Harry & Ruth by Howard Owen

private. She didn’t like what she called “the dirty talk,” she tried to accommodate his tastes, but he could tell her heart just wasn’t in it. He wished he could show her one of Ruth’s letters and say, “Here. This is what I want you to do. Be like this.”
    Still, they seldom argued. They had a million friends in common. They loved their children and, they were sure, each other. Gloria was thrilled with Harry’s ascending stardom at Martin & Rives, enough so that she was willing to have dinner alone a couple of nights a week, content to share a nightcap with a man who didn’t need one.

NINE
    On Sunday afternoon, Harry, Freda and Artie sit on the back deck, where the October sun warms them. Harry nods off and wakes up again at irregular intervals, and no one seems to mind. The three of them talk about the things they have in common—the old neighborhood, the synagogue, their parents, their friends, living and dead. Freda starts every other sentence with, “Remember, Harry?” Usually, he does.
    Lately, the temperature is almost always too hot or too cold for Harry Stein, or the wind’s blowing, or there’s ragweed in the air, or his stomach is upset, or he’s depressed for no discernible reason other than the major one.
    Today, though, on the sun-kissed back deck of Freda and Artie Marks, he has reached an equilibrium. The chaise longue fits his contour like a mold. The small table alongside is at the perfect spot for his slowly-sipped beer.
    â€œRemember, Harry?” Freda says. “Remember how I used to send those letters, those checks down to North Carolina during the war? And nobody knew?”
    And Harry nods and chuckles. It was so serious at the time, but it seems like the stuff of childhood pranks now, no more or less momentous than terrorizing the neighbors with bottle rockets.
    â€œNancy and Alan and the kids came by last month,” Artie says. “Nancy doesn’t look a day over 40.”
    Harry will nod and say something kind about the Marks boys, both living outside Washington now, a lawyer and an accountant. Artie has mentioned a visit by Harry and Gloria’s daughter twice now, but Harry finds comfort in the way their conversations loop back on themselves, the words less important than the way they’re said.
    It is all so sweet to him, a balm. Sometimes, he hears them out of a half-dream asking him something, one of them, and the other will mutter, “I think he’s sleeping,” and they let it go at that.
    Just after 3 o’clock, though, the sun dips below the top of the oaks and the wind comes up immediately, and they have to go inside. Harry tries to stick it out, tries to make rare perfection last a little longer, but soon he is shivering.
    â€œCome on,” Artie says. “Let’s see how the damn Redskins are doing.”
    At halftime of the 1 o’clock game, Hank, Paul and Stephen go outside to throw a football around.
    Paul stands to one side, beer bottle hanging loosely from his right hand, and watches Hank hit Stephen perfectly in stride with a 40-yard spiral as the boy sprints down the hard, wet sand beyond the dunes. Hank Flood was as good a natural athlete as Paul ever saw. The family line on Hank: He could have done anything.
    Paul still sees Hank the way he did when they were kids, still thinks in some irrational corner of his own brain that his brother really could do anything, still could.
    Paul knows he will always be a source of amused pride for Hank, who can’t quite believe his little brother is rich enough to afford a large home outside Atlanta and a beach cottage, too.
    He also knows Hank would readily give the good right arm he’s exercising now to be the way he once was.
    Shortly after the second-half kickoff, they go back inside. Paul and his son settle in to watch the rest of the game; Hank goes in the other room to check on the race, then joins them for the fourth