Speaking out loud should have also seemed wrong, speaking to the dead in a graveyard was the act of a crazy person, she would have said once. But now emotion surprised her, emotion of such force and intensity that it caused her throat to ache and her hands to suddenly clap shut. It was all right to speak to him, maybe; after all, it had been nine years, and this was the end of it. After this there would be Walt and the children and lots of smiles from one of the chairs behind her husband’s speaking podium; the endless smiles from the background and an occasional feature article in the Sunday supplements, if Walt’s political career skyrocketed as he so calmly expected it to do. The future was a little more gray in her hair each year, never going braless because of the sag, becoming more careful about makeup; the future was exercise classes at the YWCA in Bangor and shopping and taking Denny to the first grade and Janis to nursery school; the future was New Year’s Eve parties and funny hats as her life rolled into the science-fictiony decade of the 1980s and also into a queer and almost unsuspected state – middle age.
She saw no county fairs in her future.
The first slow, scalding tears began to come. ‘Oh, Johnny,’ she said. ‘Everything was supposed to be different, wasn’t it? It wasn’t supposed to end like this.’
She lowered her head, her throat working painfully -and to no effect. The sobs came anyway, and the bright sunlight broke into prisms of light. The wind, which had seemed so warm and Indian summery, now seemed as chill as February on her wet cheeks.
‘Not fair!’ she cried into the silence of BOWDENS and MARSTENS and PILLSBURYS, that dead congregation of listeners who testified to nothing more or less than life is quick and dead is dead. ‘Oh God, not fair!
‘
And that was when the hand touched her neck.
12.
… and that night was the best night for us, although there are still times when it’s hard for me to believe there ever was such a year as 1970 and upheaval on the campuses and Nixon was president, no pocket calculators,
no home video tape recorders, no Bruce Springsteen or punk-rock bands either. And at other times it seems like that time is only a handsbreadth away, that I can almost touch it, that if I could put my arms around you or touch your cheek or the back of your neck, I could carry you away with me into a different future with no pain or darkness or bitter choices.
Well, we all do what we can, and it has to be good enough … and if it isn’t good enough, it has to do. I only hope that you will think of me as well as you can, dear Sarah. All my best,
and all my love,
Johnny
13.
She drew her breath in raggedly, her back straightening, her eyes going wide and round.
‘Johnny…?’
It was gone.
Whatever it had been, it was gone. She stood and turned around and of course there was nothing there. But she could see him standing there, his hands jammed deep into his pockets, that easy, crooked grin on his pleasant-rather-than-handsome face, leaning lanky
and at ease against a monument or one of the stone gateposts or maybe just a tree gone red with fall’s dying fire. No big deal, Sarah – you still sniffin that wicked cocaine?
Nothing there but Johnny; somewhere near, maybe everywhere.
We all do what we can, and it has to be good enough … and if it isn’t good enough, it has to do. Nothing is ever lost, Sarah. Nothing that can’t be found.
‘Same old Johnny,’ she whispered, and walked out of the cemetery and crossed the road.
She paused for a moment, looking back. The warm October wind gusted strongly and great shades of light and shadow seemed to pass across the world. The trees rustled secretly.
Sarah got in her car and drove away.