Page 8 of The Things We Never Say

He had to get the job done; he would wait to make sure that Rob’s new girl was a good one. And then, one way or another, it was time he left this life.

Years earlier, Evie had had a hard time getting pregnant. At first it had been a joke between them, they were trying too hard, and then it stopped being a joke and Evie became very upset. Off they went to their various doctors, and they were both declared fit to reproduce, although one doctor had told them—Artie could never really comprehend this—that sometimes for no apparent reason a man’s sperm and a woman’s egg were incompatible. The term was “immunological infertility.” They kept on trying. Artie mentioned adoption and was surprised at Evie’s adamant rejection of that idea. When he raised the subject of in vitro fertilization, she was also adamantly against that, saying that the drugs she would have to take would be too dangerous.

At one point during this stressful time, Artie took Evie to London for Christmas. She had often spoken about going there as a child with her parents and sister, and so he surprised her and took her there. It was on the plane over that Artie began to get a dark sick feeling. His wife was very unhappy. Fleetingly it went through his head that she was thinking of leaving him. Where did that thought come from? She was mad at him that first day there because he did not know London, and he ended up taking her to a little hamburger place that she positively hated.

—

About a month after that trip she discovered that she was pregnant, and how that woman glowed. She was absolutely radiant as she went through her days.

At school a few days later, Artie made a mistake. Rhonda Lazarre had taken a long time packing up her books and Artie was ready to leave the classroom, but he waited while she stuffed one more book into her knapsack. Artie said, “Are you okay, Rhonda?”

She looked at him. “I have the sads,” she said.

He waited and then he said, “I’m sorry.”

“Do you ever get the sads?” she asked him, and even though a warning signal flew up inside him he said, “Yes.” He added, “On occasion.”

She gazed at him from behind her glasses, which slanted slightly to one side. She puffed out her cheeks and gave a huge sigh; her mouth made a long raspberry sound. Tugging down on her gray sweater, which was too small, she said, “My mother’s crazy.”

Artie knew this to be true. Most people in town knew of the Lazarres and the woman who often walked around in public in her pajamas, frequently getting into arguments with shopkeepers.

“My mother was too,” Artie said. As he spoke the words he felt a strange sensation in his head, as though he was separate now from his body, only not quite.

Rhonda’s expression became eager. “She was?”

Artie nodded.

“Like in what way was she crazy?”

“Oh.” Artie gazed out the window. “She just had some real mental issues. She had to be institutionalized a couple of times.”

“Jeez.” The girl said this slowly, and Artie moved toward the classroom door. Rhonda tugged again on her sweater, then pushed her glasses up with the back of her hand. She said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Dam.”

“People go through things,” he said, looking back at her. “Your sads will come and go.”

He held out his hand to indicate that she should walk through the door, and she went past him. “Okay, thanks,” she said.

No. It had been wrong of him to tell her about his mother. It left him in a state of even more heightened anxiety.

—

“Now you’re just getting hostile,” his wife said to him that night as he was talking to her about Rhonda Lazarre.

Because he’d said, “I can see you’re not interested in what I’m saying.” He had seen in her eyes—after their being married for so many years—that she was no longer interested.

The pain he felt was almost physical, he was that sad.

“What are we going to do now, Mama? What are we going to do now?” This is what Artie’s sister had said, again and again, in the hospital the last week of her life.

Maria had not married until she was almost thirty. Artie and Maria’s parents had both died the year of her marriage—their father of a heart attack and their mother, six months later, of a stroke—and Artie was glad that Maria had her husband, a firefighter named John Flaherty, a man Artie had always liked; he was decent and straightforward. For a firefighter he was surprisingly small, but he was wiry, and he exuded a sense of protectiveness (this is what Artie had always felt), and Maria had gotten pregnant soon after the death of their parents—so excited, she was.

She had confided to Artie, “I’m awful glad to have Daddy’s genes come down through me. Of course, you haven’t had kids yet—I’ll be real happy for you when you do, and don’t forget that Mama didn’t get pregnant with me for a few years, so you and Evie will eventually—but with this child at least we know that his genes have come through.”

Maria’s child was stillborn, and in the hospital she suffered a brain aneurysm that—most surprisingly—she did not die of for almost a week.

Artie and John had taken turns sitting by her bedside as she lay in the hospital.

“What are we going to do now, Mama?” Maria had asked this again and again. Turning her eyes to look at Artie, and then at the ceiling, she would say, “What are we going to do now, Mama?”