Robert Butler - Perfume River

She obviously hasn’t noticed the phenomenon.

“A start-ups tradition,” he says.

“Ah,” she says.

She grows still, her coat over her arm, her hat in her hand. She is staring at him but he has no sense that she’s seeing him. She’s considering something, he senses.

Becca no doubt has confided in her. Linda wants to speak of it but has probably made a vow not to. Linda takes that sort of pact seriously.

“You’ve got a tale to tell,” he says.

She makes a small sound, deep in her throat. Not quite a sound of assent. More meditative.

Jimmy waits for Linda to figure out what she’s free to reveal.

Then she says, “When will they be back?”

He’s thinking of their friends splitting up and hears this wrong. His puzzlement must be showing. Linda clarifies. “Your women.”

“My women …” he says, drawing out the phrase to add an unspoken as you oddly insist on calling them , “… usually take an hour and a half or a little longer on stew day. They make it up at the end of the afternoon.”

“And they left recently?”

“Twenty minutes perhaps.”

Linda nods and lays her coat and hat on the near edge of Jimmy’s worktable, and she says, “Then let’s go sit on the couch together for a few minutes.”

“All right,” Jimmy says.

He follows her to the south end of the barn and into the break room next to their office.

“The coffee’s fresh,” he says.

“I’m good,” she says, and she heads for the flannel chesterfield. He follows her.

She arranges herself sideways at one end, her legs drawn up beneath her. A long story to come.

Jimmy sits in the middle of the couch, within reaching distance, holding distance if need be. He turns toward her and waits.

She is still working something out in her mind. Then she says, “They’re finished, Becca and Paul. Forever and for the best.”

“I’m sorry,” Jimmy says.

“No,” Linda says. “It is for the best. For everyone concerned.”

A recent image of the couple flickers into Jimmy’s head: a restaurant in Toronto, the two of them side by side on the bench seats, Paul’s pugilist jaw and horn-rimmed reader’s eyes, Becca’s ballerina bun and Bardot pout. They are nearly two decades younger than Jimmy and Linda but the four of them are joined together by New Democratic Party politics, halibut fishing on Hudson Bay, and a couples’ chemistry that synthesizes compassion and snark.

Before Jimmy can consider this image, it flickers out again with Linda reaching into his lap and lifting his hand toward her. She leans to it and kisses him on the very spot where a wedding ring would be if they were to wear them.

“My darling,” she says as she replaces the hand in his lap.

But he instantly senses what is happening.

“I need to go away for a week or two,” she says.

If he objectively considers this, there is the possibility that she will, as Becca’s best friend, simply stay with her or go away with her to help her through the first wave of trauma over the dissolution of her marriage. Paul is once divorced; Becca has never been.

But Jimmy understands. Linda is invoking the agreement that allowed the two of them to officially wed. A quarter of a century ago it was what they both wanted, equally, philosophically. It was how they’d sorted out the world together — before marriage and after — with regard to equality and rights and interpersonal power and the nature of love. All these things freely given and received and shared.

Jimmy has always been content with this.

He has wanted it.

But now in the center of his head he feels a hot dilation, like the frame of a Saturday movie serial sticking in the projector and its image splitting and searing and burning through.

“I’ll be back soon, my sweet Jimmy,” she says.

He does not say anything.

This declaration is clearer than is their custom.

She keeps her eyes on his. Nothing intense in her gaze. This is how it has always been for them. They have always treated each other’s lacunae with loving tact. It is what they want.

The conversation is meant to stop here.

They will hold hands. They might kiss. They might even make love now, here on the chesterfield, to assert their abiding connection.

But the burning is done in Jimmy’s head and there is only a blank screen. A tabula rasa. And from it he asks, “Were you the reason for the breakup?”

Minutely — but minutely is significant for Linda, Jimmy knows — minutely she flinches. Then she composes herself once more.

She takes his hand again. “They’ve never meant as much to you as to me,” she says. “You’re not worried about the breakup.”

She’s right about that. Nor is it the issue. But he does not say so.

“Nothing has changed between you and me,” she says, squeezing his hand gently.

Then he hears himself ask another question. “Which of them is it?” He realizes only in the asking that he does not know, could not guess.

She lets go of his hand, but her voice remains gentle: “I think the way we’ve always handled these things is best, don’t you?”

Now he asks, “Does the other one know?” But obviously not. Otherwise none of this would now be a surprise to him. He would surely have heard from the excluded one.

Linda straightens before him, taking a deep breath. Her eyes do not narrow or harden or flare, as they can do when he and she argue. If anything, they soften for him. He feels a twist of admiration over this. Then a tighter twist, of tenderness. And then a sudden chest-clamping regret.

She says, “Are we wrong, my darling? Surely not. We have always been so smart about this. Love on this earth is not a singularity. It is a profusion. As simple as a kind word at a checkout counter. As complex as you and I. But love always has boundaries. By the parts of us — mind, body, heart — that are involved, or not involved. And to what degree. And for how long. I feel certain this is a partial thing now before me and a brief thing. Our love for each other — yours and mine — is the bedrock for any other experience in this fleeting gift of my life. It’s the same for you, isn’t it? We’ve said so to each other. Often. Aren’t we grateful for that?”

And at this she lifts her hand and touches his cheek and says, “Whichever of us dies first, I want our lips to touch in that moment.”

She pauses, and she says, “I love you, Jimmy.”

She waits, her fingertips lingering on him.

He can think of nothing to say.

He is not moving.

He can’t imagine what’s showing on his face.

She withdraws her hand.

She shifts her legs, squares her shoulders to him a bit more.

She says, “Why don’t you spend a couple of weeks with that girl Heather. She would like nothing better, I’m sure.”

He still can find no words.

She says, “Maybe she’ll help you stop worrying about what’s next.”

Just before noon Robert answers the foyer phone. As he expects, it’s his mother. “Darling, he’s off the morphine drip and starting to wake up.”

“I’ll be there within the hour.”

Peggy rightly takes these as his last words and jumps in. “Before you hang up. I’m out in the hallway. I need to ask. Did you try?”

“Jimmy?”

“Of course Jimmy.”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“He’s not coming.”

Robert hopes that will be it.

He waits for her.

She waits for him.

Not for long. “Why are you doing this to me?” she says. “What did he say?”

“Do you really want details?”

“Yes.”

“There aren’t many. We didn’t instantly turn into chums.” Robert hesitates only very slightly before the lie: “I don’t recall the exact words.” He recalls them quite clearly. “But it amounts to this: Nothing has changed. We all need to let him go.”