September Song

September Song by William Humphrey Page B

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Authors: William Humphrey
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followed.
    â€œIf only both of them would find others,” he said, which would not only have freed them but salved their consciences. “But Marcia doesn’t like men. Except Bruce.”
    â€œAnd Toby has got me,” she said. “Old Faithful. Or so he thinks.”
    To receive letters from each other in secret both rented boxes in post offices where they were unknown. Yet it all ended when Marcia found one of her letters to him. She was almost ready to excuse his carelessness. He had been unable to destroy it! Any one of her letters to him was a giveaway. They were not the gushings of a girl with a crush on, say, a professor. They were her pillow talk, the uninhibited outpourings of a long-somnolent woman to the Prince Charming who had awakened her with his kiss. Asbestos sheets rather than writing paper would have better suited their contents.
    In his last letter he wrote that he had promised Marcia never to see her again. But his love was undying.
    The Piper Cub was sold.
    Her wings had been clipped.
    Over the succeeding years:
    The children all left home.
    Married.
    Had children.
    Toby retired.
    He grew increasingly hard of hearing and that made him less talkative than ever. One mate’s deafness made the other one dumb. She pitied him for his infirmity, yet his refusal to get a hearing aid exasperated her. She had to repeat everything she said to him. It was so frustrating! She knew that his resistance to a hearing aid was not because he was vain of his appearance. Of that he was all too careless. It was that to wear one would be a constant reminder, like eyeglasses, false teeth, of decay. She was ashamed of her irritation with him, but that did not keep her from feeling it.
    She knew that people long together grew impatient with one another’s ways and weaknesses and magnified them out of all proportion. His chronic sinusitis was an affliction he had not sought, yet his honking into his handkerchief so annoyed her that sometimes she had to leave the room. It was he who should leave the room.
    He had always been bookish; his hardness of hearing made him burrow still deeper into books, leaving her more than ever to herself. One winter evening, snow flying, wind moaning, the two of them sat in silence before the fire, he reading, unconscious of, indifferent to whatever she might or might not be doing. To see just how long this could go on she sat there for hours. At last she rose, took his book from him and tossed it into the fire.
    â€œNow what did you do that for?” he wondered aloud as she made her way upstairs.
    Now had come the call she had waited twenty years for, never expecting it. It was as though some dear one had come back from the dead. And as though she had too.
    â€œThat was John Warner on the phone,” she said. The care with which she enunciated the name conveyed the need she had felt to place the person.
    â€œJohn Warner?”
    â€œMmh. Remember him?”
    â€œJohn Warner … Oh, yes. Yes. Long time no see. What’s with him?”
    â€œHis wife has died.”
    That would make it sound as though his wife had just died. That he was newly in need of sympathy, condolence. But she had died three years ago. Three years! Oh, why had he waited so long to call her? Three precious years! All that time lost when there was so little time to lose, to live! Yet she could explain his hesitancy to herself. She could imagine him longing to call her but thinking, “After all these years? She has forgotten you, you sentimental old fool. No doubt she replaced you with another lover. You’re too old for this nonsense—and so is she. What right have you to disturb her settled life? There is not an ember left of what was once a fire—not on her side. With three children she’s a grandmother many times over—a great-grandmother by now.”
    But he had called! He had overcome his fear of looking ridiculous, of being laughed at, rejected. He had trusted

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