Betried

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It was an Indian summer afternoon in mid-October. Sunday afternoon. Francie had gone back to the lab, five miles from the lakeside cabin, but Cudahy, the Administrator, had shooed her out, saying that he was committing enough perjury on the civil-service hours-of-work reports without having her work Sundays, too.

And so Francie Aintrell had climbed back into her ten-year-old sedan and come rattlety-bang over the potholed highways back to the small cabin. She sat on the miniature porch, her back against a wooden upright, fingers laced around one blue-jeaned knee.

Work, she had learned, was one of the anesthetics. Work and time. They all talked about time and what it would do for you. The healing wonder of time. As though each second could be another tiny layer of insulation between you and Bob. And one day, when enough seconds and minutes and years had gone by, you could look in your mirror and see a face old enough to be the mother of Bob, and his face would remain young and unchanged in memory. But she could look in the wavery mirror in the little camp and touch her cheeks with her finger tips, touch the face that he had loved, see the blue eyes he had loved, the black hair. And, thinking of him, her face would become like one of those putty faces children play with. Something would take it and twist it out of shape, force it to despairing tears.

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