“He never seemed to be able to get enough of it,” she said. “When I remember him that’s the way I remember him—that sad look on his face that meant he was loving. He always wanted his piece and he was lovely—lovely things he’d say to me while he caressed and unbuttoned me. He liked a piece in the morning. Then he’d comb his hair on the left side, button up his britches and go off to a good day’s work in the foundry, so cheerful and cocky. In Toledo he was coming home for his dinner in the middle of the day and he liked a piece then and he couldn’t go to sleep without his piece. He couldn’t sleep. If I woke him up in the middle of the night to tell him I heard burglars downstairs there was no use my talking. The night Mabel Ransome’s house burned down and I stayed up watching the fire until two in the morning he never listened to what I said. When thunderstorms woke him at night or the north wind in winter he’d always wake up in a very loving mood.
“But I didn’t always feel like loving,” she said sadly. “Heartburn or gas would get me down and then I had to be very careful with him. I had to choose me words. Once I refused him without thinking. Once when he commenced to gentle me I spoke roughly to him. Forget about it for a little while Charlie, I says. Helen Sturmer tells me her husband don’t do it but once a month. Why don’t you try to be like him? Well, it was like the end of the world. You should have seed the way his face got dark. It was terrible to behold. The very blood in his veins got dark. I never seed him so crossed in my whole life. Well, he went out of the house then. Come suppertime he isn’t home. I went to bed expecting him to come in but when I wakes up the bed is empty. Four nights I wait for him to come home but he don’t show up. Finally I put this advertisement in the paper. This was when we was living in Albany. Please come home Charlie. That’s all I say. It cost me two-fifty. Well, I put the advertisement in on Friday night and on Saturday morning I hear his key in the lock. Up the stairs he comes all smiles with this big bunch of roses and one idea in his mind. Well it’s only ten o’clock in the morning and my house-work isn’t half done. The breakfast dishes are in the sink and the bed isn’t made. It’s very hard for a woman to be loving before her work is done but even with the dust all over the tables I knew my lot.
“Sometimes it was a hardship for me,” she said. “It kept me from ever broadening my mind. There’s lots of important things he kept me from seeing, like after the war when the parade went right by our windows with Marshal Foch and all. I looked forward to that parade but I never got to see it. He was on top of me when Lindbergh flewed the Atlantic and when that English king, whatever his name was, put down his crown for love and made a speech about it over the radio I never heard a word of it. But when I remember him now that’s the way I remember him—that sad look on his face that meant he was loving. He never seemed to be able to get enough of it and now, God bless the poor man, he’s lying in a cold, cold grave.”
It was not until Saturday that Melissa came down, and, asking her to walk with him after dinner, Moses noticed how she hesitated at the door to the terrace as if she apprehended that the summer night might end her imposture. Then she joined him but she kept a meaningful distance between them. He suggested that they go down through the garden, hoping that the smell of roses and the sound of fountains would prevail, but she continued to keep a protective distance between them although when they left the garden she took a path through some pine woods that he had not seen before and that ended in a plot that turned out to be the animal cemetery. Here were a dozen headstones, overgrown with weeds, and Moses followed Melissa, reading the inscriptions:
Here lie the bones and feathers of an amiable bird,
A cold December twilight saw his fall.
His voice, raised in sweet song, was never heard,
Because the bird was very small.
Here lie the bones of Sylvia Rabbit.
She was sat on by Melissa Scaddon on June 17th
And died of contusions.
Here lie the bones of Theseus the Whippet.
Here lie the bones of Prince the Collie,
He will be missed by One and All.
Here lie the bones of Hannibal.
Here lie the bones of Napoleon
Here lie the bones of Lorna, the kitchen cat.
