Oh-Oh City

On Monday we sat together after class, and, as ca

Tell me you were co

"Where did you find that?"

"Up way back on a shelf in the garage. What do you want to do with it?"

My first instinct was to say dump it. Instead, I told her to leave it with me. What was more troubling than seeing it again was knowing for sure I had left that box with the police the day I heard about her death. I walked into the police station and spoke to men I'd never had any real contact with, other than seeing them give parking tickets and chatting with store owners. Now two of these blue uniforms were asking me questions, and their faces were solemn, suspicious. One of them took the box and opened it. He looked inside, although I'd already described what was in there. What did he expect to find? I told them what I could, and left. The box looked strangely naked there, open in the middle of that wide oak desk. I left the police station empty-handed.

Beenie gave me this same box and left the room without questions. Adrenaline rushed through my body, and I started breathing shallowly, quickly. Whatever I'd been doing before fell from my thoughts. I took A

Roberta was still gone at four when Beenie came in to say good-bye. "Well, I'm done. That garage is smiling again. Hey Scott, are you all right? You look gray as cement. I think you should put down those papers and go out for a walk."

I was two-thirds of the way through. It was still a bad book, worse than I remembered. "Do you know what this is, Beenie? Do you have a minute to listen?"

She said sure, and I invited her in. I went to the desk, and she sat in my fat reading chair by the window. For such a terrible experience, it took only a short time to tell. I'd spent years going over it in my mind, but here I was, telling it again, and it took no more than ten minutes. When I was finished, she looked at her hands.

"When I was young my husband and I liked to spend New Year's Eve in interesting places. Once, it was in a train going across Canada; another time in a firehouse in Moscow, Idaho. Then the children came –" She threw a hand in the air as though she were throwing confetti to the wind. "Kids tame you, don't they? After Dean was born, we usually stayed home on New Year's, and maybe brought in a bottle of champagne. Once in a while, there was a party, but we weren't so crazy about going out and wearing fu

I looked at her, confused by her co

"I never could figure out what I liked better – New Year's on the back of a camel, or sitting in the living room with our kids, waving sparklers and jumping around. Both were good.

"What does that have to do with you? Who knew more, Scott – you before this girl died, or the you after? Scars make our faces ugly, but they also give it character. From my point of view, I'd've done the same thing you did back then – That girl didn't want your opinion; she wanted you to say she was great. Well, she wasn't, and, sooner or later, that would've caught up with her."

"Maybe if it had caught up with her later, she would have been better equipped-"

"Nonsense. She's dead, Scott. Weak links snap. But as for you, here's something I believe in really strongly: guilt's a whore. It goes with anybody, but it's not good in bed. You're not dying, but this thing you've got with the girl is no different than my situation. We could both use up whole days feeling guilty 'bout what we didn't do in life, but why spend a day in bed with someone who doesn't give you any pleasure?"

"That's too easy, Beenie."

"No it's not! It's the hardest thing in the world. Just dumping your guilt and moving on.

"Like I gotta be right now. Sorry we don't see eye-to-eye on this. You know, I do believe in recycling. Save your old papers, Coke cans, glass. But not old guilt. Far as I'm concerned, guilt goes bad after a certain while, and can't be used after that."

We said our good-byes, and she left. It was so disappointing. I knew Beenie wasn't Albert Einstein, but it seemed a person who knew they were going to die soon would also know … more. But what she'd said sounded as though it had come from one of those popular psychology books you find at a drugstore. Sighing, I put my glasses back on and picked up the last pages of A

New Year's came and went, and I thought of Beenie's evenings with her family. Would she visit with Dean and his wife? Or with the daughter? Why did she talk so much about the son, but almost nothing about the daughter? Roberta knew.

"Because they don't get along. The girl married a stinker who caused bad blood between them. It breaks Beenie's heart."

"There's been no reconciliation since she got sick?"

"No."

I could not throw the manuscript away, but my smart wife came up with a solution, as usual. Following her suggestion, I went to the university hall of records, found A

At two o'clock in the morning, I woke Roberta to read her this passage from Rousseau:

"She only kept her bed for the last two days, and continued to converse quietly with everyone to the last. Finally when she could no longer talk and was already in her death agony, she broke wind loudly. "Good!" She said, turning over, "a woman who can fart is not dead." Those were the last words she spoke.'

"Now, Beenie Rushforth or not? Can't you imagine her going out like that? Farting and stomping and shaking her broom at the gods."

Roberta reached for her glasses on the night table, which was her prelude to saying something that mattered. She would chat with glasses off, but when it was serious, she somehow felt she needed a clear field of vision.

"I think you've got her pegged wrong, Scott. She's tough in ways, but also very vulnerable. Extremely vulnerable. Just listening to her talk about her daughter is so damned sad! The woman grieves. I think their separation hurts her more than the cancer. You know, I look at her, and we talk, and every time I think, 'Scott and I are so lucky. We are so, so lucky.'"