Where I'm Calling From

for the first time in my life I felt at a loss for words. Then I took heart and said to my wife, “The last time you wore that hat, you wore a veil with it and I held your arm. You were in mourning for your mother. And you wore a dark dress, not the dress you’re wearing tonight. But those are the same high heels, I remember. Don’t leave me like this,” I said. “I don’t know what I’ll do.”
    “I have to,” she said. “It’s all in the letter—everything’s spelled out in the letter. The rest is in the area of—I don’t know. Mystery or speculation, I guess. In any case, there’s nothing in the letter you don’t already know.” Then she turned to Frank and said, “Let’s go, Frank. I can call you Frank, can’t I?”
    “Call him anything you want,” the deputy said, “long as you call him in time for supper.” He laughed again—a big, hearty laugh.
    “Right,” Frank said. “Sure you can. Well, okay. Let’s go, then.” He took the suitcase from my wife and went over to his pickup and put the suitcase into the cab. Then he stood by the door on the passenger’s side, holding it open.
    “I’ll write after I’m settled,” my wife said. “I think I will, anyway. But first things first. We’ll have to see.”
    “Now you’re talking,” the deputy said. “Keep all lines of communication open. Good luck, pardee,” the deputy said to me. Then he went over to his car and got in.
    The pickup made a wide, slow turn with the trailer across the lawn. One of the horses whinnied. The last image I have of my wife was when a match flared in the cab of the pickup, and I saw her lean over with a cigarette to accept the light the rancher was offering. Her hands were cupped around the hand that held the match. The deputy waited until the pickup and trailer had gone past him and then he swung his car around, slipping in the wet grass until he found purchase on the driveway, throwing gravel from under his tires. As he headed for the road, he tooted his horn. Tooted. Historians should use more words like “tooted” or “beeped” or “blasted”—especially at serious moments such as after a massacre or when an awful occurrence has cast a pall on the future of an entire nation. That’s when a word like “tooted” is necessary, is gold in a brass age.
    I’d like to say it was at this moment, as I stood in the fog watching her drive off, that I remembered a black-and-white photograph of my wife holding her wedding bouquet. She was eighteen years old—a mere girl, her mother had shouted at me only a month before the wedding. A few minutes before the photo, she’d got married. She’s smiling. She’s just finished, or is just about to begin, laughing. In either case, her mouth is open in amazed happiness as she looks into the camera. She is three months pregnant, though the camera doesn’t show that, of course. But what if she is pregnant? So what? Wasn’t everybody pregnant in those days? She’s happy, in any case. I was happy, too—I know I was. We were both happy.
    I’m not in that particular picture, but I was close—only a few steps away, as I remember, shaking hands with someone offering me good wishes. My wife knew Latin and German and chemistry and physics and history and Shakespeare and all those other things they teach you in private school. She knew how to properly hold a teacup. She also knew how to cook and to make love. She was a prize.
    But I found this photograph, along with several others, a few days after the horse business, when I was going through my wife’s belongings, trying to see what I could throw out and what I should keep. I was packing to move, and I looked at the photograph for a minute and then I threw it away. I was ruthless. I told myself I didn’t care. Why should I care? If I know anything—and I do—if I know the slightest thing about human nature, I know she won’t be able to live without me. She’ll come back to me. And soon. Let it be soon.
    No, I don’t know anything about anything, and I never did. She’s gone for good. She is. I can feel it.
    Gone and never coming back. Period. Not ever. I won’t see her again, unless we run into each other on the street somewhere.
    There’s still the question of the handwriting. That’s a bewilderment. But the handwriting business isn’t the important thing, of course. How could it be after the consequences of the letter? Not the letter itself but the things I can’t forget that were in the