ERNIE AND ERNESTINA: The Writer, His Wife, and their Afterlife

Book One, Part Two, Chapter 119: Missing in Action

Several neighbors know I’m writing of my life with Ernie, including Pat, who’s lived in this building a long time. We talk as she fills a plastic watering can and douses the potted junipers flanking the building’s side entrance.

She and her companion, Lou, were together almost twenty years, until he died last year. Although they didn’t live together, they played golf together, traveled to Africa together, and vacationed in his Florida condo. They were close to each other’s children.

“Only happy memories,” she says. “How about you? How are you doing?”

Her voice is so soft I only guess at what she’s asked. “Not so good.”

“You and Ernie seemed like a happy couple. You took your walks. You did what couples do.”

“I was disconnected from him. From everyone. That was my way.”

“As a form of protection?”

“Yes.”

She stops the watering to look directly at me. “I’m not being critical, but poor Ernie. That must have been hard for him.”

Tear spring to my eyes. I brush them away. “Yes. He was cheated.”

“I love to go back to my memories. Of Lou. Of my father. I often ask myself, when I’m faced with a decision, what my father would say to me. It was his habit, when I went to him for advice, to give me a few things to think about. Then he’d say: ‘We’ll talk again in a few weeks.’ ”

“I grew up in a family that didn’t talk. I wasn’t used to speaking my mind. I didn’t even know my own mind. I was empty inside.”

“You didn’t know this about yourself until now?”

“I knew there was something amiss in the marriage. The obvious person to talk to about this was Ernie. But this is just the kind of thing we didn’t talk about. It hovered just under the surface. . . . You can see our estrangement in photos. He has his arm about my waist, but I’m somewhere else. I’m missing in action. And I see the tension in his body, how rigid he held himself. I see it now, but I didn’t see it then.”

Missing in action. Most of my life, I’ve been in action . . . and missing.