The Optimistic Decade by Heather Abel

Author:Heather Abel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2018-04-16T04:00:00+00:00

nine

Do You Love Me?

“So, do you love me?” David asked little albino Caitlin, who was kneeling to tie her laces. He stabbed at her sneakers with her broom. “Do you love me? Do you love me?” It was the morning after Rumspringa, and David was rehearsing on the patio near the Gathering. Shauna, Tanaya, and Nicole, and their admirers huddled to watch. David continued. “If I have to ask, I don’t want to know, right? Right?”

Rebecca, he thought, this is the mitzvah of not taking skits too seriously.

Rebecca, he thought, of course I remember the pier.

Caitlin rose, laces tied. “Do I what?” She sounded frightened. A rash had spread on her pink face. She was only eleven, a little young to be a shtetl bride.

“David, your line.”

“Do you . . . ?” He raised the broom high, until its straw mouth kissed the willow roof, and he thought about adding a mitzvah of the willows to his list.

This mitzvah originated on a day that remained, in his calculation, as the greatest day of his life. It was the second summer of Llamalo, when Caleb had started to expand into the high desert across the irrigation ditch from the house; before that, they all slept in the alfalfa field. Caleb decided that campers needed some shade near the Gathering and asked only Suze and David to help quarry the sandstone for the floor of the patio. They spent hours slamming rock into the truck bed, but once they were done, the truck couldn’t move. There’d been this hysterical camaraderie, David just swept up in Caleb and Suze’s love for each other. She would tease them both, kiss Caleb, mess up David’s hair. The sun had set by the time they’d unloaded half the rocks just to get out of Escalante Canyon. Drove back in the dark, all three of them in the front seat of Caleb’s truck. The next day, they brought the rocks up to the Gathering in wheelbarrows and laid the floor as if they were solving an extremely heavy jigsaw puzzle. They dug postholes, secured the posts, placed supporting beams, and cut willows at the Upper Escadom Reservoir to rest across as a roof. At the start of every summer, Caleb and Suze and David—and then just Caleb and David—returned to the reservoir, slicing out a new covering with army knives.

“David.” Shauna fanned herself with the clipboard. Most kids couldn’t handle the summer’s deep heat like David could. “You can’t space out like that.”

David came to and handed the broom to his wife. “So, do you love me? Or have we just succumbed to the diminishing lust that plagues every marriage? Staying together out of habit, for the children, for society’s sake. Society!” He raised a fist.

Matthew snorted. Nicole sighed, “The actual line.”

A midsized girl ran breathless onto the patio, explaining that they needed more Dektol for the photography shack. Nat, who was supervising photography, didn’t know where it was, and someone said David would know, and someone else said David was here, and so, did he?

David nodded, pleased.

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