The Incurables

Classmates

Classmates You suspect the lawn hasn’t been mowed since sometime in the summer; it is full of weeds and intrudes onto the concrete walkway from both sides. The house is in a similar state. Its gray vinyl siding was doubtless once white, and a section of gutter dangles from the roof like an arm over the side of a bed. You drop the knocker, shaped like a dragon or snarling dog, on the wooden door. A moment later, you knock again, three quick strikes. In your free hand, you hold six yellow roses. Presently you hear a whine, the door’s complaint as it swings inward. Standing in front of you is a woman with shoulder-length hair, its black conceding to gray. Her eyebrows, entirely black, are so thin they seem inked on. She is shorter than you imagined, the top of her head no higher than your shoulders. 223 _ Classmates 224 After you introduce yourself, there is a silence, so you remind her of your phone call. She stands fixed in place, staring at you with neither irritation nor curiosity. Time passes, and you feel, as you sometimes have in the last year, like a phantom or dream figure, a shade shy of invisible. You are about to speak again when she says, “Come in.” She accepts your roses without comment and leads you into the living room, painted baby blue. Against the near wall is a white couch, like a cloud, with matching armchairs on either side. Against the far wall is a stand-up piano, the dust on its keys exposed in the yellow-gray afternoon light. You expect to see pictures on the wall or on the mantel above the fireplace or on top of the piano. In their absence, you recall the only picture of your classmate you have ever seen—the photo at the back of his lone book, in which he appears to have gained thirty pounds since your graduation. But you didn’t know him in college; he might have been overweight all of his life. In the same fifteen years, you have gained twenty-two pounds. The weight hasn’t altered your face, which preserves its hard angles; instead, it has settled around your belly, a beer gut on someone who drinks wine. Your classmate’s wife has yet to invite you to sit down. You wonder if she is hoping you will leave. But you’ve driven five hundred miles to be here. At last: “Sit down.” In a softer voice: “Please.” You sit in one of the armchairs. After placing the roses on the coffee table in front of the couch, she sits in the other. “I’m sorry,” she says, “I didn’t ask if you wanted anything to drink.” “I’m fine,” you say. “Thank you.” “Oh,” she says. She has pulled herself to the front of her armchair. “Are you sure? All right.” She slides back. You wonder if she has friends or family to help her. She must. But it has been two months since her husband’s death, and Classmates 225 they probably have stopped calling and visiting as frequently. She is moving in a couple of weeks—she told you this on the phone— and doubtless she will feel better when she does. “I’ve come because . . .” What you said to her during your brief phone conversation and repeated at her front door was: I’d like to write a story about your husband for the alumni magazine. “You told me why you’re here,” she says. She adds, “Does anyone ever read the alumni magazine? Don and I used to stack them in a closet, saying we’d get to them when hell sold ice cream.” You smile at her joke; she doesn’t. “I’m sorry never to have known either of you when we were in college,” you say. “Big school,” she says. “Did you meet in a class?” “We met in a bathroom. In his sophomore year, he had a job cleaning dorm rooms. He was cleaning the bathroom in mine when I walked in.” Her smile, though slight, is genuine. “We talked until dark. I don’t think he ever finished cleaning the bathroom.” “It was love at first sight,” you say, although you are thinking of the day you met your wife. “I don’t know,” she says. “I can talk to anyone for hours.” She looks at you. “It’s probably hard for...