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Chance Encounters

Thirty-fifth high-school reunion, fly-fishing, the 1960 World Series

Sunbeams

The honeymoon is over when he phones that he’ll be late for supper — and she has already left a note that it’s in the refrigerator.

Bill Lawrence

The Thousand-Peso Suit

Still, I love that line by poet Rainer Maria Rilke: “A good marriage is that in which each appoints the other guardian of his solitude.” But my wife is not familiar with Rilke, and solving our difficulties is not a matter of my explaining things to her. I’ve been doing that for three years, in two languages, and neither of us has changed.

The Poplars

I was a conscript, like Caroline before me, drafted shortly after her fourteenth birthday when Mom first came up with the idea for a family band. Caroline and I knew better than to reveal the true circumstances of our participation, though I suspected people sensed the truth. I’d seen a documentary about American POWs in Hanoi who’d blinked Morse-code distress signals to the camera, and I sometimes imagined the audience could read the same message of resistance in our faces.

My Marital Status

I tried to appear strong in the face of Wanda’s weakening condition and, to some extent, my own. I visited her, ran errands for her, and sometimes cooked for her while the earth tilted us into summer and then fall.

Getting Ready

A pregnancy test, a hope chest, a nitrous-oxide machine

My Accidental Jihad

For the next month, nothing will touch my husband’s mouth between sunup and sundown: Not food. Not water. Not my lips. A chart posted on our refrigerator tells him the precise minute when his fast must begin and end each day. I will find him in front of this chart again this evening, staring at his watch, waiting for it to tell him he may eat.

Change Of Heart

A tattoo, a stolen kiss, the Gulf of Tonkin incident