Her by Anonymous

Author:Anonymous
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 1971-09-24T16:00:00+00:00

6

We had not made any arrangements for her to meet me on my return. Somehow we had both thought of the obligatory trip as a function to be performed by the man I had been before we had met, and so it had no relation to us as a pair. It would not have seemed right to see her face again for the first time, in a throng of welcoming faces, at the terminal gate as I got off the airplane. I had not even told her precisely what flight I would return on.

So I came away from the plane moving alone through the crowd of Christmas greeters. I waited for my single suitcase—a weekender it was called, I thought wryly—to come around on the luggage belt, and then I took the airport bus to the Greyhound station. The airport was not in the college town where I lived, but forty miles away in the nearest large city. I did not have long to wait for my bus and as the sun was going down we were zipping through the slum sections on our way out of town.

I sat against the window, in a seat alone, and watched the sunlight fading out of the sky, being slowly replaced by darkness. I did not yet have in me the anticipation of meeting, though I knew that we would fuck tonight. Unless she had started her period. Maybe we would, anyway, I thought. It was all right that way, that one time, and I've been away long enough...

The houses thinned out to country landscape, dark masses of trees against the lighter sky. Occasionally we passed a house, or a cluster of houses, and I could see, through their lighted windows, the family groups doing all the things that families do as the sun goes down and darkness comes over the land.

Until this Christmas visit I had considered myself a family man. I knew now that I no longer had a family. I was a single-ton. The children related to me no more than Marcia did, a random factor intruding uncomfortably into their accustomed lives. Children are that way; and in spite of their ages they were still children; if I had been able to see them on a regular basis, that would have been an accustomed matter. But I was far enough away to be irregular, and the irregularity disturbed them. They did not know how to handle me emotionally—nor I them.

I had been depressed ever since they had walked away from me and I had had the brief talk with Marcia. Now, sitting alone in the bus, I knew that I would never again exercise my right of visitation. Let them go. Let them go. For they had departed already.

Only with that crystal thought in my mind could I turn with eagerness toward homecoming. For that is what it was. That room—that woman in that room—was now my home. I felt a stirring within me that was far more than desire, and yet desire was its solid foundation.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.