Apparition & Late Fictions: A Novella and Stories (21 page)

“No,” she said without hesitation, “never once. I was just so glad to have him home, safe, after the war, I’d missed him so. And I thought, I always thought, what a beautiful man, what a good man he was. So I can tell you, we had our hard days,
sure. But no, I never wondered about being with him. I wish I were with him now. I can still feel him.”

There was a catch in her breath. Her hands dropped from the steering wheel of the old wagon. Adrian said nothing.

“The young these days are so unhappy, so impatient, so full of expectations. All we wanted was to survive it. To be together. To get through, Bob and me, you know, and for the children…Nowadays they just want too much. Whatever they have, they think there must be more. They want so much they don’t know what they want.”

She was staring at a point in the middle of the steering wheel. She caught her breath again.

“Yes, yes, I suppose that’s it.”

Adrian wondered what it was he wanted. He had long since lost hope of a woman who could love him like a wife would and love his children like a mother. That mix of passion and sacrifice seemed quite impossible to him now. Not because such women did not exist, but because he lacked what it was they wanted. Though he’d had housekeepers and nannies and tutors and teachers and therapists for his children; though he’d had no shortage of memorable sexual partners; there had not been nor would there be, he now knew with certainty, anyone like Gloria in his life and times—a woman who would mourn and remember the boy he had been, the man he was, the old man he hoped to be, who would love him and outlive him and keep him alive in the daily lives and times of his people, his children and his children’s children. He could feel the wave of sadness rising in him that he knew, if he did not move, would overtake him.

He closed the car door and made for the ferry.

“Safe home,” she shouted after him.

Boarding the boat, Adrian blew kisses.