Something You Never Forget

by WILLIAM GEORGE

IT WAS cold and the hills behind the city were all autumn and alone on the streets and we walked to the house along a hill at night. The summit was dark and the slope below was lamp-lighted at the street crossings. We were together and alone and Jan was ready to cry. I held her hand and she smiled. She controlled herself very well walking on the hill in the cold in the fall.

By the time we arrived at the house I felt pretty bad. I opened the door and she went in first. She started to cry before I could say anything. I would have said something even then but it would have been awful. I simply waited until all at once she would not cry any more.

In the bedroom was a small radio. I pushed open the portal curtains and stepped in and turned the radio on. The radio warmed and music came on and then I did not want it. I would not hear that now. She was crying and all the slow-motion in the world seemed to be far away rushing, and I remembered our history faster and faster as the slow stuff went out of sight.

We invented the whole thing one night in the ghostly equipment of the moon. Jan looked beautiful, but because we had grown up together I could only guess she was really that beautiful. The place was very familiar on a hill under some pine trees outside of town. We had always come there and it was there we composed a world I had heard about vaguely. I told her how I wanted to be large in that world and she said, you don’t really have to, you know, and I said I must, and she said I’ll go with you — and she did. We left the town and the hill and the ghostly equipment of the moon.

Soon I went away to the war. I never had a chance, you see. She went home and I think maybe something got her. I mean, something got everyone. Everybody got whatever it was. I don’t know what it was, but God, it hurt them terribly. When the fighting was over we all knew it was different in the world somewhere. But then it was different in the next room too because she called me.

“Yes,” I said.

“I’m through with this,” she said.

“All right.”

I moved into where she was looking out the window with her back to me.

“It doesn’t do any good,” she said.

“Yes it does.”

“I cry too much.”

“It does some good, though.”

“Darling. Please don’t start that now.”

She turned around and put her arms around me. She had light dark hair and her skin against my face was wet and cold.

“Cry some more,” I told her.

“Not now, darling.”

“You may as well get rid of it.”

“No. I’m not mad.”

“I know it. Go ahead. Cry again.”

“Nonsense,” she said. She kissed me and I could see through the window where a sky across the valley held no distance in it. This morning the wind exploded off the mountains and now the clouds had slipped down and the street lamps shine white and small and you imagine it is raining very lightly and there are the people moving under the rain and some of them hold themselves near a street light to have a cigarette and wait for a feeling to happen. How I felt was in the rain just then.

“Go ahead,” I said.

“Now?” she asked.

“Yes. Right now.”

She was holding on and her shoulders shook and I held her tighter and she was sobbing hard and quietly and I held on to myself too. She did not continue it long this time.

“That’s it,” she said. “I’m absolutely finished.”

“You’re sure?”

“I am. Really, Mike.”

She wiped her eyes and glanced out the window.

“Jan?”

“Yes, darling.”

“It helps?”

“I feel fine.”

“It does, doesn’t it?”

“Oh, Mike, I have to sometimes.”

She was really finished crying now. Her little perfect body lengthened some against me and all the slow-motion soared up closer and floated, waiting. I knew she was trying to refill everything with how much we were to one another and she said: —

“Honestly, Mike, I get away with the worst things.”

I kept still.

“Don’t you hate it, Mike?”

“No,” I said.

“Mike. Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yes you do. You must.”

“Why must I?”

“You do though, darling.”

“Maybe.”

“I know you must.”

“All right.”

I had no space-like concrete knowledge to enable me to say exactly why I did not hate it. Which was because maybe it was warm and natural and sort of like the soul returning backwards. And I said: —

“You see, Jan, well, it is funny. I don’t mind at all. You see, I dream sometimes it is your way of praying.”

2

SHE certainly felt the quiet then. For the longest time we stood still without any talking. It was quiet in the room and it must have been enormously quiet outside. Honestly, it must have been enormous. And occurring to me was a reminder that tonight was almost like other quiet times in the war when I used to stand suddenly very still as I felt an emotion and then slowly and deliberately made a shape for it in my mind.

Usually those shapes I made had plenty of lamplighted hills and fall weather in them. Sometimes they were gray from a fog we had flown through back in home-country and sometimes dozens of cold white sunsets spread beyond a single plateau and they were the best companions. They took up the empty places and passed away cool and came back exactly on a signal I never really understood. But it was a little like tonight. You take the breathing down inside and neither desire any end to it nor a beginning again.

A car went by on the side street on the hill and a line of lights were in the valley.

“Shall we go to bed?” I said.

“Shall we?”

“Yes.”

We undressed and in the bed then she had something to talk about.

“Mike,” she said, “this is being home, isn’t it?”

“I’m sure of it,” I said.

“Thank you, darling.”

“Yes. It’s being in bed with you.”

“Mike. That wasn’t nice.”

“Yes it is.”

“I feel a little serious, darling. Don’t joke me.”

“You feel so serious.” I had my arms around her and she felt so serious. I repeated, “ You feel so very serious.”

She slapped my face and we laughed together and I held her so she could not hit me another one and the other seriousness was there before we could laugh again.

“But we’re happy,” I said. “What would I do there?”

“We might try.”

“No,” I said, “ I won’t have it. I won’t go home.”

“It’s nice this time of year,” she said lightly. “All along the street they are burning leaves and visiting one another beside fires.”

“I wish you hadn’t gone home. What ever happened back there?” An old question by now.

She did not answer.

“When we were away, what happened?” I said bitterly. “Everyone acts hurt. What the hell are they so hurt about? They act like they had done the fighting.” That was the truth all right. Everyone at home acted like they had been kicked in the stomach and they tried to smile through that sick feeling. It did not occur to me then they probably felt sorry for me, or perhaps they were sorry for her.

“Aren’t you happy?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“We’re doing all right. We’ll be rich yet.”

“Don’t blame anything on the town, darling. It’s still a nice town.”

“No, it isn’t,” I said. “It’s impossible. Nothing is there for anyone. There isn’t anything for a young man.”

“I don’t really want to go back,” she said. “I thought perhaps it meant something to you. Can’t we simply not go back and not hate it?”

“It means nothing.”

“Mike. You shouldn’t hate it so.”

“Somewhere I hate it.”

“You shouldn’t,” she said. “I wish you didn’t hate it.”

“I don’t want to hear about it.” She knew I was not being cruel. She was a very wise woman, and any woman understands cruelty and the rules it is used with.

“We’ll not discuss it any more,” I said. “We do better not talking.”

“And you shouldn’t hate it.”

“Yes. I shouldn’t hate anything.”

“Mike, am I scolding?”

“Let’s call it praying again.”

“I think we’d better say good night,” she said. “I don’t want to fight.”

“I’m sorry, Jan. I didn’t mean that.”

“I know it.”

After that we lay together and gradually she was sleeping and I passed the night through my brains and brought her back and heard her crying silently and I felt it silently.

She had cried, and, of course, I had been right. It was her way of praying. It was all that and all the hill lamp-lighted below the house and the walk home at night knowing someone was going to cry tonight. And it was easier this way. She did not have to cry in her sleep any more. Earlier in our marriage she had cried quite often in her sleep and after she told me about missing it all only when sleeping, I would wake her up and she lost her fear of waking and missing anything. Then she cried just once in a while as she had this evening.

Soon I got tired thinking. That was something else I would not listen to right now. I would listen to a prayer. I said a prayer they told me always frightens away the goblins. “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep; if I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.”

The last thing I remember is I missed her and I wanted to go to sleep.