By Sylvia Wiseman '53

Would he tell her this was their last afternoon? At what time would he admit to himself he would no longer be a part of her life? Even if he told her would she understand truly understand now and later? How would he tell her? These questions and others fluttered in and out all that afternoon. Answers came to him, and then before he spoke, moth-like they flickered away.

Mike looked down at Emily's face, small and pale, but shining like a little girl's coming home from her first day at kindergarten. Even without looking into a mirror, he felt time's touch pulling at his face, matching mark for mark those creases he knew had been pinched into his heart.

They walked hesitantly away from the house, one of a few standing in what resembled a bomb-splattered town. The sidewalks were uneven, broken in places, and the streets a jumble of rubble left by workmen who had disappeared with the noon whistle. The renovation would soon be complete: the neighborhood built on young-marrieds' dreams intertwined with spring green trees falling aside for a thoroughfare which would enclose the entire city with its firmly packed asphalt and concrete corridors.

Mike tried to ignore the clutter and Emily seemed to wash away the sight, her voice ping-ponging from one thought to another, from this afternoon to one in some hazy yesteryear. He watched her thin lips, thinking how soft and full and moist they had seemed under his touch. She slipped again, her high-heeled shoes crunching the gravel, but as he reached for her elbow, she jerked her arm away, quickly moving several steps ahead of him.

“I can walk,” she said. “I'm all right, I can still walk.”

He did not respond but continued to walk willingly behind her, hearing her voice like some familiar tune from the past. He did not hear all the words, but it did not matter. He knew them well. She was remembering. Going to the familiar home had started her constant chatter. But if it had not been the house, it would have been something else. A car passing. A dog barking. A siren in the distance. Any sound. She would seem to be listening and then there would be a slight sound and she would say, “Mike, Mike. Do you remember?” And he would not have time to reply because immediately she would tell him all the things she remembered.

It had not been wrong to bring her to this house again. He was certain of that now. Immediately when they walked inside the door, she started talking as she wandered from her hands. He felt in that bedroom she wanted to reach out and hold him, too, and he moved quickly to open a window letting in the sound of a machine as he heard her voice over his shoulder saying, “Mike, Mike. Do you remember?” And from some dark cell of her memory, she began a story about a motor they had listened to for hours one Sunday morning as the light filtered in through that same window and how they tried to guess who was interrupting the quietness of the dawn and why.

The mood for touching passed.

It seemed strange that she did not notice the disorder in the streets either when they were coming into the house or when they were leaving. But she didn’t. Or at least she didn’t seem to as she stepped over the small piles of debris. Occasionally when those red shoes which glistened in the afternoon sun made her stumble on the uneven ground, she would say, “Oh,” like a child surprised, and go on with whatever story she was remembering.

Around nine o’clock when he picked her up at Safe Haven and told her they were going to spend the morning at their house, she smiled. He still found pleasure in being able to make her smile and decided not to say anything about the streets being torn away until she asked. Even when he had to park the car several blocks from their old home, and they had walked unsteadily through the clutter, she only continued smiling, eager to reach the front porch where she at once she sat down in the green rocker and said, “Mike, Mike Do you remember?”

Mike did remember, although he had spent years trying to forget. And always he thought he had erased those days until Emily and her singsong recollections would bring back that special pounding of his pulse and without warning she had pulled him back into her world. Batiks on the wall. Peach preserves in the pantry. Yoga for three weeks, then TM for 10 days.

In those earlier days when he came home there might be hot soup, enough for twelve, bubbling on a burner or three days of unwashed dishes ignored while she bottle-fed a half dozen puppies which came from some place only God and Emily knew about. Should he have said then, this is the beginning of something? Wondered? Worried? But no, she quit her job she said only because it was no longer a challenge. He had agreed she needed a change and should not resume working for a while. Take off a couple years if she wanted to. He was doing well and could easily manage for both of them.

At first it was exciting to find her there when he came home. Sometimes there would be a cool drink. Or a crackling warmth from the open fireplace. Or an unexpected massage in the upstairs bedroom which lasted for hours until they both were naked and giggling and finally fell asleep without dinner.