Ask Again, Yes

by Mary Beth Keane

“I’m very sorry about all this,” Anne said, and when Francis glanced at her, she seemed sorry. Her face was ashen and she looked exhausted, brokenhearted. Then she reached under the couch cushion next to her and, moving faster than Francis thought possible, removed a gun, pointed,

and fired.

One of the consulting neurosurgeons told him that he’d once put his finger in the place thoughts are made, and Francis wondered how a person empties the dishwasher after that, how he balances his checkbook and does his laundry.

“The thing is, Peter, grown-ups don’t know what they’re doing any better than kids do. That’s the truth.”

The night she shot Francis Gleeson, she hadn’t been feeling well for a long time, but she only realized that later. For months, conversations were drowned out by static, and she found herself having to speak louder, listen harder. She lost track of what people were saying. She lost track of what she was saying and sometimes heard herself speaking as if from across a room. Physical movements were becoming more and more difficult, like trying to swim through a vat of wet cement. But these were symptoms she only noticed after the static quieted, after the cement drained away. “It’s mostly like that for everyone,” Dr. Abbasi said. Everyone like her, he meant. It was impossible to have sufficient detachment at the most dangerous times. This was his way of saying she had to forgive herself.

“You think a person comes out of a house like that undamaged? You don’t see it now, Kate, but it’s there. I promise you. Marriage is long. All the seams get tested.” “Well, you would know, right?” Kate said, Francis gave her a warning look. She looked right back. “Why him?” “Because I love him.” “Love isn’t enough. Not even close.” “It is for me. Him, too.” Francis smiled but there was no light in it. “You don’t have the first clue what you’re talking about.”

They’d both learned that a memory is a fact that’s been dyed and trimmed and rinsed so many times that it comes out looking almost unrecognizable to anyone else who was in that room, anyone else who was standing on the grass beneath that telephone pole.

“Things are better now, they feel like they’re getting better—don’t they? But there might be more coming. This might be the least of it. Have you thought about that? We knew nothing about what it meant to grow up, to be partners, parents, all of it. Nothing. And maybe we still don’t. Would you have said yes back then if you’d known?”