly, in silence, then move her backward, with the grace of a dance, to the couch, pull her shirt up past her shoulders and hair and above her head and raised arms, and fumble at her shorts. The couch was a new one; that is, it was a year old. They had sold all the furniture in their apartment, and left it like a box that had contained their marriage.
“I brought you some tomatoes,” he said, and handed her the bag; she took it at its top, and the weight lowered her hand.
“Come in the kitchen,” she said, and her voice was all right, not
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