Buckeye

by Patrick Ryan

“We’re each meant for a special thing,” the boy said, and when Cal asked what his special thing was, the boy shrugged and said the two of them would have to wait to find out.

“Is the future knowable? Will our older selves be anything like our younger selves thought we would be? We can only find out by writing it down and then putting it out of our minds and letting life take its course. The unraveling of time should be mysterious, don’t you think?”

It was a solid two-story house, plum-colored, with a gabled roof, white gingerbread trim, and wagon-wheel brackets framing the entryway. The backyard was fenced in and had a sycamore and a pair of white birches; the front was planted with hostas and had a young buckeye tree growing in the middle of the yard, just ten feet tall, its autumn leaves bright pumpkin-orange.

Time was like a rock bed with a lot of layers, she said, then took a moment to find the word she wanted: strata. Even the most unbearable things became fossils, after a while.

“You have to love him, and you have to let him love you back. But you don’t have to care about every dumb thing he says, because I can guarantee you, tomorrow he’s going to say something dumber.”

He says I only know how to give bear hugs, and I want to say, ‘That’s because I’m trying to squeeze the stupid out of you, honey!’ ”

“You want me to lie to her.” Roman’s eyes dollied forward under his brow. “If it means living in peace? Absolutely. That’s one of the reasons we have lies.”

The world was hard enough on women with average looks, like her; she could only imagine how it must come down on the beauties.

People were much nicer when you had a little money. It was like a secret handshake that gained you admission to a friendlier world. When she agreed to buy three lipsticks instead of two, the woman behind the counter gave her the warmest smile she’d ever received from a stranger.

That had been part of its appeal: they were like an ice-cream cone you’d be crazy to let melt.

He’d started talking about names. Thomas, he said. Thomas Aquinas. He quoted: The things that we love tell us what we are.

The early 1950s were a good time to be ambitious and privileged in America. Business boomed big for big businesses already booming, and it boomed medium for smaller businesses hoping to boom, and for those who knew no boom at all and had no chance of experiencing one, well, that’s what the American Dream was for.

When they’d emptied all their pockets and Skip thought they were out of nuts, Tom pointed to his socks, which were bulging with them. Skip thought that was one of the funniest things he’d ever seen. He called Tom Buckeye from that day on.

“So you slept together while she thought I was alive, and stopped while she thought I was dead?”

Forgiveness wasn’t so great if you were the forgiver, Becky discovered. Forgiveness was supposed to be the high road, but it was low and bumpy—and long.

maybe Cal’s special thing was his determination, after taking a wrecking ball to his life, to put it back together.

This is why old people seem distant and distracted, he thought. We aren’t living in the past; the past is living in us. And it’s talking. We get old to be able to recalibrate everything we thought was going to be important. We get old just to hear it. It says, the days, the days, the days.