He stayed there on the front stoop a long time, watching the rain fall and the Bear Trap gurgle in the distance. He leaned his head against the porch railing, from time to time pulling out another cigarette and smoking, or grabbing the flask out of his pocket for a nip. Occasionally, a car passed on the highway, slowing for the approach into town, or speeding up on its way out. Otherwise, the day was quiet but for the gentle rain and the chirping of birds in the trees. It was as pleasant as a dream of some idyllic past that had never truly been, but was nice to think of all the same. He realized he felt empty again, but this time it was a good and unfamiliar empty: almost clean.

Chapter 52

Understand your mate. Set about that job as though your life depended on it. Your married life and its happiness do depend on it.

—The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book, 1939

THE MICKELSON HOUSE
502 W. First Street, Pine Rapids
Thursday, August 3, 1950

Yesterday, when JJ had told her his dream of war, Dolly had thought: Byron! Did Byron have such things in his mind that he couldn’t or wouldn’t tell her? Was this why he worked so much, stayed away from her? Why he seemed to insist on such distance between them? It seemed obvious now, but why had she not realized it before? That, as JJ had so bluntly pointed out, maybe the actual house she shared with Byron meant nothing. That, no matter how ideal their physical surroundings, the distance between them would not naturally mend. That some sort of bridge was needed, some sort of reaching out.

“Why don’t you go home to your husband?” JJ had asked her. A valid question!

“If you only knew,” she wanted to tell JJ. “If you only knew what it’s like to be married and feel you’re married to a stranger, or, worse, to someone you’ve only imagined! You imagined him to be something, and then found that he isn’t that, and yet you haven’t found out what he is.”

Not that she would tell JJ any such thing.

Nor would she tell him how much she hated Byron’s favorite chair because it seemed to know the contours of his body so much better than she did, nor how much she resented his T-shirts for the audacious way they clung to him and absorbed the smell of his skin. (Did they not respect boundaries, for heaven’s sake? Did they not appreciate that Byron, of all people, had boundaries?) Nor would she mention how she envied his wristwatch for all the time it got to spend with him, that wristwatch that probably knew Byron the best, since he put it on first thing in the morning and removed it just before bed. Certainly Byron had no secrets from the wristwatch, at least not if it was paying attention.