Crying: that cheap trick women use to put us in the wrong. I cannot stand it, and I thought highly of my wife for the fact that she stopped crying soon after we were married, because she understood that the crying game wasn’t fair, that it repulsed me, that I refused to play it. I can say with pride that my children didn’t cry either; when my eldest was eight, he broke his arm and ran home from the playground, and rode with my wife and I to the hospital, without shedding one tear.

But how was I supposed to explain to Irene that her pain wasn’t my responsibility; that I was an inappropriate recipient of her tears? She kept crying and held onto my hand so that I couldn’t just get up and go. Finally, I couldn’t stand her crying, her face buried in the pillow, her shaking shoulders, or the way I was sitting awkwardly beside her, and I took her in my arms and rocked her, and made soothing sounds until she fell asleep.

When she woke up in my arms, she looked at me kindly, even happily, and smiled and said: “Thank you.” I didn’t understand what she was thanking me for, but I didn’t want to question something that seemed to please her, so I smiled back.

10

Then the harvest began in the fields of the Midwest. Irene had once seen pictures of combine harvesters, rolling in unison over wheat fields, and asked: “Where are the combine harvesters?” In her memory, flags flew from the machines, and the operators, male and female, laughed with joy – more Soviet propaganda than American reality, but a couple of flags on the combine couldn’t hurt, and we couldn’t see the faces of the drivers. So on we drove. For hours on end combines would pop into view, sometimes in a row, though more often just one monster machine. They all flew flags.

We slept in motels. The rooms were always big, with two beds, and a TV screwed to the wall near the ceiling. There was a soda machine with Coke and Sprite and ice cubes in the lobby, and before we went to sleep we would lie in bed watching TV, drinking the beer and eating the chips we’d bought in the last town.

“I was worried about what awaited us in San Francisco and how we would get by there. I wanted to talk about it, but you didn’t want to plan, you wanted to take things as they came. I think you thought I was petty. Actually, why did you choose a pedantic husband?”

She looked at me that way again.

“Not that you should think I’m jealous. I’m simply interested why you did what you did. Too many questions already? You just said I should ask more questions.”