phone. She called Soos everyday, or stopped by her house. She talked to her mother nearly every day on the phone. Sometimes, on Wednesdays and Fridays, her mother met her at the Historical Society for lunch and they spent time in the exhibits. Sometimes Soos and Susan came also. Then there were the calls to Gretchen in New York of an evening while Stephen sat in his chair. Sometimes it seemed as if Stephen was purposely disengaging, losing interest in their lives. She could sense him preparing to leave, not her as his wife, but leaving his own life; not dying yet, but slowly taking his hands off the wheel. It couldn’t be time for the end yet.
Solome lived in America where there was a heaven and an earth. But there was something coming for Stephen. They both felt it in the night. It was a new territory neither of them wanted to enter.
She remembered once at her parents’ place at Crane Lake, a large boat docked. A woman in a black swimming suit ran toward her parents’ cabin where Stephen worked with her father to screen the porch. She watched the woman run toward her husband like a dream that followed sleep into waking. Soon the woman realized she was running toward the wrong house, and turned to the house next door.
“Who was that?” Solome asked her mother.
“She’s the daughter of a woman who looked in on the old couple,” her mother said.
Yes, the people who lived in the next cabin with their retarded daughter.
Solome watched Stephen return to his screening after a woman in black ran toward him in the afternoon, a black butterfly, ready to carry him away, to unthread him from her.
Once there had been a common Indo-European language with words for winter and horse, but no word for the sea.
Wear warm clothes, Solome remembered.
Once she had taken a course on language. She still remembered it, or some of it. After the common language, there had been closely related Germanic languages that formed the basis of English, which formed the basis of her American language. There had been links to Sanskrit, Greek, Latin. There was a Norman conquest; there were the Anglo Saxons. Imagine a language that could move over, make room for others. Imagine new words joined to the old ones, crossing to other worlds, spreading like the sea.
The English and American language wasn’t as rigid as other languages. New ideas were given new words, maybe new words were given new ideas. There were openings for possibilities: abstractions and complex thought.
Christianity also had added words: cedars of Lebanon, camels, myrrh. Even language had been converted by Christianity. There also was the story of the Tower of Babel in the Bible, where language was purposely mixed.
Solome felt the piles of language like laundry yet to be folded. She felt cardboard. Artificial. What was her language telling her? She didn’t like herself. No, that wasn’t it.
Where were all the facts she had once memorized?
Where was all the wood she had chopped? Chores she had done?
What if she had had the opportunity to develop a career the way Stephen had? What if she hadn’t been clamped off? Was that how she saw her life?
On Monday evening, the Bible study group met at her house. The members took turns hosting the group. Solome decided to make a dessert. There were three couples, two unmarried sisters named Forman, and a man who came without his wife. The minister and his wife also sometimes attended.
The group was amazed at the Savard’s house. Solome could tell by the way they looked at the room. Didn’t they know she was the wife of a provost? She wished it were something she could hide. The man who came without his wife was the only one who didn’t seem impressed.
Mrs. Croft, the minister’s wife, thought Solome could do everything as she tasted her dessert. Flattery should have been her name.
The Bible study group was a fast-paced crowd, Stephen told her with irritation when they left.
“Do you want me to quit?” Solome asked.
“Do what you want.”
The minister’s wife had a drifty presence. She could be everything to nearly everyone. Solome admired her resistance to getting stuck in one place— Her wide berth.
Solome was who she was. But who was she? And why did she have the feeling she was on the swift current of a river moving toward a sea from which there was no return? Or sometimes she felt like she was on a river with a steep waterfall ahead. Would the river just stop, and she would find herself mid-air?
On Sunday morning at church, the group studied the travels of Paul in Acts. In the old class, the one Stephen and Solome had attended for years, the Fidelis class, they had speakers, and not much talk about the Bible.
Stephen Savard
“Brian and Soos need a small loan,” Solome told me at lunch on Sunday.
“Let them go to the bank,” I answered. I wanted to change the subject. I wanted to tell her I was embarrassed I had forgotten a colleague’s name as we left church. But Solome wanted to talk to me about their youngest daughter.
“Soos called yesterday— She has enough pressure in her marriage.”
“They weren’t in church,” I said. “They said they would be there.”
Solome looked at me. “Maybe the baby wasn’t well.”
“Maybe they spend too much money.”
“It takes a lot of money, Stephen. Susanna doesn’t work so she can take care of Susan. I don’t see why we can’t help them.”
“Because they’re dependent enough as it is.”
“No, they’re not,” Solome argued. “They handle their finances.”
“Then why are they asking for money?”
“The interest they have to pay on their Visa card— ”
“Tell them not to buy so much,” I offered.
“I think they buy what is necessary.”
“Solome— ”
I knew she could hear my impatience.
“ — that’s their problem.”
“But you give Mark what he wants— ” Solome protested.
“Didn’t we just help Brian and Soos?”
“That was Gretchen,” Solome said. “And when did you talk to Susanna— when did she say they’d be in church?”
I looked at her. “When she called.”
“I talked to her yesterday,” Solome said. “You weren’t here— ”
“She called later— ” I got up from the table. “You give them the money they’re asking for,” I said angrily, and left the dining room and went to my study.
Solome couldn’t let go of the fact that I wasn’t responsible for my forgetfulness.
