and was garrulous (and honest, Joan believed) about its flavor.
The sadness that stayed with her was less an emotion than a presence, like the Guardian Angel she had believed in as a child. You never felt the Angel, as you felt shyness or confidence or affection; but often, when you had forgotten about it, you felt it standing beside you, so close that its airy body touched your side, and one large wing enfolded your back. These might be times of danger, to your body or to the self that in childhood you worried most about, the heart and soul that were your name. Or they might be times when you were flirting with the forbidden, pretending to yourself that you would only look but not touch, while knowing that the closer you approached, the more certain was your fall. Now, though, her sadness did not manifest itself only on certain occasions that were connected to it, either directly or by association. Its wing did not wait to touch her when Richie phoned, or when she phoned him, or waited in the car for him to come out of the house and go with her to her apartment; or when she saw a mother with a young son on the sidewalks of the town, or a family with a young son at the restaurant where she worked. No: the wing remained on her back, the body at her side, even when she was in good spirits, alone in her rooms or drinking after work with the other waitresses; her peaceful solitude or talk and laughter were not destroyed, but they were distracted, and so diminished.
She would rather endure carrying Richie in her womb, and the bursting pain of bearing him, than what she had suffered the day she told him and, that same day, left him, and what she had to keep enduring, it seemed, for the rest of her life. She should have left before she conceived him, but she could not wish that, because then he was not alive, and she could not imagine that, nor wish for it, nor survive with her sanity one day in a world he had either left or, because of her, had never joined. Yet a time had come when, still married, and living every day with Richie, she had believed if the phone rang once more, if she drove across the Merrimack to the supermarket one more time, if she cooked one more meal, or if Greg did or said or only started to do or say one of the fifty to one hundred things she could not witness without a boredom that was plummeting toward revulsion, she would go mad. But it was none of these that had defeated her. Nor was it Greg. She could make a list of his parts she disliked, even despised; but any wife could make the same sort of list, any wife who loved; or any husband, for that matter. It was that she had outlived love. A century ago she might have died in childbirth or from the flu, while she was young. Nutrition and medicine had preserved her life, yet without the resilience to love so long. Then each phone call or errand or chore, each grating part of Greg, was love’s passing bell.
The restaurant where she worked was owned by Hungarians, the chef had come from an expensive Hungarian restaurant in Boston, and Joan was proud of the good food and low prices that drew from the Merrimack Valley customers who dressed casually and worked for salaries that did not allow luxuries. The restaurant was a white wooden building with two dining rooms and an eight-stool bar, and it was in the shade of trees beside Route 110, a two-lane country road. She could have sat forever at her bedroom window with what Greg sent her twice a month, though she had asked for nothing—at least nothing material—but she worked five nights a week to be with people. She had never been a waitress, and now she was a good one, and she liked the work: liked learning the names and some of the lives of the regular customers, and knowing their drinks before they ordered, so as she turned to each one she could name the drink with a question in her voice. They would nod and praise her memory, and she knew their smiles came from a deeper source: she made them happy by
The sadness that stayed with her was less an emotion than a presence, like the Guardian Angel she had believed in as a child. You never felt the Angel, as you felt shyness or confidence or affection; but often, when you had forgotten about it, you felt it standing beside you, so close that its airy body touched your side, and one large wing enfolded your back. These might be times of danger, to your body or to the self that in childhood you worried most about, the heart and soul that were your name. Or they might be times when you were flirting with the forbidden, pretending to yourself that you would only look but not touch, while knowing that the closer you approached, the more certain was your fall. Now, though, her sadness did not manifest itself only on certain occasions that were connected to it, either directly or by association. Its wing did not wait to touch her when Richie phoned, or when she phoned him, or waited in the car for him to come out of the house and go with her to her apartment; or when she saw a mother with a young son on the sidewalks of the town, or a family with a young son at the restaurant where she worked. No: the wing remained on her back, the body at her side, even when she was in good spirits, alone in her rooms or drinking after work with the other waitresses; her peaceful solitude or talk and laughter were not destroyed, but they were distracted, and so diminished.
She would rather endure carrying Richie in her womb, and the bursting pain of bearing him, than what she had suffered the day she told him and, that same day, left him, and what she had to keep enduring, it seemed, for the rest of her life. She should have left before she conceived him, but she could not wish that, because then he was not alive, and she could not imagine that, nor wish for it, nor survive with her sanity one day in a world he had either left or, because of her, had never joined. Yet a time had come when, still married, and living every day with Richie, she had believed if the phone rang once more, if she drove across the Merrimack to the supermarket one more time, if she cooked one more meal, or if Greg did or said or only started to do or say one of the fifty to one hundred things she could not witness without a boredom that was plummeting toward revulsion, she would go mad. But it was none of these that had defeated her. Nor was it Greg. She could make a list of his parts she disliked, even despised; but any wife could make the same sort of list, any wife who loved; or any husband, for that matter. It was that she had outlived love. A century ago she might have died in childbirth or from the flu, while she was young. Nutrition and medicine had preserved her life, yet without the resilience to love so long. Then each phone call or errand or chore, each grating part of Greg, was love’s passing bell.
The restaurant where she worked was owned by Hungarians, the chef had come from an expensive Hungarian restaurant in Boston, and Joan was proud of the good food and low prices that drew from the Merrimack Valley customers who dressed casually and worked for salaries that did not allow luxuries. The restaurant was a white wooden building with two dining rooms and an eight-stool bar, and it was in the shade of trees beside Route 110, a two-lane country road. She could have sat forever at her bedroom window with what Greg sent her twice a month, though she had asked for nothing—at least nothing material—but she worked five nights a week to be with people. She had never been a waitress, and now she was a good one, and she liked the work: liked learning the names and some of the lives of the regular customers, and knowing their drinks before they ordered, so as she turned to each one she could name the drink with a question in her voice. They would nod and praise her memory, and she knew their smiles came from a deeper source: she made them happy by
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