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When Wanda tells everyone that she\u2019s going to visit her parents for the weekend, she\u2019ll leave on a Friday morning, but not get to their place, which is only 100 miles away, until a Saturday morning. Six times a year, she has a day to herself, just her and her station wagon in the rolling hills of New York and all the money she\u2019s hoarded for the past two months so she can stay in a motel under the name Alexandra Whetstone. She likes to sit in the hotel room without any sound or chore and listen to the silence while she reads detective novels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In October, when she gets back home from her folks\u2019 place, she finds Henry and Charles oddly quiet, oddly distant. Charles, her husband, is always distant, but Henry is usually excited because she brings him liquorice. When she hands him his candy, he doesn\u2019t look at it, doesn\u2019t eat it all in one sitting the way he always has before. \u201cWhat\u2019s wrong?\u201d she asks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Henry frowns at her as though she should now. \u201cGrandpa died,\u201d he says in the whine that 11-year-olds can achieve as though it\u2019s obvious, and the weight of his words backs her up, makes her grasp the kitchen table to keep her from falling. \u201cDad called you and told you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And Wanda knows that he must have called Friday. He must have spoken to her folks but gave nothing away because they didn\u2019t even mention the call on Saturday morning. He must have been very good with his words because they didn\u2019t say a word. When Wanda finds Charles in the living room reading the newspaper, a highball glass full of bourbon, he doesn\u2019t even look up. He says, \u201cHe was out back with Henry checking that bat house they built, shining a flashlight up into it to see if they had any visitors.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat happened?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHeart attack.\u201d He still doesn\u2019t look up from the Sunday paper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cRight in front of Henry?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now, he looks up at her. \u201cYes.\u201d He takes another sip from his glass. He is not a man to speak to his wife. He\u2019ll get loud with other people, whoop it up at a baseball game or yell at someone driving stupid, but he always speaks to her with his eyes. Now, his eyes are asking a question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Up until now, she wasn\u2019t really worried that he\u2019d catch her. It\u2019s easy to fool a drunk man. \u201cI\u2019m not cheating on you. I go to a little motel halfway between here and there just to get a little time for myself.\u201d Charles\u2019s eyes quiet themselves, and he nods, at whatever peace he finds in himself in these years after the war. He came home a hero, a part of Patton\u2019s cavalry, and hasn\u2019t said one word about his time there, at least not to her. \u201cDo you believe me?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now his eyes tell her that he\u2019s confused. \u201cOf course, I believe you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWould you be angry if I were lying?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He puts down the paper and grabs the armrest of his chair. \u201cYou wouldn\u2019t lie,\u201d he says. \u201cNot to me about that. If you did, I\u2019d understand.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhy?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019m not the easiest person to live with,\u201d he says. He takes another long sip and goes back to his paper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the days ahead, there will be planning and cooking and phone calls and all the million details that go with arranging a funeral, and that will take up her mind and his. There will be time to ponder the meaning of her marriage, and she wonders if he will too. She doesn\u2019t think he will leave though. He did that years ago. He left her for Patton\u2019s war, and she doesn\u2019t think he\u2019ll ever come back. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When Wanda tells everyone that she\u2019s going to visit her parents for the weekend, she\u2019ll leave on a Friday morning, but not get to their place, which is only 100 miles away, until a Saturday morning. Six times a year, she has a day to herself, just her and her station wagon in the rolling … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa867U-YX","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3779"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3779\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3780,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3779\/revisions\/3780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
John Brantingham is the recipient of a New York State Arts Council grant and was Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks\u2019 first poet laureate. His work has been in hundreds of magazines and The Best Small Fictions 2016 and 2022. He has twenty-two books of poetry, nonfiction, and fiction. Check out his work at johnbrantingham.com.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"