Anne Tyler - The Amateur Marriage

“Isn’t that the truth!” she said.

“It wasn’t so hard on me personally, but I know Mattie was disappointed. She just doted on her nephews. Doted.”

“And do her nephews live nearby, so they can give you some company now?”

“Oh, no.”

She waited.

“Well, I have a son and two daughters, myself,” she offered finally.

“Is that a fact!” He pulled into a parking lot, beside a restaurant with a neon crab above the door. “Daughters are what Mattie would have liked, I know,” he said. “She believed that daughters would stick by you more than sons.”

“Did she really,” Pauline said. She considered debating the point, but she decided to wait for some other topic on which he was better informed.

The restaurant was spookily, unnaturally quiet — not even any canned music — and so dark that the hostess had to lead them to their table with a flashlight. They passed only a few other diners, some of them sitting alone, most nursing cocktails garnished with maraschino cherries or slices of fruit. An old people’s restaurant, then. Pauline was familiar with those. This would be its busiest time — five till six-thirty or so. She settled comfortably onto the banquette and accepted an enormous laminated menu. The table was made of some rough, dark wood and laid with paper place mats. A candle shaded by a little tin hat flickered in the middle. She tilted the hat to shed light on what the menu offered. Caesar salad, crab cakes, strip steak, surf ‘n’ turf… She smiled across at Dun. “Isn’t this nice!” she told him. She spoke barely above a whisper, but even so her voice was the loudest sound in the room.

“You think you can find something you’re able to eat?” Dun asked.

“Why, yes.”

“Mattie, you know, she couldn’t eat seafood. It seemed like such a waste, moving to the East Coast and then not able to take advantage of that good fresh crab and fish. But she had all these digestive troubles. She did enjoy the strip steak, though. You might want to order that.”

“No, I think I’ll have the crab cake,” Pauline said firmly.

“And to drink?” a waitress asked, standing over them with a pad and pencil.

Pauline hadn’t realized she was actually placing an order. She had counted on a little slower tempo. “Well, um… a glass of white wine?” she said. She looked at Dun to see if he would suggest they get a bottle, and when he didn’t, she told the waitress, “The house brand will be fine.”

“Just tomato juice for me,” Dun said.

Pauline said, “Oh. Are you not having a cocktail?”

“Puts me right to sleep,” Dun said. “But you go ahead; don’t mind me. And the strip steak,” he told the waitress, “well done, with fries and the salad, French dressing.”

“What vegetables for you, hon?” the waitress asked Pauline. She was still a very young girl, gawky and ponytailed, but already she had that maternal, waitressy tone of voice.

Pauline said, “Oh…” She peered again at the menu. “Coleslaw? And the string beans?”

She waited till the girl was out of earshot before she said, “I didn’t have to have wine. I could just as well have had juice.”

“Oh, now, I want you to enjoy yourself,” Dun told her. “And what I said earlier about the desserts: I hope you won’t hold back from ordering one just because it’s not Wednesday. Why, I plan to get one! Half-price or not! Make the most of life while you’re able, I always say!”

“Let’s just see whether I have the space for it,” Pauline told him.

“Oftentimes, you know what we’d do? Mattie and I? We’d splurge and get a third dessert and split it. What Mattie always said was, it wasn’t like we were paying for three. On Wednesday nights, that is. But we could even do that tonight! It’s a special occasion!”

Pauline looked directly into his eyes and said, “It is an occasion, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sirree,” he said.

“It’s our first time going out together, just the two of us alone.”

His gaze slid toward the waitress, who was approaching with their drinks. He watched intently as Pauline’s chunky wineglass was set in front of her. He watched as his little tumbler of tomato juice arrived, a tree of celery jutting out of it at a slant.

“Cheers,” Pauline said, lifting her glass.

“Yes, cheers,” he said.

They sipped and set their drinks down.

“You know what I like to ask people?” Pauline said. She leaned toward him confidingly, the fingers of one hand curled around her wineglass stem. (She was good at this. She had to be. Other women — long-married and taking too much for granted — could afford to sit back passively and let a conversation drift, but Pauline had had to learn to be entertaining and thought-provoking.) “It’s a little sort of personality test,” she said, “when I’m trying to get to know somebody. I ask about their house dream.”

“Their dream house?”

“No, their… See, I believe that almost everyone dreams now and then about the house they’re living in. They dream that one day they climb a set of stairs they hadn’t noticed before or open a door that wasn’t there before and, presto! They find a whole new room! An undiscovered room that they never knew existed! Have you ever dreamed that dream?”

“Well,” Dun said, “it does sound kind of familiar, now that you bring it up.”

“And here’s what I’ve observed: half of the people think, Isn’t this wonderful! Someplace new to explore! And the other half thinks, Just what I need: another maintenance problem. This room has not been tended in years and now I can see daylight through the ceiling.”

Dun knotted his forehead.

“Which do you say?” Pauline asked him.

“Oh, why…”

“Would you look at that room as a gift, or a burden? Because I feel it’s very revealing, don’t you?”

The waitress set their plates in front of them. “Anything else I can get you?” she asked.

“Not a thing,” Dun said. “Unless you, Pauline…”

“No, thanks,” she said. “Don’t worry; there’s not a right or wrong answer. It’s just a… symbol, you know? A symbol of which style of person you are.”

“Actually,” Dun said, “I’m not sure I’ve had that dream after all.”

Pauline said, “Oh.”

“But it’s an interesting question.”

He cut into his steak and examined it. Helpfully, Pauline tilted the candle shade to send him better light. “Me,” she said, “I get this sense of possibility. A brand-new room! A new adventure! But my husband, on the other hand… His version of the dream was, he discovered a second story when, as you know, our house is a ranch house, and the floor was puddled with water and snakes were swimming around in it.”

“How could that have happened, though?” Dun asked her.

“What? Well, it was only a dream.”

“Was your loss a very recent loss?”

“My…?”

“Your husband. When was it he passed?”

“He didn’t. We’re divorced,” Pauline said.

“Oh, I hadn’t realized.”

“We parted ways thirteen years ago,” Pauline said.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Dun told her.

“Don’t be sorry! I’m over it!” She took a bite of her crab cake. Her words seemed to hang in the air a moment; she heard a ring of bravado that she hadn’t intended. “It was all very friendly and civilized,” she said, softening her voice. “No long-drawn-out court battles or anything like that.”

“Well, still,” Dun said, “I can guess it must have been painful. I don’t know what I’d have done if Mattie’d asked me for a divorce! Would you believe she and I never had a serious quarrel? I don’t mean we didn’t disagree — she’d want the thermostat higher and I’d be sweating; she’d want to go to some shindig and I’d prefer to sit home. But we never what you’d call fought; we never regretted we were married to each other. I consider myself lucky that way. I feel I’ve been very fortunate.”