“Are you two years old?” Kathleen asked.
Nathan nodded warily.
“Don’t worry,” she whispered. “I won’t pinch your cheeks or kiss you. But I hope you’ll come back and find the teeny tiny toad with me. He lives in my garden in a teeny tiny house with an itsy-bitsy mouse and a squeaky beaky grouse.”
Nathan stuck his thumb in his mouth, but his eyes smiled.
Brigid returned with a cardboard box that held the entire contents of the temple’s juvenile collection. “There isn’t much here. The rabbi said to recycle anything — or everything. It’s up to you.”
Brigid lifted her son, kissed him on either cheek, and asked, “Um, Mrs. Levine? I gotta ask. With a name like Kathleen? Are you Catholic?”
“I converted to Judaism before I married my husband. What about you, Brigid?”
“That would kill my mother. But the kids are going to be Jewish? I mean, we’re raising them Jewish? Actually, I’m raising them Jewish. My husband isn’t all that into it? You know?”
“Yes, I do.”
Kathleen walked Brigid to her car.
“Will you come back sometime, Nathan?” Kathleen asked.
He looked at her for a moment and nodded.
“So you’ll call me when you’ve gotten a chance to look through this stuff?” Brigid asked.
“Yes.”
“Say bye-bye, Nathan.” But Nathan shook his head no.
“Bye-bye,” said Kathleen.
The house felt empty. She switched on the radio, but that only made the rooms seem even more desolate. The phone rang. “How ’bout a fish sandwich for lunch?” Buddy asked.
“Okay,” Kathleen said, thinking of the way Nathan nodded with his thumb in his mouth. Danny had sucked his two middle fingers.
Buddy showed up twenty minutes later with the sandwiches, french fries, and two chocolate milk shakes. Kathleen had dropped eight pounds since the surgery. Buddy had noticed; she saw it in his eyes every time she changed into her nightgown.
Marcy had noticed and asked about her appetite. But Kathleen liked being thinner. It made her feel younger. Besides, food didn’t appeal to her much these days.
Buddy coaxed her to finish his shake after she polished off
hers. “I guess I was hungry,” she said, spooning the last of Buddy’s coleslaw onto her plate.
“Good. Now, how about a nap? You were up again last night, weren’t you?” he said.
“Maybe I could sleep.” Kathleen shrugged. “Would you lie down with me for a moment?”
“Sure.”
He lowered the blinds and turned back the bedspread. Kathleen took off her gardening pants and stretched out. Buddy came out of the bathroom in his shorts. He lowered himself to his side, his eyes on her.
“What are you looking at?”
“My beautiful wife.”
Kathleen smiled. “Keep the glasses off, m’dear.”
“You are beautiful,” he whispered. “Even more than when we met.” She kissed him and ran her fingers over his kind, rugged face. He was still a good-looking man, but he had aged. His face was craggy, his chin was starting to slacken into jowls, and there were thick white hairs in his nose and ears. She could go for days on end forgetting how much she had changed, but Buddy’s face reminded her of the passing of time.