"I've come to ask you something," I said.
"Yes?" As he spoke, Noah tore off a piece of bread and tossed it into the water. The swan bobbed its beak toward it and straightened its neck to swallow.
"It's about Jane," I added.
"Jane," he murmured. "How is she?"
"Good." I nodded, shifting awkwardly. "She'll be coming by later, I suppose." This was true. For the past few years, we've visited him frequently, sometimes together, sometimes alone. I wondered if they spoke of me in my absence.
"And the kids?"
"They're doing well, too. Anna's writing features now, and Joseph finally found a new apartment. It's in Queens, I think, but right near the subway. Leslie's going camping in the mountains with friends this weekend. She told us she aced her midterms."
He nodded, his eyes never leaving the swan. "You're very lucky, Wilson," he said. "I hope you realize how fortunate you are that they've become such wonderful adults."
"I do," I said.
We fell into silence. Up close, the lines in his face formed crevices, and I could see the veins pulsing below the thinning skin of his hands. Behind us, the grounds were empty, the chilly air keeping people inside.
"I forgot our anniversary," I said.
"Oh?"
"Twenty-nine years," I added.
"Mmm."
Behind us, I could hear dried leaves rattling in the breeze.
"I'm worried about us," I finally admitted.
Noah glanced at me. At first I thought he would ask me why I was worried, but instead he squinted, trying to read my face. Then, turning away, he tossed another piece of bread to the swan. When he spoke, his voice was soft and low, an aging baritone tempered by a southern accent.
"Do you remember when Allie got sick? When I used to read to her?"
"Yes," I answered, feeling the memory pull at me. He used to read to her from a notebook that he'd written before they moved to Creekside. The notebook held the story of how he and Allie had fallen in love, and sometimes after he read it aloud to her, Allie would become momentarily lucid, despite the ravages of Alzheimer's. The lucidity never lasted long--and as the disease progressed further, it ceased completely--but when it happened, Allie's improvement was dramatic enough for specialists to travel from Chapel Hill to Creekside in the hopes of understanding it. That reading to Allie sometimes worked, there was no doubt. Why it worked, however, was something the specialists were never able to figure out.
"Do you know why I did that?" he asked.
I brought my hands to my lap. "I believe so," I answered. "It helped Allie. And because she made you promise you would."
"Yes," he said, "that's true." He paused, and I could hear him wheezing, the sound like air through an old accordion. "But that wasn't the only reason I did it. I also did it for me. A lot of folks didn't understand that."
Though he trailed off, I knew he wasn't finished, and I said nothing. In the silence, the swan stopped circling and moved closer. Except for a black spot the size of a silver dollar on its chest, the swan was the color of ivory. It seemed to hover in place when Noah began speaking again.
"Do you know what I most remember about the good days?" he asked.
I knew he was referring to those rare days when Allie recognized him, and I shook my head. "No," I answered.
"Falling in love," he said. "That's what I remember. On her good days, it was like we were just starting out all over again."
He smiled. "That's what I mean when I say that I did it for me. Every time I read to her, it was like I was courting her, because sometimes, just sometimes, she would fall in love with me again, just like she had a long time ago. And that's the most wonderful feeling in the world. How many people are ever given that chance? To have someone you love fall in love with you over and over?"
Noah didn't seem to expect an answer, and I didn't offer one.
Instead, we spent the next hour discussing the children and his health. We did not speak of Jane or Allie again. After I left, however, I thought about our visit. Despite the doctors' worries, Noah seemed as sharp as ever. He had not only known that I would be coming to see him, I realized, but had anticipated the reason for my visit. And in typical southern fashion, he'd given me the answer to my problem, without my ever having had to ask him directly.
It was then that I knew what I had to do.
Chapter Two
I had to court my wife again.
It sounds so simple, doesn't it? What could be easier? There were, after all, certain advantages to a situation like ours. For one thing, Jane and I live in the same house, and after three decades together, it's not as though we had to start over. We could dispense with the family histories, the humorous anecdotes from our childhoods, the questions of what we did for a living and whether or not our goals were compatible. Furthermore, the surprises that individuals tend to keep hidden in the early stages of a relationship were already out in the open. My wife, for instance, already knew that I snore, so there was no reason to hide something like that from her. For my part, I've seen her when she's been sick with the flu, and it makes no difference to me how her hair looks when she gets up in the morning.
Given those practical realities, I assumed that winning Jane's love again would be relatively easy. I would simply try to re-create what we had had in our early years together--as Noah had done for Allie by reading to her. Yet upon further reflection, I slowly came to the realization that I'd never really understood what she saw in me in the first place. Though I think of myself as responsible, this was not the sort of trait women considered attractive back then. I was, after all, a baby boomer, a child of the hang-loose, me-first generation.
It was 1971 when I saw Jane for the first time. I was twenty-four, in my second year of law school at Duke University, and most people would have considered me a serious student, even as an undergraduate. I never had a roommate for more than a single term, since I often studied late into the evenings with the lamp blazing. Most of my former roommates seemed to view college as a world of weekends separated by boring classes, while I viewed college as preparation for the future.
While I'll admit that I was serious, Jane was the first to call me shy. We met one Saturday morning at a coffee shop downtown. It was early November, and due to my responsibilities at the Law Review, my classes seemed particularly challenging. Anxious about falling behind in my studies, I'd driven to a coffee shop, hoping to find a place to study where I wouldn't be recognized or interrupted.
It was Jane who approached the table and took my order, and even now, I can recall that moment vividly. She wore her dark hair in a ponytail, and her chocolate eyes were set off by the hint of olive in her skin. She was wearing a dark blue apron over a sky blue dress, and I was struck by the easy way she smiled at me, as if she were pleased that I had chosen to sit in her section. When she asked for my order, I heard the southern drawl characteristic of eastern North Carolina.
I didn't know then that we would eventually have dinner together, but I remember going back the following day and requesting the same table. She smiled when I sat down, and I can't deny that I was pleased that she seemed to remember me. These weekend visits went on for about a month, during which we never struck up a conversation or asked each other's names, but I soon noticed that my mind began to wander every time she approached the table to refill my coffee. For a reason I can't quite explain, she seemed always to smell of cinnamon.