Coe Review

and he would never see her again. He slid his checks through a window, to
a teller named DONNA. Donna with her hair bleached blonde, the dark
roots showing, her face thin and pinched, the skin sallow. Her sweater was
too large, and there was something perfunctory about the way she addressed
Eugene. He wanted to ask where Norma was, but he felt stifled. He couldn't
make the words come out.
Or maybe she was dead, he thought. He looked at the receipt in his hand.
Lost not only to him but to the world. Things like that did happen. A car
crash, a murder, a fire, an accident, tumbling out of her fifth floor apartment
when she leaned too far trying to adjust the screen. She fell asleep in the
bathtub and drowned. Or she had a sudden seizure—she'd never had one
before—and there was no one around to help. Eugene thought about all the
bizarre deaths he had ever read about in the newspaper. A friend kept exotic
pets, and one got loose from its cage, and Norma was bit on the ankle by a
cobra. Or she went to the drugstore to fill a prescription and the pharmacist
handed her the wrong combination of medicines, a mistake that twisted her
insides into knots. No one said life was forever. There were no guarantees,
not even something so simple as that another day would follow the last.
He stood in the doorway until a woman bumped past him. Now I'm in
the way, he thought, interfering with the eternal flow. The week was all but
over. Three of the windows had tellers in them and three did not, and Norma
was nowhere to be seen. Or maybe it was only something like appendicitis,
he mused, consoling himself again, soothing his nerves, forcing the panic
down—and she was in the hospital recuperating. If that was the case he
ought to think about picking up some flowers, which he could slide through
the slot along with his checks. Certainly she would be back on Monday,
hardly the worse for wear.
But it was Sharon who got the flowers, not Norma. Eugene put together
a bouquet himself, picking out one flower here and one there. He mingled
colors, pulling the flowers from the refrigerated case as well as from the
display by the counter. Orange and pink and white and violet, some buds
still new and tight, some in full bloom. He stopped at the florist's on the
way home from work. He had not been kind to his wife, he thought. She
deserved better—what had happened was through no fault of hers. It was
all Eugene—he had gotten distracted. He paid her no mind. He couldn't
remember when it started, though he knew it was months.
Sharon was upstairs, so Eugene arranged the bouquet in a vase and set
the vase on the table. In the center, sticking above the rest, was a daffodil,
bright yellow, head drooping forward.
Eugene slipped off his jacket. The country club was finished, at least
12 Roman Norma of the Manor