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By Root 544 0

hardly knew Julie’s husband at all. However, as it works out, she is not so far off the beam. No good is a kind of easy way of putting it, and even if I say he was off his rocker, what do I know of it? That was Julie’s first husband, and she pulled out. My sister has this very unreasoned but strong urge for self-preservation. At the time I thought she was just being a first-rate nut, as she sometimes is, leaving this guy who was making a good living as a long-distance driver. That was in B.C. and he was doing the long hauls, Alaska Highway and that, and I thought – if she doesn’t like him so very much, hell, she only has to see him one day out of seven or whatever it was. I was all for basic security in those days. Let’s worry about the subtleties after we’ve paid the rent, that kind of thing. I thought she was out of her mind. But she took off, nevertheless, with the one kid. Divorce, the whole jazz. She re-married and went to Montreal. Not long ago her first husband ended up in the morgue because he played chicken with his truck once too often, and this time the other guy didn’t swerve and neither did Buckle Fennick, prince of the highway.”

“That’s – terrible.”

“Why?” Nick says. “He got what he wanted, didn’t he? It was a good thing Julie wasn’t there, that’s all. I give full marks to my mom, though. She never said I told you so.”

“What did she say?”

“She didn’t say anything,” Nick says, leaning back on an elbow. “When something can’t be said, she doesn’t try to say it. Not like my dad. Or me. Steve was like her. The old man always feels Steve was like him, but he wasn’t. He was like her, able to rely on faith, and not having to make everything public. My dad has to see to it that everybody knows what he’s feeling. He makes a kind of theatre out of his life, and yet in the end he doesn’t intend anyone to know how much of the act is real or if any of it is. Pretty corny. I understand it, though.”

“Do you?” The words have no relation to what he is saying. They’re only spoken to make some sound, to draw him back and away from where he’s been, back to here, because I want to make love with him.

He laughs, and the past thread dwindles, and he is looking now at me.

“I like the way you do that, Rachel.”

“Do what?”

“Oh – run your fingers along my ribs.”

“It’s because they’re amazing.”

“Are they? Why?”

“I don’t know. I can’t say. Just to feel you living there under your skin.”

“Darling – be careful, eh?”

“Why should you say that to me? I thought it was the opposite I should try for.”

“That’s what I thought, too,” he says, “but now I don’t know.”

“Your spine isn’t quite straight. The bones jut, right here. Did you know?”

“Yes, I knew. It’s from – I had polio, as a kid.”

“And you got better. That’s unusual, for then.” I don’t know why I say this – only out of gratitude. “You weren’t crippled.”

“Not so anyone would notice,” he says.

“Nick – take off your clothes.”

“Darling –” he says, surprised and smiling, “is it really you first, this time?”

“Never mind.”

“All right,” he says. “Never mind.”

“Go into me. Now. Right now.”

“All right, darling.”

Nothing is complicated. He inhabits whatever core of me there is. I can move outward to him, knowing he wants what I am, and I can receive him, whatever he is, whatever. And then this tender cruelty, always known to him but never before to me, the unmattering of what either of us is – only important that what we are doing should go on and go on and go on –

“Nick – Nick –”

Only his name. Only, at this moment, his name. The only word.

A gap in time. Then our makeshift bed returns to my sight. And he is still here, with me.

“Rachel –”

“Yes?”

“That was good luck,” he says.

“Yes.”

He wants to sleep, to be left alone. I want to sleep, too, but not for the first thing. I want to draw away only slowly and gradually, so it will not hurt to break and be separate. And something else. If one speaks from faith, not logic, how does that turn out? I do not know, except that I am so strong in it, so assured, that it cannot possibly go wrong.

“Nick –”

“Mm?”

“If I had a child,