or only one. I want to talk to you, and still I want to be quiet, just watching you. I want to tell you all about it, how beautiful you are and how much I love you, and still I know there isn’t any way I can really say it and that you shouldn’t try to talk about it too much when it’s like this, because talking takes a little bit of it away, and all the words have been worn out anyway by people who maybe only thought they felt it. I want too many different things and I want them all at once. There’s a lot of it I don’t understand, and maybe I never will. I can see why I want to make love to you the way we did; I can see why touching you or looking at you or being around you should be exciting in that way; but there’s no way to understand why I get angry just thinking about the way you had to live and the way you dressed and at your being barefoot, or why I feel the way I do about your feet and just want to sit there and hold them in my hands. Do I make any sense to you? Could anybody make any sense out of it?”
“Yes,” she said softly. “It makes sense. Weren’t you ever in love before, Jack?”
“I guess not. Anyway, not like this.”
“But you were married.”
“I know. But it wasn’t anything. Even at first.” It was odd I thought now. It seemed to have been years since I’d even thought of Louise.
“Yes,” she said musingly. “I think you’re right. I don’t think you ever have been before. I know it’s a funny thing to say, but you seem to be so completely amazed by it, like a little boy.”
“Now you’re talking as if you were a thousand years older than I am.”
“I think I probably am,” she said gently.
“Have you ever been in love before?’ I asked, suddenly and furiously jealous.
“You want me to tell the truth, don’t you, Jack?”
“Of course,” I said, not wanting her to at all.
“It was a boy who was killed on Guadalcanal in 1942. I was nineteen then, and pregnant. When his parents received the telegram I tried to kill myself with sleeping pills. They didn’t work, but when I went to the abortionist, he almost did it for me.”
“My God!” I said. “No.”
“It had been too long. I don’t know why it didn’t kill me as well as the baby. Maybe it was because I didn’t really care.”
“But,” I cried out angrily, “Why, Doris? Why?”
“I don’t know. It wasn’t just because we weren’t married. I wouldn’t have minded that very much then, and wouldn’t at all now. But it was the injustice of it. I hated everything. I wanted to die and I wanted to kill a baby who couldn’t have been responsible for a war that did things like that. And maybe a little of it was because of my father. He was such a sweet old thing, and the disgrace would have ruined him. He’d have lost his church. Oh, I don’t know. After all, I was very young, Jack. We wanted to be married in San Diego before he left, but I looked so young they wouldn’t give us a license without my father’s consent, and by the time I got the letter from him it was too late. He already had been shipped out.”
“How did you get to San Diego in the first place?” I asked.
“I ran away and followed him. After he went overseas I came home. Daddy didn’t say anything. It was after I got back that I realized I was pregnant. Of course, I was very happy about it then, married or not. But when his parents got the telegram—”
“My God,” I said. “What an awful thing!”
“It was a long time ago, Jack. I mean, it’s all over now.”
I saw a little then of what she had meant when she had said she was older than I was. “And it was some time after that when you met him?” I wondered if either of us would ever be able to say his name.
“Yes,” she said. “About a year.”
We were quiet for a long time. Even though I didn’t want to think about it I kept trying to imagine what their life had been like. After a while I turned and looked at her and asked, “Did he hack up your hair