have to die.” I think it was because Ruthie was so important, and I wanted to stay forever to make sure she was all right forever.
Back then, when I had those anxious nights, I used to get up very carefully so as not to wake you, and go to watch Ruthie sleep. She was so little then, not even two, still in a crib, and she slept with her butt up in the air, her arm around her bedraggled Doggie. I would hear her soft breathing, see the dim outline of her toys scattered around her room. The white rocker I’d nursed her in was still in the corner, the curtains I’d made her were hanging there, just as they did in the daytime. Being in her room always worked to calm me down. I would cover her again—her blanket was always off her—and pick up one of her toys, sit in the rocker with it, move back and forth in the ancient rhythm. I would think, tomorrow I will give her some ABC soup for lunch in her blue bowl, and I’ll give her little squares of toast with it; and for dessert, some vanilla yogurt with strawberries sliced on top. After her nap, we will walk to the library and look for birds’ nests in the bushes—she liked to find them, she always asked was there a mommy and a daddy that lived there, and this always made me think, I can never get a divorce. Not that I thought about it so much then. I did think about it later, though I only told you about it once. Do you remember that morning? Ruthie was eight years old, off to school, and you were leaving for work in one of the suits you’d just bought—a very nice Italian silk, I remember it was a wonderful taupe color with a minute pattern, your cologne was fabulous—and I was sitting in the chair in my bathrobe with my terrible coffee breath and I said to you, Martin, I’m too lonely. And you said, Oh Jesus, Nan, not now. I said, Martin, I need romance. And you said, So have an affair. I looked up at you and I said, You bastard, I want a divorce. And you looked at your watch, and I really think if I’d had a gun I would have shot you. You said you had to go, you were late, we’d talk that night, but we didn’t.
You never knew this, but the reason we didn’t talk is that I went to lunch with one of my old girlfriends that day and she told me how much trouble she was having with her husband. By comparison, we seemed great. I remember that after that lunch I went to the grocery store and bought a fancy cut of beef, made a wine/mushroom sauce for it that was quite good. And that night, when we were watching television in our pajamas, you covered me with a blanket. We’d forgiven each other, and we lay comfortable in the groove of our life together.
We’ve become quite good at forgiving each other by now, have you noticed? Sometimes I want to say to people considering divorce from a marriage that’s only vaguely bad, Oh, just wait. It just takes a lot of time, that’s all. You’ll see. Later, you’ll be sitting together and you’ll see the small lines starting in each other’s faces, and though your hands may be in your laps they will also be reaching out to touch those lines with a tenderness you weren’t sure was in you. You’ll think, Oh well, all right. You’ll have come to a certain kind of appreciation that moves beyond all the definitions of love you’ve ever had. It’s like the way you have to be at least forty before a red pepper sliced in half can take your breath away. Do you know what I mean, Martin? A certain richness happens only later in life, I guess it’s a kind of mellowing. And now when I think of dying I think, Oh not now, not when I’m just starting to see. And I also think, don’t let it be from something where I have to get my throat radiated. Don’t let it be from something that makes me have a lot of pain. Don’t let it be from something where I become a vegetable, or a burden in some other way. Let it be this way: Let me be eighty-eight. Let