Page 7 of The Things We Never Say

Artie gave a small shake of his head. “No, but I can imagine how tough it must be.”

Tom said, “I could tell you got no problems.” He glanced around. “I mean, look at this house you live in.”

“This was my in-laws’ house. I grew up in a basement apartment in Revere. My father was the super of the place. Three buildings my father was in charge of.”

“Yeah?” said Tom, looking at him, but Artie could tell that Tom did not care about Artie’s background. After a moment, Tom stood up. He said to Artie, “What do you do?” And Artie told him that he taught history at the local high school.

“Yeah?” The man turned to him. “I have a son who goes there. Danny Marino.”

“I know Danny.” Artie paused. “Nice kid.”

“That’s my oldest son,” the man said. “You think he’s okay? Turns out he knew about my wife’s affair. Jesus.” And the man picked up the box of whatever it was that was his plumbing gear and started to leave.

Artie said, “Thank you for finding the time to come over.”

The man turned in the door of the bathroom. “My son—he means the world to me,” he said. And Artie said, “I understand. I have a son.”

The man hesitated, and then he walked through the bathroom door, and Artie followed him to the front steps of the house. “Good luck to you,” said Artie, and the man said, “Okay, thanks.”

—

“I’ll bring her by in a couple of weeks,” Rob said. He stood up to leave. “Nice to see you both.” Evie gave him a kiss and Artie briefly put an arm across his son’s back, and then Rob left the house.

“I didn’t know that you didn’t like Francesca,” Evie said to Artie. She started to put away the bread.

“It’s not that I dislike her, I just always found her to be…strange in some way.” Artie felt a sense of disorientation. The plumber had disturbed him, and Rob was different, almost happy. Almost. “But Rob seems good, don’t you think?”

Evie turned back to get the knife and walked over to drop it into the deep stainless steel sink. The sun had moved slightly and was now slanting across the white tiled floor. “Yes, but he called and told me he wanted to talk to me privately. He seemed very stressed about it. Very urgent somehow.”

“Well, I imagine he was stressed about how you were going to react to the news about Francesca.”

Evie did not answer.

—

Later that night Artie looked at the essay that Danny Marino had written on the first day of school. “People suck,” Danny had written. “Everything in this world is a big stinking lie.”

And then on that Tuesday night this happened: Artie and Evie, after their dinner, moved into the living room. Evie had had two glasses of wine with dinner, which she frequently did, and Artie, who almost always abstained, had left his one glass unfinished. He said to her, as they sat on opposite ends of the couch, “I had a memory of my mother this morning.”

Evie raised her eyebrows. “Tell me.”

He said, “She was giving me a bath one night and she told me that some mothers killed their children.”

“Jesus,” Evie said.

“And I said to her: How? And she said they usually drowned them in the bathtub. And I said: Why? And she said: ‘Because the mother thought they would be better off without them.’ ”

Evie’s eyelids drooped. She said, “That’s awful. But I’m exhausted from work, I’m sorry.”

Artie rose and said, “You rest.” He dimmed the lights in the living room and went upstairs to their bedroom. As he lay on the bed it came to him with utter clarity: I am lonely enough to die. He remembered that his wife had loved some book—oh, years ago now—about a crotchety old woman from Maine, and he had read the book reluctantly only because his wife had liked it. He’d forgotten about it until now. In the book the awful old woman’s father had killed himself when the woman was younger, and now that she was older, the woman thought: People die of loneliness. It happens all the time.

And he thought: Yes, that was correct. People do die of loneliness, and I am—or will be—one of them.

—

Within five minutes his wife came upstairs and said, “I’m all awake now.”

But it was too late.