Hard Things

21 ELISE JUSKA HARD THINGS L ately George noticed that Vicky talked a lot about the strangeness of time. Things that happened years ago but were still vivid and detailed, things that happened only last month but felt far away. How moving her things into George’s house— nicking her dresser on the doorjamb, deciding whose plates to use and whose to store—felt like yesterday. How at the same time, it felt like they’d lived here forever. George disliked these conversations. They seemed to go nowhere , looking at the phenomenon through this lens or that one, as if it might yield some conclusion. There were no conclusions . Time felt strange; lots of things did. But Vicky liked to talk in abstractions, to analyze things. Once, in the beginning, she said, “Sometimes I kind of wish you said more.” It was the year she was still living in Boston and they were visiting each other on weekends. They had just left the movies in Ellsworth, and it was a forty-minute drive back to George’s house. Longer , in winter. Early March, and the Maine air was brittle with cold. The roads were pitch-black and icy, more dangerous than George let on. He’d been driving in rough weather his whole life; he enjoyed it. But Vicky got nervous about these things. “I mean, I just wonder what you think,” Vicky said. She was hunched forward, holding her knuckles against the vents. George watched the road, high beams splashing over the dark trees and tires jouncing over the potholes. She was saying something about how she believed the main character, but the ending was a stretch. Then she was quiet. A car approached, and George flicked the high beams off. “When I go to the movies, I kind of like to discuss it after,” Vicky said. “But I guess you’re not a discusser.” It would become a familiar feeling, disappointing her. “I guess not,” George said, flicking the beams back on. The car skidded a little, and Vicky pressed the dashboard with one hand. —— colorado review 22 Allison Pearson, Vicky’s college roommate, was coming to visit for the weekend. She lived in New York City and was having problems in her marriage and needed to get away. It wasn’t the first time someone had seen George and Vicky’s life as an escape. And there was something to it, George thought. He would swear, driving back from Boston, he could tell with his eyes closed the minute his truck crossed the state line. The air changed. Some pressure lifted from his chest as he drove up the Maine Turnpike, the rest of the world disappearing behind him like an ice floe cracking off and drifting away. When guests came, George and Vicky could deliver on this image. In the summer, their coastal town came alive with puttering lobster boats and roadside stands selling ice cream and onion rings. People didn’t usually choose to visit in February, but Allison thought it sounded “cozy.” And it was, George agreed, though maintaining it wasn’t easy. The woodstove, for instance, required constant tending—keeping the wood chopped and dry, the kindling replenished, the ash can emptied. With Allison coming, there were matters of comforters and the frigid back bedroom George usually kept closed off with a thick wool blanket to save on heat. Vicky didn’t like the blanket—“I just want this to feel like a house,” she’d murmured when George nailed it to the doorway—but in December, she’d agreed to stretch sheets of thin plastic over all the windows and seal them with her hair dryer. Vicky had gone over the plastic for hours, aiming the dryer like a blowtorch, trying to smooth every wrinkle. She didn’t want it to look like there was plastic there at all. “It’s not possible, honey,” George had said, squeezing her shoulder. “It is here,” she said, pressing her finger to the picture on the front of the box. George was trying his best to keep Vicky happy; he was, technically , the reason she was here. They’d met the August before Some pressure...