I splutter a laugh., "You sound more like your grandson than an eighty-year-old woman."
She takes a long sip. "I love that boy more than just about anything. He and his mama don't get along right now, so I spend a lot of time talking to him. He thinks it's funny to teach me the lingo of his generation, and I think it's funny to use it with the other uptight fuddy-duddies at Bingo night."
"Bingo night, huh?" I say. "Didn't have you pegged for a bingo kinda gal."
"I'm not. It's stupid and boring and I never win. But I live alone and the hall is walking distance, and what the hell else am I supposed to do on a Tuesday night? I've knitted about a thousand sweaters that no one wants. The other old folks who play may be uptight old fuddy-duddies, but there is a certain…je ne sais quois, I guess, about being around people who get it."
"Get what, Faye?"
She feeds the fire some bigger sticks. "Being old. Getting left behind. Friends died, husbands or wives died, kids moved away, grandkids either live far or don’t care. The achy joints. Forgetting when you are. I ain't got dementia or nothing, but sometimes I’ll be at home and I'll forget and go looking for Thomas. I’ll call for him and I'll get mad at him for ignoring me. And then I remember.” She gazes at the fire, lost in memory. "I miss him, my Thomas."
"What was he like?" I ask.
"How long do you have?"
"All night, it would seem."
She shakes her head. "Complicated—he was a very complicated man. He could be very tender and sensitive, but he hid it, mostly. His father was a hard, brutal, cruel man, and Thomas learned early to hide his sensitivity behind a mask of toughness. And hewastough. He survived Vietnam. He was a police officer, and even up here in this little one-stoplight town, which it was back then, he saw his share of unpleasant things. But he never lost that sensitivity, even after the war and the police work. He just…I was the only one he showed it to. He had absolutely no sense of humor. None. It was my mission in life to make him laugh, but it was difficult. We went to see Don Rickles in Las Vegas one summer, and I'm sure you don't know who that is, but he was break-a-rib funny. The whole audience was in stitches, but not my Thomas. Nope. Arms crossed, grumpy face on, lookin' like he'd rather be back in the P-O-W camp."
I blink. "Wait, what? He was P-O-W?”
She sniffles. "Yeah. For four months, toward the end of the war. He told me a lot about his other experiences during the war, but he never would talk about that. The only thing he'd say was if something bad happened, like a wreck or bad weather or whatever, he'd say 'well, Faye, this may be bad, but it sure beats the shit out of that camp.'" She adopts a deep, surly, gruff voice when she quotes him, and I obviously never met the man, but I get a sense of who he must've been. "When he did refer to it, it was always that phrase—that camp."
"He sounds like a very interesting man."
"Oh, he was. You just…you had to dig a little to get to the good stuff. He kept it buried under a nice, thick, crusty layer of grumpy old codger attitude." Faye glances at me. "You gonna unburden yourself yet or what? Don't think I didn't see you fighting tears after Felix Crowe took off. And the way that boy was lookin' at you? I'd'a sworn you'd have had him eating out of your hand by the time I got in from the water, but instead he took off like his tail was on fire. What the hell'd you say to him, anyhow?"
"Nothing, and that's the problem." I sigh woozily. I'm a lot highanda little tipsy, so the truth just sort of tumbles free from the vault, which is normally locked down tighter than Fort Knox. "He asked me out, and I hesitated." It sounds so stupid, said out loud. I groan. “God, I'm an idiot. I'm attracted to him, Faye. Why’d I hesitate?"
She snorts. "Girl, a blind nun would be attracted to that fine hunk of man meat. Even my old Aunt Evelyn, the nun, would've been tempted by Felix Crowe. Did you see the man's abs? You could grate cheese on ‘em!"
"Mmmm," I hum. "Cheese. I'd like to try."
She laughs at me. "Got the munchies, do you?"
“Mmmm-hmm."
"Comin' up!" She tosses me the package of Chips Ahoy. "Now, as to why you hesitated…"
I crunch into a cookie, and I swear, nothing has ever tasted so good. "Dutchie."
“Your husband?"
I nod. "Mmmm-hmmm." I wash the cookie down with sparkling water because I've had enough peppermint vodka chocolate shake. "I don't know what to do."
"You wanna talk about him?"
I shake my head. "Nope."
"How long?"
I swallow hard. "Six months, three weeks, two days…" I glance at my phone and do some math, "eight hours, and five minutes."
She nods knowingly. "Still counting the hours and minutes, are you?”
"Yeah," I say, my voice raspy. I look at her, my eyes blurring. "When does it get easier?"
She grunts, shaking her head. "It doesn't. Time puts layers of scar tissue over it, but if you poke it, it always hurts."
