The faintgray of the road ahead of him,
The faded white line to the left,
The muffdrone of the engine.
He remembered:
Rob saying that their grandson was going to his first day of kindergarten.
Him handing John the whiskey. Rob: “Blue label? How dare you!
Coming here after— since— the first time— And you bringing me Walker Blue?”
Him saying “She was the one who settled. She settled, in our marriage. She settled for me.”
— Yes.
Yes, she had.
She had— for him.
He pictured himself saying that to her in their bedroom, as he had for years,
“Thanks for settling for me,”
She smiled, he smiled.
But now, seven months after her death,
Her dying, the funeral, her being dead,
He’d said it to Rob and Liz.
“She settled for me.”
He’d always known, but now:
It’s why she’d mentioned him having gone to Princeton so much;
And she’d never worn any of her nice dresses, except at things for the kids;
She’d never taken part in the joke, not even once a sarcastic “Oh yeah— settled big time!”
Why she’d wanted to move into the city;
Why, when he’d mentioned that he’d had to write short stories for a class, she’d talked about
him trying to get them published, wondered if they could’ve been published, even
though he’d just done them for class, twenty years ago, and he had no reason to think of
them had been particularly good, and then she’d started reading The Beautiful and The
Damned.
Now that she’s dead.
Now that there isn’t anything that he could—
Any way that he could—
No job he could get or money he could make to change—
Now that it’s something that had been,
How it had been,
How it will have been.
One thing that he’ll feel whenever he thinks about her,
When he sees pictures of her,
When people talk about her,
When it’s her birthday, their anniversary,
When he sees the kids.
Though it wasn’t as if she’d had some love, some epochal love before him,
Someone who’d spurned her or failed her,
Someone in her youth who’d died,
There hadn’t been anyone, really, anything before.
There hadn’t been one disappointment.
He had been an option better than some others,
That she could pick, because she was to pick.
If he could have gotten—
If he could have worked for—
To equal things—
Started his own firm?
Opened a new practice division?
Written a book?
But no: now
There was nothing,
And there would be nothing,
From now on there would always be nothing,
Nothing more,
Nothing better,
Nothing else.