Other People's Love Affairs

by D. Wystan Owen

  not know. He never strayed from routine: never drove off in the

  company of a woman, never turned left where he should have

  turned right. Often she phoned the pub from inside the car, but

  when he answered she found herself with nothing to say.

  December. Streetlamps were furnished with garlands, the

  Green Man with strings of bright colored lights. She and Violet

  had never really made much of Christmas, but they’d enjoyed their

  simple routine: a bottle of champagne, Richter’s good panettone,

  and, if Violet was feeling nostalgic, a walk past the church to listen at mass. What pained Erma now, as the holiday neared, was

  not simply the end of these things; it was the belief that, in her own absence, Violet would have managed to carry them on. For

  it was clear now that to Violet they had merely been roommates,

  bound first of all by convenience and thrift. How foolish Erma

  had been. That most everything had been left to her was hardly

  any consolation at all; she’d got that because it was only fair that she should, the same as when her parents had died. The greater

  gift, it seemed to her now, had been Killian’s, precisely because

  it was worthless, because it was no more than a symbol. In this

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  short, meager life, it is a thousand times rarer to be given what

  isn’t owed.

  When she telephoned Catharine it was midday, though

  Erma had not yet been out of the house. Outside, the landscape

  was fogged in and dreary. The sea and the sky were a similar gray.

  There was a pot of leftover soup on the stove, bread to warm in the oven for lunch. It took a moment to explain who she was; they’d

  not spoken since the will was retrieved.

  “I thought I’d tell you how I was getting on,” Erma said. “And

  how the town remembers her. They still wave at the car when I

  pass. They forget, you see. Friends everywhere she went, Violet.”

  “Yes.”

  “Was she always that way? When you knew her, I mean?”

  “I suppose she was,” Catharine said. “She was a prettier girl

  than you’d think.”

  “So she wasn’t always plain?” Erma said. She pictured Violet,

  laughing and near. She’d been the taller between them, the fairer.

  “I was, always.”

  Catharine made no reply.

  “And she had a good sense of humor?”

  “Yes, of course,” Catharine said. “But you know that, Erma.

  You knew her a longer time than I ever did.”

  Erma smiled hearing that and let the silence stretch a moment

  over the line. She was in the sitting room of their house, curtains drawn to the fog, the fire unlit. It had been she who’d split wood for them winters, having learned the proper way from her father,

  a job that more often a man would have done.

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  “Erma,” Catharine said. “Why have you called?”

  “She must have been popular,” Erma went on. “With boys, I

  mean.”

  “That was part of the trouble.”

  There had been girls she’d admired, too, Erma thought now.

  From the far past there emerged an image of one, books clutched

  tight to a pretty white cardigan, skirt ballooning away from her

  waist. The sort of girl who might smile at you from a distance

  or offer to show you how makeup was worn, who might suggest

  asking a boy to spring ball, never thinking those things could be

  hurtful to say.

  “She left home after school?”

  “She never finished,” Catharine said. “I’m surprised you didn’t

  know that.” There was, for the first time, some cruelty in her voice.

  “Once she left, she never came back.”

  Erma was reminded of all the many occasions she’d been sur-

  prised by some item from Violet’s past, as though assuming she’d

  not have had one at all, or that, as a matter of course, it would

  have matched exactly her own. That belief had been another part

  of the foolishness, for what in life had ever suggested that she

  might so possess her beloved? She should have recognized Violet,

  having seen her before: no different from the girl in the skirt, the kind boy; she’d been generous, loving after a fashion, but finally remote, beyond grasp.

  “I held her all night when her mother died,” Erma said. She

  had never told anybody before. “I held her and kissed her neck

  while she wept.”

  Catharine sighed. She was silent a moment, and then she said,

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  in a voice no longer cruel but exhausted, “I nursed Violet’s mother through the whole of her suffering.”

  By the time they had each said good-bye and rung off, the fog

  had given way to a rain. It fell steadily, softly, without any purpose, a sound like handfuls of dry, scattered seed. Erma stood, relit the stove for her soup, feeling she might stay in after all.

  In the next days she didn’t return to the pub. It was

  not that she wished to let go of Violet or surrender the memory

  of her to Killian. Only she felt that the point had been reached

  where there wasn’t anything left to be learned. There was solace to be taken in one thing, at least: that the biggest changes of her life had already occurred.

  And yet, as happens, despite her resolve, she did see John

  Killian again: a mere ten days later when, in the evening, she

  answered the door and was met with his figure. He was dressed in

  the same ill-fitting suit, the same tie, the overcoat she’d seen on so many nights. This time he was still wearing his hat, and it cast his face into deadening shadow.

  “Now look here, Erma,” he said.

  She stepped back, aware of her own beating heart, her own

  ribs.

  “What are you after, ringing the pub? Slinking about, follow-

  ing me? I don’t like it. I’ve a mind to see the police.”

  Momentarily, she tried to muster some anger: he’d come to

  her home, unannounced. What she found, though, instead, was

  embarrassment, shame. Her shoulders fell; she lowered her head. It did not cross her mind to tell him a lie, as it never had, really, in all

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  of her life. Seeing her face now, one might have wondered if its lack of beauty had forever been a consequence of inability to deceive.

  “Come inside, Mr. Killian,” she said. “Come inside, John.”

  In the sitting room, he seemed slowly to alter. She watched

  him with his hands in his pockets, blinking as he regarded it all: the unfinished puzzle, the jars of glass beads, the doilies and anti-macassars on chairs.

  “I’m having potato dumplings for supper.”

  He frowned, puzzled, seeming not to have heard.

  “I haven’t shared a meal these six months.”

  She took his coat and his hat, led him into the kitchen. At the

  far end of the corridor was the bedroom, but she didn’t say that,

  knowing he knew.

  On a pan, she arrayed the small yellow pies. She motioned for

  him to have a seat at the table, and when she’d put the dumplings

  in the oven, she joined him.

  “How long has it been since last you were here?”

  “Decades,” he said. “Twenty years, Erma.”

  From the sadness in his voice, she believed him.
r />   “The desk was in the bedroom, those days.”

  They were quiet. He put his hands on the table. One wrist

  was broader than the other one was, irregular in shape, as though

  from arthritis. It would have bothered him lifting the desk. She

  wondered how he’d managed once he’d gotten it home.

  “I’m sorry I lurked at the pub.”

  “I thought you’d gone mad.”

  “I didn’t mean trouble.” She shifted her gaze, not allowing it to

  rest on his face. “How did you find me out?”

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  “The car, Erma.” It almost seemed as if he would laugh.

  “Everybody recognizes that car.”

  She smiled and glanced at the clock. “Not exactly double oh

  seven, I guess.”

  At length, she rose to take the food from the oven, returning

  with two plates of dumplings, two forks. She offered a beer, and

  he accepted.

  “It was hard when I found you were named in the will.”

  She sipped her own beer, wiped the foam from her lip.

  “It was something she’d kept a secret from me, which I never

  liked thinking she did.”

  Killian nodded. Steam rose from his plate where he’d opened

  a dumpling with the side of his fork.

  “She loved you, I suppose,” Erma said.

  His chewing slowed, and she recognized in him the feeling

  she’d come to know in these months: the almost overwhelm-

  ing weight of the heart, the way food became like a stone in the

  mouth.

  “I drove her home in the evening sometimes,” he said. “She

  drank too much in those days. She was mistreated.”

  It no longer shocked Erma hearing that said, only saddened

  her. “She was prettier then?”

  “Maybe she was, but it was never just that. You know what

  she was like. Sometimes, when I put her to bed she would say

  something sweet to me,” he said. “But she was as likely to say

  something cold.”

  “It’s terrible finding you were wrong about someone.” She did

  not want to eat. She was thinking of Killian sitting alone at the

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  desk beside Violet’s bed. Listening, waiting for her breath to find a rhythm.

  “I’m glad she never told you about me,” he said. “It wasn’t easy

  pouring drinks for the two of you, seeing you in the passenger’s

  seat of that car. I’m glad Violet and I had one thing to ourselves.

  It’s only fair, Erma, since you got all the rest.”

  “Oh, no, no,” she said, as she had also on the day when he’d

  come for the desk.

  She cleared their plates. He thanked her and stood, though it

  seemed he might like to stay a while longer.

  As she showed him out, as they exchanged apologies and con-

  dolences, as they even embraced in the doorway, Erma knew that

  in John Killian’s eyes it was she who’d had the better end of things, who’d won Violet’s heart and what time there had been. He did

  not know, as all the other people of Glass did not either, that her endearments had gone for twenty years unanswered, that the desk

  in the bedroom had been replaced not by one large bed but by

  the addition of a second twin. When they’d waved at the car as it

  passed on the road, they had all thought or spoken aloud, “There

  is Violet with her Erma.” And when Violet had sounded the horn

  they had taken it for a proclamation of love. They need never find now how mistaken they’d been; what they believed had in time

  become its own truth. This was the gift that Violet had given in

  death, having been unable to offer what was asked for in life. It

  was quite a lot. Nearly everything, really. For Killian, there was only the desk and the memory of things whispered in the darkness of a room: thanks offered vaguely as breath through the lips; prayers from the world between waking and dreams.

  The Well Sister

  z z z

  Friday evening, slowed by an ache in his foot, Myron

  Idris climbs the narrow flight of steps to his room.

  He pauses a moment, reaching the top, long enough

  for the overhead bulb to shut off. Outside, the day has only just

  begun waning, but in the windowless stairwell it is too dark to

  see. He curses, setting his bags on the landing, waves an arm in

  hopes of restoring the light. For months he tried to dissuade Mrs.

  Usak from having the motion sensor installed. It has only been a

  nuisance, as he knew it would be; there was never anything wrong

  with the switch. But she was insistent—“For safety,” she said—

  and finally he surrendered his case. He is liked downstairs, given a

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  discount, because he isn’t the sort of person who presses a point. If his chicken is dry or lettuce has gone off, he only mentions it once, and shyly at that. He is a model tenant, in many respects. Twice he has mended the faucet himself; he is always on time with the rent.

  He fumbles to place his key in the lock, relieved when he feels

  it settle into its groove. A clatter of dishes can be heard from below.

  They’ll be preparing for the first rush of dinner: oil brought up to heat in the fryer, the rims of glasses inspected for stains.

  The room, when he enters, smells warmly of rot; it is time he

  took the rubbish down to the street. A lamp beside the sofa is lit, and he curses again at the thought of his bill.

  On the counter, he arrays the items he’s bought: tuna fish,

  baked beans, custard, and peas. Bananas he hangs on a hook

  beneath the dish cabinet; a whiskey bottle goes beside the dwin-

  dling one. The kitchenette is in need of a cleaning. The whole

  room looks suddenly shabby to him. That happens when you are

  gone all day from the house: you come back and see your own

  life as if from afar. It would not do to bring the woman from the

  thirty-six here, any more than it would to have brought the one

  from the bookshop.

  And so he sets about cleaning the space, the rubbish bag knot-

  ted and placed by the door, surfaces dusted and wiped with a rag.

  He moves slowly, having nowhere to be, taking care because he is

  the sort of person who does.

  With a smile, he remembers saying, “Rain again,” displaying

  the screen of his cellular phone. That memory has been with him

  all day, through his half shift at the bookshop and at the market

  as well. She was riding the bus as he’d known she would be: the

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  thirty-six, going north to the city center. Mornings, she works in a publishing house, a local one, small books of poetry, mostly. He knows because he followed her there, unable to believe his good

  luck. On the street, autumn leaves littered the pavement; with her sharp, mincing steps she neither sought nor avoided them. He

  would hardly have credited that it was her, except you’d know her

  by the birthmark she has. No way you’d mistake her for somebody

  else. Dark red, the birthmark: like a wound at the eye.

  Beneath the surface of the hot plate, grease has collected. With

  the back of a spoon, he scrapes it away.

  She smiled when he showed her the phone, set more at ease

  than she had been before. When he’d sat down beside her she had<
br />
  stiffened a bit, clutching her purse instinctively nearer herself. He didn’t mind; he wasn’t offended. Things are that way in the city.

  Later, the memory of her initial disquiet will perhaps be some-

  thing they laugh at together.

  He steps back. The kitchenette looks more presentable. In the

  main room, adjacent, the futon is rumpled, the sheets untidied

  for several days.

  It was chance, good fortune, that brought them together. He

  will say that if ever they are alone. A blessing for him, and for her as well, because in a strange way they need one another.

  He needs her because she might be a friend. He is lonely some-

  times, if he’s telling the truth. It was the same with the woman he met in the bookshop, but that didn’t work out in the end.

  She needs him because he alone knows her secret. He has a

  certain gift for collecting up secrets. In a way, it is a kind of vocation. On Monday he will explain that to her.

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  He will tell her what he saw those decades ago. He will assure

  her that all is forgiven.

  From Old Telegram Press she makes her way to the bus

  stop, her coat insufficient to a chill in the air.

  She has missed her usual bus, made late because of a mis-

  aligned type form. A half run of poetry chapbooks was ruined, or

  anyway had to have pages replaced. The machine is antique with

  finicky parts: reglets and quoins that easily loosen, a flywheel that seems to keep an unsteady pace. Angharad ought to have noticed

  the error—she was supposed to be checking the prints—but some

  days the girl can hardly be bothered.

  “Oh dear, forgive me,” Mr. Buchanan said, knowing she dis-

  likes to be kept late. She is paid minimally for her time, the press being run at a perpetual loss, and in exchange its demands of her

  are minimal, too. He is kind and always has been, Mr. Buchanan.

  But scattered. These days he is not up to much. At a holiday

  party, after some wine, he once playfully hinted at marriage. It

  was an absurd proposition, a joke really, not least because he is

  gay. “You forget, Robert’s only been gone a short time,” she said, and he nodded, chastened, being widowed after a fashion himself.

  Sometimes she wonders how he’s got on; thirty years he has man-

  aged the press on his own.

  At the bus stop she doesn’t sit down on the bench, preferring