Lots of things in his life Bill would never forget. When he thought about it, he could still remember his mother laying on the sofa. She was dead. He was a kid. He stared at her and from time to time he thought he could see her stomach rising as if she were breathing. But she wasn’t breathing. She would never breathe again.
He could remember his father laid up in intensive care after his valve surgery, some twenty-four years later. The shock of seeing him there, the hospital gown laid open, the coarsely sewed stitches down his chest, all the wires and tubes he was hooked up to—that was one thing. The limp, drooping side of his face and the immobile arm and leg, the wholly immobile one side of his body, that was another thing. Nevertheless it was all part of the first. The most remarkable thing of all, the one he could never forget, was his father motioning with his good hand to the pillow to his lips, to the pillow to his lips.
Bill would never forget that on that day his father wanted him to smother him.
Of course he couldn’t know it yet but he would later come to realize that he would never forget Arlene sitting there naked weeping on the toilet. Her feet pointed inward so her toes were almost touching. The shiny, clear-painted, French-pedicured toenails stood out, perfections amidst the imperfect. Her legs were together at the knees, her thighs tight against each other. Her pink-nipple breasts, cone-shaped and non-droopy, pointed forward. Her elbows were tucked into her sides, her face buried in her hands.
Wow, Bill thought. Looking at her, moving into the bathroom and standing before her, he wondered how they had gone from so happily high in the bed naked together and spooning to here with Arlene now weeping uncontrollably. All he had done, the way he saw it, was ask her what she really wanted to tell him, as if she had some hidden agenda, as if there were something she truly wanted to tell him but had not yet divulged.
What he had to do was simple, or at least so he thought, or at least this was what his instincts told him. He stepped forward and got to his knees right before her as she sat there. He took his hands and placed them on the top of her thighs. He leaned forward and kissed first one knee and then the next. Then he reached up with both his hands and gently took her hands in his.
“Shhh,” he said. Her hands in his, he kissed each one softly then began kissing each finger gently. He could see her face now, could see her eyes. They were reddish, wet and non-bright.
“Shhh,” he said again. Now that he could see her face, her hands still in his, he reached his head forward and upward. He kissed her softly once on each cheek.
“So I guess there’s some things you really want to tell me,” he said.
“Fuck you,” said Arlene.
“So I guess that means I’m right. Maybe we should meet up in the bedroom and talk.”
“Maybe we should,” said Arlene.
When she joined him, he had already put on his pants and his T-shirt. He was still barefoot. He sat on the edge of the bed.
Arlene went to her closet and retrieved a bathrobe from inside it. Facing away from him, she slipped her arms into it and tied it around her. She was no longer crying, he could see when she turned toward him. It was obvious she had dried her eyes.
“So,” Bill said, “pull up a chair and let’s talk.”
Arlene took the one armchair that was there in the bedroom and dragged it so she was sitting opposite him where he sat.
“I’ll rub your feet if you like,” said Bill.
