It jarred him, and although she did not look at him he knew it must have shaken her too, but there was nothing he could do about it. The client, DeBerry, had arrived first and chosen the table, and of course he could not change it now. So he went on sitting very close to her, facing her, but not looking at her. Brock would never have mentioned it, but DeBerry was a sort of silly, guileless man, and almost immediately he leaned forward and said in a conspiratorial whisper: “Hey, Max, isn’t that your wife sitting behind me?”

Annoyed, Brock nodded. But he did not look up at Mary, and eventually DeBerry’s eyes lightened with bright discovery. “Oh. You’re still not friendly, ha?”

Brock said nothing. It was none of DeBerry’s business, but then, nobody in Brock’s law office took DeBerry seriously anyway. And really, it didn’t matter.

“Last I heard you were planning a divorce. It come through yet?”

“No.”

“Well, what you waitin’ for? Man, this town is full of action.”

“I’ve been busy,” Brock snapped, and even DeBerry could see that that was the end of it. But his feelings were not hurt. You could not possibly hurt DeBerry in any spot outside his wallet, and he rambled on almost instantly to his one all-important never-ending subject: women, the latest conquest, and how it had been accomplished. But that did not bother Brock, because it was not the kind of conversation that required answers, or even attention. It left him time to think—plenty of time to think of Mary.

He was vaguely surprised at how the meeting had unnerved him. He had not expected any feeling at all, but sitting here with his eyes cast down, not looking, he felt somehow guilty, discovered. He remembered passing her on the street once some months ago. He had nodded to her then, and felt nothing at all, and was not even surprised at feeling nothing, but didn’t even think about it. He remembered that he had looked at her only long enough to realize who she was; and in that same moment she had seen him, and nodded, and then they had both turned away, embarrassed, somewhat shamefully even, because each had built a world in which the other did not exist, and for that one moment the worlds had collided, had cracked in a sharp split, and they had looked at each other across the open seam. But then quickly the split had sealed and he had gone on, and had not thought of her. He could tell himself truthfully that he had not thought of her at all.

He looked up abruptly and saw her again. Of course she was not looking at him. He dropped his eyes quickly. He was startled to find that the sight of her seemed to shake something inside him. He could not understand what it was. He began to feel profoundly uneasy, the way he remembered feeling after a shot of adrenaline. He wanted a cigarette suddenly, although his dinner had just arrived.

The moment passed. He calmed himself quickly—he had had much experience at calming himself. He thought about that, and it occurred to him that this was probably true: there would never be another moment in his life that would destroy that calm. To prove it to himself he looked up at her again. And felt nothing. He went on with his dinner…

At the time of the breakup they had been married for seven years. Max and Mary Brock, a quiet, likable couple who were regarded by their friends as somewhat naïve and shy, but excellent neighbors. And they had a delightful son.

His name was Charles, but he was better known as Buck, and he was four. There were no children for him to play with on his own street, and so he wandered around among the grownups, a thoroughly captivating little man with very fine manners, so he was welcome everywhere. He was the product of a good home, and everyone knew it, of a relatively stern father and a loving mother. But what no one understood, perhaps not even Mary Brock herself, was how much the little boy meant to his father.

It was a thing Max seldom spoke about. There was no way for him to express the enormity of the emotion, though he felt the need often, especially at night, staring down at the little sleeping boy and wondering, Does he know what I feel? Does he understand that I have to be rough on him sometimes because I care so much and must do all I can? In the end it was probably only Max Brock himself who knew the depth of his own emotion, because he alone knew that the boy had been responsible, in part, for making him a man. Brock had never been a really stable person until the boy came along. For some reason the presence of the baby, his warmth, his wide eyes gazing up, had unlocked a feeling in Max that he had never suspected—a kind of sudden, overwhelming faith that the world was good and the future worth working for.

And the boy went out to play one day, went out saying only that he was going next door, and did not come back. He wandered off for some unknowable reason, and played near a drainage ditch filled with water from a recent rain, and fell in and was drowned.

That night Brock went a good way out of his mind. Probably no one knew just how far he went, certainly not Mary, who was in no condition at that time to realize much of anything. But that night was not the breakup. That did not happen until the following morning, when the terrible daze in Brock had begun to clear. All night long he had been unable to go into his son’s room; he was unable to move from the chair by his own bed. But in the morning he went—he could not help going—and he saw the toys still scattered on the floor, the pajamas hanging on the door, and he reached out and touched one small leg of the pajamas, and his mind gave way. Exactly what he did then he was never to remember clearly, or want to remember. But the one thing he knew was that he had to get out of there, far away from there.

Some time later that morning he went downstairs and saw Mary bending over the stove, making a desperate effort at least to stay on her feet, to go on with routine. She looked up at him as he came in and he went on by her and out the door and did not come back. And he ended the marriage then. She needed him in that moment as she had never needed anyone in her life, and he went on by her and away from her, leaving her to believe that he blamed her for the baby’s death. And so he ended the marriage. Yet he was never able to see any fault in it.

Getting out of that house was a matter of survival. Looking back on it afterward, he knew absolutely that it was the only thing he could have done. IF he had stayed there he would have died, or broken. He could not help Mary; he could not help himself.

He did not drink, or try in any other way to forget it. He got himself a room in a hotel and did nothing but walk, walk, for several days, exhausting himself each day so that he could finally sleep. And when people approached him out of kindness, he simply went away. He wanted silence. There was nobody to help him. You simply had to hang on and wait until it passed. You endured. You cured it in isolation, just as you bandaged a wound and let it heal in darkness. And what helped now was only the passage of time, because the feeling could not go on forever. It dulled—gradually, almost imperceptibly, but it dulled. And it its place was an emptiness—peace.

But even after it healed he could not go back to Mary. He had nothing to say to her. Their life together was no longer real—he had buried all the memories of it with the memories of his son—and when he spoke to her on the telephone it was as though to a stranger.

Once she said that she would never forgive him for leaving her at that time. The words meant nothing to him, for he knew that there was nothing else he could have done. Another time, some weeks later, she called to ask him if it wasn’t time now to begin again, to start anew, with more children. He was amazed at that, that she couldn’t even expect him to consider going through all that again. He didn’t even answer her. He had had his child, and his child was dead, and he could never have another, because if he did, and loved it…

He found himself a permanent room. He forgot Mary entirely, except to send her a monthly check. He never thought of her in between times, and never thought of the boy. That had all happened a long time ago, and did not matter. He resumed his work, and it went well; he was clinically efficient. He did not hear from Mary again until she called one day asking for a divorce, and he agreed, of course. He would have got it himself, but he had simply forgotten about her. She instituted proceedings. When word of that got out he began to be questioned about dates: some friends began thoughtfully hinting that he should get out and relax. He was not interested. He was not yet wholly well. In those days he did a lot of fishing, and much reading. He was neither happy nor unhappy. He was only—calm.

And he was calm now, was calm right through to the end of the dinner, listening while DeBerry droned on about the sexy way high-school girls were dressing nowadays. Eventually DeBerry got down to his business, which was minor—his dog was bothering the neighbors and he wanted to know his rights. Brock advised him, and then, abruptly, DeBerry rose to leave. He apologized breezily—Brock was still eating his dessert—but he made several suggestive remarks about a date he had that night, made a poor show of picking up the check, and left. And he took with him Brock’s calm.

It seemed to Brock now that he was alone with Mary, although the restaurant was crowded. He had to glance up, and again she was not looking, and the jittery feeling came back into him. Now that’s crazy, he thought. He went on studiously regarding his plate. But he found that the image of her stayed in his eyes. She was wearing a light blue dress that he did not remember. Her hair had been arranged in a different way which made her look much older, fully a woman, and it was a shock to him to realize that she was strikingly beautiful. She had always been pretty, but in a schoolgirl way; it had been a joke in his family to refer to her as his “child bride.” But now the long hair was gone; it had been cut short, and that was a strong part of the difference. That was one of the few things they had argued about: She had begun to complain that she was getting too old to wear her hair that long, especially in the heat of summer, but he had never let her cut it. And now it was cut. But it looked fine.

But what does that matter? he thought. He went on doggedly eating his dessert, beginning to be annoyed with himself for having come here, annoyed with her for being here, and feeling foolish to be annoyed over nothing. But he could not help glancing across to her repeatedly now, and though she never once looked at him the jittery feeling did not go away.

He delayed with the dessert, delayed with his coffee. It began to seem to him that he could not possibly get up and leave while she was still here. He did not know why that was, but he did not think about it. He wanted her to leave first. Looking up, he saw that she was still eating her dessert; but she had always been slow, very graceful in her movements—it was one of the things he had loved.

He lighted a cigarette. He sipped his coffee. He waited, and tried not to look at her. But he couldn’t help looking.

Yes, she was definitely changed. She seemed much more…grown up. He felt a pang of unusual sadness, just looking at her. The things that had been done to her had not been very kind…but he mustn’t think about that. He wondered suddenly why he couldn’t just be decent and civilized and get up and say hello to her. It would be a very simple thing. But he knew he couldn’t. He had been sitting here too long now, and he couldn’t. But do you want to? he asked himself, and knew that he did, very much.

He ordered another cup of coffee. He began to wish to God she would leave, but she sat on, apparently unaware of his existence. The feelings in him rocked back and forth from anger to softness. Looking at her now he could begin to remember the good moments and forget the bad. And watching her move now—the curve of her neck meeting her shoulders, the small hands, the nose that for some incredibly funny reason twitched at the tip when she laughed—he was overwhelmingly aware of why he had fallen in love with her, and might again.

My God, he thought, that mustn’t happen, after what you’ve done to her. But there at the table he thought back, suddenly starkly moved, and he saw again helplessly that there was nothing else he could have done. He had had to seal himself off like that or, God help him, he would have killed himself. Could she understand that?

He waited, drinking coffee. He could not get up and talk to her. He told himself he could always see her some other time; he could call her one afternoon, or just drop in like a visiting friend. But not tonight.

He was frozen to his chair, waiting for her to leave.

She was having coffee herself. He wondered briefly if she might be waiting for him to come over, but he dismissed that instantly. No. She hadn’t even looked at him. If she wanted him for anything at all she might at least have looked at him. And why would she want him.

For more misery, more loneliness? For another black desertion? He tried to choke that off, but it was suddenly enormous, a welling, burning sensation that was life coming back into him, into the long dead spaces, the empty caverns of his mind. And for the first time in all those dead months he thought with brutal clarity of the dead boy, Buck. And though the memory was terrible, it was somehow not so terrible as before, because now there was reason behind it, not simply emotion. And he thought, stricken, this is what you did, you made the boy your whole life, but Mary—Mary, what you give to Mary? How could you forget all the good moments, the early years…

And yet, he thought, bowing his head, and yet…I was ill. God forgive me, I was ill. And for the first time in his life as a lawyer, he understood at last why the law allows a man to plead insanity.

But can I ask her to understand that? he thought. It was asking an awful lot of a woman to forgive a thing like that.

But she is not just a woman. She is my wife.

And so he still waited. The last thing he thought brought a little of the calmness back. All this had had to happen. There was nothing anyone could have done. He knew that when she left now, he would not follow her—he had no right to follow her; he would not call her, either. It was only here, faced with the sweet, soft presence of her, that he would be shaken. After she left, the blankness would return, the patient emptiness, and it would all be the same. And so he waited on, and so did she, not looking.

And then she rose. He was aware of it only by the sound of the movement, the near rustle of her dress. He looked up. She was standing with her back to him, putting on her coat, smoothing her hair. She was leaving. The fact of it agonized him. She reached down and picked up her check, and then looked down at him.

She did nothing else. She just stood there, looking at him.

He looked back at her, frozen, searching her eyes, her lovely eyes. He understood finally that she was as shaken as he. He stood up. He started to say something, but he had nothing to say. There were tears in her eyes.

“Can you wait for a minute,” he said, “while I put on my coat? I’d like to…walk with you a little way.”

“I’ll wait,” she said. “I’ll wait.”

First published in Redbook, August 1958

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