The Thing He Loved - Jackie Davis-Martin

“The thing I really love to do is sail that boat,” Henry said. They were looking through the windshield of his car at the river. Virginia’s car was right next to his. If she rolled down her window and stretched out her arm, she could put her hand flat against her own window.

“But that’s so possible,” she said. “I mean, it’s something you can do.” They had been talking about their ideal Saturdays and Virginia had confessed she liked the house quiet, to herself, when she could work on a painting.

Henry smiled and nodded his head. “You would think, wouldn’t you?”

He looked at her with such gentleness—she could see affection in his eyes—and she was flattered and unsettled by it.

“Yes, the boat.” He sighed thinking of it, or thinking of something whose import seemed beyond the simple conversation they were having. Or trying to have. Virginia had to admit it was awkward to talk to someone you didn’t know at all, someone you just had coffee with in the faculty room along with a dozen or more others where what you said was not strictly measured to determine who you really were. Henry gazed at the river where a sailboat was coming into their view, just at the bend, then turned to her again. “May I?” he said, lifting her hand.

She agreed, and watched their two hands fold into each other and rest on her left thigh. There can’t be anything wrong with simply holding hands on a Saturday morning, she thought to herself. With a co-worker she added, to give Henry a neutrality she wasn’t t feeling at all. What she experienced was a strong charge emanating from his hand to an area in herself she hadn’t felt for a few years. She took a few short breaths.

“It’s difficult to get away,” he explained, “on Saturdays. You know, the kids have things to do—there’s so much to catch up on around the house.”

“Don’t they like the boat?” Virginia had no children, so the “you know” Henry had inserted was just conversational rhythm.

“Ella doesn’t want them on it,” he said. Ella was Henry’s wife. “She’s afraid. And she has a point.”

Virginia tried to read Henry’s face. Was it being critical? She wanted him to be unhappy in his marriage, to adore her, the easy one, the one easy to talk to, soft around the edges, different. At the same time she admired him for defending his wife; that was a good thing to do.

“It’s not a big boat, and they have to know what they’re doing. I wouldn’t want to risk it with the kids either. Maybe when they get a little older, if they want to.”

Virginia stared at their hands and felt more than barren at the moment. Henry’s life seemed unimaginable to her, full of bustle and giggles and activities and things to do. Her life seemed almost sculpted. Stewart sat at a desk in the living room, reading his French papers, or Paris Match, or he took over the family room (family! what a misnomer!) with his opera recordings. He told her she could paint all she wanted there, too, to spread the ground cloth over her half, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t think around the soprano voices.

“Would you like to go?” Henry asked. “Would you like to try sailing with me?”