Chapter 8
DOYLE
"Sit down," she said.
I made the coffee first. She let me. It gave me something to do with ninety seconds, which she probably knew. Then I sat.
"I found something," she said, "and I want to say it before you say anything, because if you go first I'll spend the rest of my life wondering whether you softened it."
"Okay."
She turned the phone around. Text messages, hers in the color and mine in the gray — four of them screenshotted, one after another, with a little red circle drawn around each date.
She'd used some drawing thing on her phone that she does not know how to use.
She'd learned it Saturday night for this.
"March, four and a half years ago," she said.
"Me: we should finally do the cave this fall.
You: someday when the elevator slows down.
You went in September of the following year.
" She swiped. "Spring, four years ago. Me: a picture of balloons.
You: someday. Eleven months." Swipe. "August, six years ago.
Me: the pull's at the state grounds, grandad had a Farmall.
You: someday, this weekend's shot. Twelve months. "
I watched the screen. I couldn't look at her face.
"Every one," she said. "Every single time I brought up one of those items, you did it inside of eighteen months. Without me. In the order I brought them up."
The coffee maker was going behind me. It's a loud one. I have never hated a sound so much in my life.
"Doyle."
"Yeah."
"My asking was your reminder system."
"Iris," I said, and it came out thin and wrong.
"No, wait, I've got a better way to put it." She was looking at the middle of the table. "I was the secretary of my own exclusion."
I got hit by a piece of equipment once. Ninety-four, the grain leg, a manlift chain came off and caught me across the back and put me flat on the concrete and I couldn't pull a breath for what felt like a minute. That was worse.
"That's not—" I started, and stopped myself, because there's only one ending to that sentence and it was exactly how it was. She'd built the thing out of my own texts. I could have argued with how she felt. I couldn't argue with a date.
"I don't need you to agree," she said. "I'm not asking you a question."
"It's true."
She blinked. That's all she did. But I've been married to this woman since I was twenty-three, and that blink was the first crack I'd seen in her since the closet floor.
"I'd like to do something," I said. "I've had it ready since Wednesday and I was going to do it today anyway, and now I'd like to do it more, and I want you to know I didn't build it in the last four minutes."
"What is it."
"Get your coffee first."
She got hers, I got mine. I sat back down, put the phone on the table, and opened the note.
"Last Monday you got to the school line and you stopped," I said. "You never read the rest. You've been carrying that around ever since, knowing there were words in there you hadn't seen."
"That was my choice."
"It was, and it was the right one, because handing it across a table is me making you do the work again.
" I set the phone flat and put my finger under the first line.
"So I'm going to read it to you. Out loud, every entry, all the way through, including the parts you didn't get to.
I haven't touched a word of it. I want you to hear it in my voice, because it was my voice that wrote it. "
She didn't answer. She wrapped both hands around her cup.
"One," I read. "'Mule, canyon. October, with Lonnie.'" I made myself take the next part at the same speed. "'Rim: unreal.'"
Iris didn't move.
"That's your item," I said. "Number one, in blue. And there's your husband writing the word unreal in a motel room about a place you wrote down on your fortieth birthday."
"Keep going."
"'Two. Ballgame weekend. May. Lonnie, Pug, Dale, Denny. Three games. Sunburn.'" I looked up. "Four men out of this county and not my wife. Denny can't back a truck into a lot without hitting something that's been there since 1961, and Denny went."
"Keep going."
"'Three. Cave. September, after the regional. Two hours. Lights-out part is real.'" My throat was going but I kept on. "You said to me in that hall, when I got home, that it would have scared you to death. And I said something back. I don't remember what I said."
"You said, 'You'd have been fine.'"
"Christ."
"You did say it kindly," she said. "That's the part I'd forgotten till just now. You weren't being ugly about it. You said it the way you'd tell me the coffee had gone cold."
"Keep going."
"'Seventeen. Tractor pull. August, state grounds, with L.'" I had to stop a second before the last part. "'Farmalls ran.'"
"Say what that means."
"It means I stood at a fence and watched two old Farmalls pull against each other, and thought about your grandad, and got out my phone, and did not call you. I typed two words into a note. That's what it means."
She set her cup down.
"'Five. Balloon. June, fairgrounds charity, with L plus Pug. Sunrise. Forty minutes.'" I said all of it. "Hundred dollars a head to the volunteer fire department. There were three seats. I took Pug."
"You took Pug."
"I took Pug."
"There was a seat," she said, "and you looked at it, and you thought of Pug."
"No. That's the part I need to get straight, because if I let that stand it's a lie by an inch.
I didn't think of Pug and forget you. I thought of you.
Six in the morning in the parking lot at the fairgrounds, and it went through me like cold water, and then Lonnie said something about the basket and I laughed, and by the time we were up I had it put away.
" I looked at her. "Every one of these has a minute like that in it.
Every single one. Usually right at the best part. "
She had her hands in her lap now, out of sight, and her face wasn't telling me anything.
"There's one more thing in the tractor pull entry," I said. "Two letters. It says with L. Lonnie drove. I bought the tickets at the gate, twelve dollars apiece, and we stood at the north fence, because the north fence is where you want to be, and there were four Farmalls in the antique class."
"Four."
"Four. Two of them were his model. The letter H — that's what you told me he had."
She put her hand over her mouth a second, then took it down and put it back around the cup. "Keep going."
"'Four. Fly day. May, Ferrin's water, half day with the crew. Book the school.'" I stopped. "That last part's an instruction. I wrote myself an instruction."
"And then?"
"'Four. School. September twenty-fourth through twenty-seventh. Three spots. L plus Pug. Deposit paid seven-nine.'" I put the phone down. "July ninth. Paid it on my lunch break with the joint card. Six-fifty. It's canceled, they kept it, and that's the whole file."
The kitchen went quiet enough that I could hear the clock in the front room.
"The deposit," she said. "July ninth. What day of the week was that?"
"Wednesday."
"You know that off the top of your head."
"I've thought about it some."
"What did we do that night?"
I had to go find it, and it took a while. "You had the Vaughn girl's wedding party that Saturday, so you were doing trial runs all week. You came home late. We had the leftover ham."
"So you paid six hundred and fifty dollars on a fishing school in July," she said, "and then came home and ate ham with me and talked about a wedding."
"Yes."
"Did it cross your mind at all? That night?"
"No. By July it wasn't a thing that crossed my mind anymore. That's the honest answer. It was a booking."
She took that one standing up. I watched it go into her.
"Is there anything else anywhere," she said. "Any note, any receipt, any photograph, anything on a computer. Any of it."
"No."
"Doyle."
"No, Iris. That's everything. If something turns up I'll bring it to you the day I find it, but there's nothing to turn up. It was seven lines. It was never any bigger than seven lines."
"Read the first one again."
"Iris."
"The first one. I want it twice."
I read it again. "'One. Mule, canyon. October, with Lonnie. Rim: unreal.'"
"Unreal," she said.
"Yes."
"That's not a word you use."
"No."
"I've known you since I was twenty-one and I've never once heard you call anything unreal.
" She turned her cup a half turn on the table.
"You say that's something. You say that'll do.
Your father said that'll do and you say that'll do, and one time in fifty-six years you stood somewhere and the word that came up out of you was unreal, and you typed it into a telephone in a motel room. "
I didn't have anything for that. She let it sit there long enough that I understood she wasn't going to help me carry it.
"That's the part I'm going to be chewing on," she said. "Not the six. The word."
She sat a long time after that, two minutes maybe, and I wanted so badly to fill it — to say I'm sorry, to say I love you, to say something about what a fool I'd been — and every one of those would have been me putting a blanket over the top of it so we could both quit looking.
I kept my mouth shut. It was the hardest work I've ever done sitting down.
Then she said, "Was any of it not good?"
"What?"
"The six. Was there one that was a disappointment. The cave, maybe. Something that rained out, something that wasn't what you thought." She wasn't looking at me. "I'd like there to be one."
I had one lined up before she'd finished asking. The ballgame — second game rained out, we sat under a concourse two hours. It would have cost me nothing and put something in her hand.
"No," I said. "They were all good."
Iris nodded, slow. "Thank you."
"For what?"
"For not giving me the rain. You had one, didn't you."
"I had one."
"I know you did."
She stood and rinsed her cup and set it in the rack. "Thank you for the books."
I didn't trust myself to answer.
"Item eight is mine to choose," she said. "You'll be told."
"When?"
"When I've chosen it."
"Can I ask one thing?"
She stopped in the doorway with her hand on the frame. "Ask."
"Is it one of yours? That's all. I don't want to know which one. I want to know if it's one of the blue ones."
She looked at me a second. "Yes."
"Good."
"Don't say good. You don't get an opinion on it." She went on down the hall. "But yes."
Then she got dressed, because it was Sunday, and Sunday she takes my mother her groceries, and she has never once missed it.