Ask Again, Yes

by Mary Beth Keane

The quiet of the house when she kept to her room was not the peaceful silence of a library, or anywhere near as tranquil. It was, Peter imagined, more like the held-breath interlude between when a button gets pushed and the bomb either detonates or is defused. He could feel his own heartbeat at those times. He could track his blood as it looped through his veins.

He knew it didn’t quite have anything to do with him, but some days, often when he least expected it, he removed his sympathy from her and took it back to wrap around himself.

Kate thought about their wedding day as a conclusion to something, where he thought about it as a beginning. Rising action versus falling action. They were reading different books.

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.

And while he lightened her burden, he felt he’d lightened his, too. It was the truth, what he’d said.