The Age of Grief - Jane Smiley [60]
At dinner, when we sat across from each other at the old wooden table, she did not lift her eyes to my face. The portions she served me were generous, and they rather shamed me, as they reminded me of my size and my lifelong greed for food. I complained about the fish. It was a little undercooked. Well, it was a little undercooked, but I didn’t have to say it. That was the one time she looked at me, and it was a look of concentrated annoyance, to which I responded with an aggressive stare. About eight we drove back to town. I remember that drive perfectly, too. Leah was sleeping in her car seat beside me, Lizzie was in the back, and Dana had Stephanie in her car. At stoplights, my glances in the rearview mirror gave me a view of her unyielding head. At one point, when I looked at her too long and missed the turning of the light, she beeped her horn. Lizzie said that her stomach hurt. I said, “You can stand it until we get home,” and Lizzie fell silent at once, hearing the hardness in my voice. It was one of those drives that you remember from your own childhood and swear you will never have, so frightening, that feeling of everything wrong but nothing visibly different, of no future. But of course, there is a future, plenty of future for the results of this drive to reveal themselves, like a long virus that visits the child as a simple case of chicken pox and returns over and over to the adult as a painful case of shingles.
I should say that what I do remember about Dana, from the beginning, is a long stream of talk. I don’t, as a rule, like to talk. That is why I preferred those rubber dams. That is why I like Laura. Dana is right, people who don’t talk and rarely smile seem threatening. I am like my mother in this, not my father, whose hardware store was a place where a lot of men talked. They wandered among the bins of traps and U joints and washers and caulk, and they talked with warmth and enthusiasm, but also with cool expertise, about the projects they were working on. My father walked with them, drawing them out about the details, then giving advice about products. When my father was sick or out of town, my mother worked behind the counter and receipts plummeted. “I don’t know”—that’s what she answered to every question. And she didn’t. She didn’t know what there was or where it might be or how you might do something. It was not that she didn’t want to know, but you would think it was from the way she said it: “Sorry, I don’t know.” Snap. Her eyelids dropped and her lips came together. I suspect that “I don’t know” is the main sentiment of most people who don’t talk. Maybe “I don’t know, please tell me.” That was my main sentiment for most of my boyhood. And Dana did. She told me everything she was thinking, and bit by bit I learned to add something here and there. I didn’t know, for example, until the other night that I don’t smile as much as most people. She told me. Now I know.
What is there to say about her voice? It is hollow. There is a vibration in it, as of two notes, one slightly higher than the other, sounding at the same time. This makes her singing voice very melodious, but the choir director doesn’t often let her sing solo. He gives someone with purer tones the solo part, and has Dana harmonize. These small groups of two or three are often complimented after the choir concerts. It is in this hollow in her voice that I imagine the flow of that thirteen-year stream of talk. She is a talker. I suppose she is talking now to him, since I won’t let her talk to me.
Monday night, after a long, silent day in the office to the accompaniment of extra care by the office staff that made me very uncomfortable, we went to bed in silence. She woke up cursing. “Oh,” she said, “oh shit. Ouch.” I could feel her reaching for her feet. When we were first married, she used to get cramps