The Last Ballad(72)

“Katherine, I said no such thing. You heard wrong.” His hand came down lightly on her bare shoulder. She flinched at his touch, as if his skin had become a dangerous thing. He cleared his throat, lifted his hand away from her.

“It was your voice.”

“I said no such thing.”

“Who said it?”

“I don’t even know what you’re talking about.” She heard him pulling at his tie.

“And then what you said to Claire tonight, during your speech, about us having only one child.”

Richard stopped moving. She could hear his breathing.

“Katherine,” he said, his voice a whisper, “I didn’t mean it that way. She’s never known. We’ve never told her. What was I supposed to say?”

“It made me think,” she said, but she stopped. Words tossed themselves through her mind; she picked up as many as she could and looked at them closely, then she set them back down and looked for others. “It’s just when you said that about the woman at Loray—”

“I told you,” Richard said, his voice rising, “I didn’t say that.” He squeezed past her and disappeared into the closet. The light came on inside. She listened as he yanked at his tie again as if he struggled to remove it.

“When I heard what you said about that poor woman, and then I heard what you said to Claire, it made me wonder if you thought that of me. If you thought that we lost the baby because I couldn’t care for him. If he was better off.”

“No, Katherine,” Richard said from inside the closet. “Of course not. Of course I don’t think that. This whole thing has been taken out of context. This whole evening—” But he didn’t finish.

The song ended, and without looking at the phonograph, Katherine lifted the needle and the song began again.

Here is a flower within my heart

Daisy, Daisy

Planted one day by a glancing dart

Planted by Daisy Bell.



Richard reappeared from the closet wearing only his undershirt and shorts. He caught Katherine looking at him, at his body.

“You’ve changed, Richard.”

He looked down at himself, stared at his belly beneath the shirt. “I’ve gotten old, Kate. Everyone changes.”

“That’s not what I mean,” she said. “I never notice your aging, but I’ve watched you change. You weren’t always who you are now.”

“Who was I then?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Now you just seem so concerned, so goddamned concerned of what other people think of you.”

“Katherine!” he said. His voice arched around her name because he’d never heard her speak this way, but she didn’t care. She couldn’t help it. “Really, Katherine?” he said. “Really?”

“Yes, Richard,” she said. “It’s true. You’re just so goddamned concerned. I feel like I don’t know you, which is awful because the first time I ever saw you I felt that you were someone I’d always known.”

“I felt the same way about you.”

She didn’t want to recount the story because she knew it would hurt to do so, but she hoped it would hurt Richard too, this memory of who he’d been, of who she’d been, of who they both were before they were a couple.

“David had told us about you in his letters, talked about you over Christmas, the last time he was home,” Katherine said. “And when we arrived at the university you’d already packed up all of his belongings.”

“They asked me to do it because they wanted to move another boy into our room,” Richard said. “There was a wait list, but I kept the door locked when I wasn’t there. I didn’t want anyone else to touch his things.”

Tears came into her eyes, and she wiped them away. She looked down at her hands, spun her wedding ring on her finger.

“And you’d had all the boys sign his yearbook for us. And then you helped Father carry everything out to the carriage, and then you went inside for your coat and rode with us to the station.”

“It was April,” Richard said. “And it had turned cold. I remember that the dogwoods had blossomed, and you were worried about them dying during the night.”

“And at the station, you went out onto the train platform to see us off. I remember my father crying and you put your hand on his shoulder and said—”

“‘The valiant never taste of death but once.’”

“I thought it was so beautiful,” she said. “And so fitting, for David. All these years, I’ve never forgotten it.”

“It was Shakespeare,” Richard said, “from Julius Caesar. I’d just heard it that morning in Professor Hume’s class. I’d memorized it because it made me think of David. I wanted to tell it to your father if I met him. I didn’t expect you. But I’d seen you in a photograph David had. I was so nervous in front of you. I’d rehearsed how to act in front of your father, but I didn’t know how to act when I saw you.”

“You didn’t seem nervous,” she said.

“I was.”

“You seemed kind and generous and honest.”

“Do I no longer seem that way to you?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know what you seem like now.”