Friend of My Youth

of course it wasn’t. He never bought new appliances or new materials when he was
xing up the places he owned. And three years ago last June, at a dinner dance in the
Valhalla Inn, Matilda said to him, “My hot-water heater gave out. I had to replace it.”
They were not dancing at the time. They were sitting at a round table, with some
other people, under a canopy of floating balloons. They were drinking whiskey.
“It shouldn’t have done that,” Morris said.
“Not after you’d put it in new,” said Matilda, smiling. “You know what I think”
He kept looking at her, waiting.
“I think we should have another dance before we have anything more to drink!”
They danced. They had always danced easily together, and often with some special
ourish. But this time Morris felt that Matilda’s body was heavier and stier than it had
been—her responses were tardy, then overdone. It was odd that her body should seem
unwilling when she was smiling and talking to him with such animation, and moving
her head and shoulders with every sign of irtatious charm. This, too, was new—not at
all what he was used to from her. Year after year she had danced with him with a
dreamy pliancy and a serious face, hardly talking at all. Then, after she had had a few
drinks, she would speak to him about her secret concerns. Her concern. Which was
always the same. It was Ron, the Englishman. She hoped to hear from him. She stayed
here, she had come back here, so that he would know where to nd her. She hoped, she
doubted, that he would divorce his wife. He had promised, but she had no faith in him.
She heard from him eventually. He said he was on the move, he would write again. And
he did. He said that he was going to look her up. The letters were posted in Canada,
from dierent, distant cities. Then she didn’t hear. She wondered if he was alive; she
thought of detective agencies. She said she didn’t speak of this to anybody but Morris.
Her love was her affliction, which nobody else was permitted to see.
Morris never oered advice; he never laid a comforting hand on her except as was
proper, in dancing. He knew exactly how he must absorb what she said. He didn’t pity
her, either. He had respect for all the choices she had made.
It was true that the tone had changed before the night at the Valhalla Inn. It had
taken on a tartness, a sarcastic edge, which pained him and didn’t suit her. But this was
the night he felt it all broken—their long complicity, the settled harmony of their
dancing. They were like some other middle-aged couple, pretending to move lightly and
with pleasure, anxious not to let the moment sag. She didn’t mention Ron, and Morris,
of course, did not ask. A thought started forming in his mind that she had seen him
finally. She had seen Ron or heard that he was dead. Seen him, more likely.
“I know how you could pay me back for that heater,” she teased him. “You could put
in a lawn for me! When has that lawn of mine ever been seeded It looks terrible; it’s
riddled with creeping Charlie. I wouldn’t mind having a decent lawn. I’m thinking of
xing up the house. I’d like to put burgundy shutters on it to counter the eect of all
that gray. I’d like a big window in the side. I’m sick of looking out at the nursing home.
Oh, Morris, do you know they’ve cut down your walnut trees! They’ve levelled out the
yard, they’ve fenced off the creek!”
She was wearing a long, rustling peacock-blue dress. Blue stones in silver disks hung