TOUCHED

                                                 

“Mathematics always defeated me,” she said.

     They were calculating their taxes, going through the form line by line, she punching the numbers into the calculator, he quoting the numbers from the various documents and forms they had piled on the table and writing the numbers she gave him on the appropriate lines.  They had been at it now for a couple of hours, and they were both tired.  This year they had tried to do it on-line, but every time they thought they had it done and clicked on “send,” they had gotten a “form incomplete” indicator, and because they couldn’t figure out what they had done wrong, they went back to the beginning and started all over.   Thoroughly frustrated, they waited till the last minute to fill out the forms by hand, and now they had to get them to the post office, which would stay open until midnight for that purpose.

     “It was not my best subject, either,” he replied, “but I survived it.”

     “I survived,” she responded with a smile, “I’m here, aren’t I?”

     “Sure.”

     “But?  Isn’t there a ‘but?’  You mean you’re not going to take advantage of the opportunity I just gave you to put me down?”

     “Why do you accuse me of such baseness, Tia?  I don’t put you down.”

     “Ha!  I can’t believe you said that.  What?  Do I dream?  Is that it?”

     “Oh, stop being dramatic.  I don’t put you down.  Maybe sometimes you’re so sensitive that no matter what I say, you think I’m putting you down.”

     They were tired and frustrated, because they had so many deductions and so many investments that needed specific line-item identification, and then there were the charities, and then, and then, and it went on and on, which is what stymied the on-line effort.  Every year when they finished their taxes they said this is the last time they would do it themselves.  Always, it was, “Next year we go to the accountant.”  But they never did go. 

     They were married twenty years, and they had done their own taxes every one of those years.  But they were finished now.  The ordeal had come to its end.  He gathered up the forms, took the envelope she had all ready, pushed back his chair, and said, as he rose, he would be back in fifteen minutes.  She looked at the clock on the shelf by the bookcase and saw that it was only ten o’clock.  He had plenty of time.  She stood and stretched, the heels of her hands pressed into the small of her back.  She was thin, and he noticed how her ribs showed.  Her blond hair was beginning to gray at the temples, and he wondered why she didn’t do anything about it.  He wasn’t graying yet, though he felt it when he exercised and knew what he felt were signs. 

     He fished the car keys from the wicker basket at the end of the counter in the kitchen and went out the back door into the garage.  She heard the garage door going up and the car starting.  She swept all the papers and documents they had been working with into a pile and placed them in the big envelope she had labeled “Taxes for” and then wrote the year.  She had twenty of them now, neatly stored in a drawer in their study.  She could hear, even with the kitchen door closed, the garage door going down, and she could see her husband backing down the driveway through the window in the living room.  It was the last time she ever saw him.

John Wilkens had no idea what he was going to do as he backed down the driveway.  The tax forms and the addressed envelope sat on the seat next to him.  He needed to buy stamps, seal everything up, and hand it to the guy behind the counter.  He expected to be home again by ten fifteen, ten thirty at the latest, if there were a line at the post office.  He thought about who he might see there waiting on line.  He anticipated the conversations with a certain pleasure—everybody making fatalistic gestures, as though they were all Tea Partiers, and would gladly join a tax rebellion if only someone would start it.  He turned from his neighborhood onto Main Street, which crossed town. 

     Even though it was late, just after ten, there were so many people about it surprised him.  It was, after all, he said to himself, the middle of April, and the weather was fine.  The town was bustling.  The McDonald’s was jammed.  Teens paraded in their cars up and down Main, and couples still walked in the park, holding hands, sitting on the benches or on the swings.  There was a certain air of festivity in town, and as he drove towards the post office, he thought he might just tell Tia he wanted to go out for a hamburger and a coke when he got back, and didn’t she want to go, too?  But he knew she wouldn’t.  He might have better luck getting her to go out if he said he saw Darin and Marsha going into Duffy’s, and didn’t she feel like a glass of wine and some talk before turning in?  As he passed the bar, he slowed down and tried to peer through its big window overlooking the sidewalk to see if he could see who might be in there.  But he couldn’t make anyone out, nor could he identify any of the cars parked along the sidewalk on Duffy’s block.

     That’s when he saw Linda Went standing on the corner.  She was wearing jeans and a light blue windbreaker over a tee-shirt, and she looked to him at that moment just like she did when they were in high school.  He couldn’t help himself.  His foot came off the gas pedal.  He and Linda had been sweethearts when they were in tenth and eleventh grades.  Her life got complicated then, and they went separate ways.  He went off to college and met Tia, and she, Linda, had never married.  He wondered about that as he braked the car and swerved toward the curb at the corner where she stood.  He touched the horn to get her to look into the car and see that it was him.  She stooped and saw him and smiled.  The way her head turned made her ponytail swing behind, and then swing to the other side of her neck.  He gestured for her to get in.  To his surprise, she opened the door and slipped onto the seat beside him, laughing, saying, “What a coincidence to see you here, John.  What are you up to?”

     “I’m running away from home, Linda.  Wanna come?  Whadaya think?” he said, falling back into their teenage dialect.  He hadn’t said, “Whadaya think?” since he graduated high school.  It was one of their teen identifications.  Whenever someone met up with another, a guy or a girl, he’d say, “Whadaya think?”  And the other’d reply, “Ain’t got nobody!”  Then they would shake hands if they were guys, and if the other was a girl they’d touch cheeks.  He loved that, doing that with a girl, especially someone he really liked.  But he liked everyone in those days.  He never did that little teen ritual with Tia, though.  For an instant he imagined explaining it to her.  But then Linda with the brown ponytail said, “Run away, hey?  You, running away?  Well, if you’re brave enough to do that, I’ll go with you.”

     It was no more complicated than that.  She had picked up the tax forms and the envelope when she got in, and he looked over at them and told her he had just that one thing to do and could she wait.  And she said, “No need, John, I have stamps in my purse.”  So she sealed up the envelope, put two stamps on it, and as they passed the post office, he swung into the blue box at the curb on the corner, lowered his window, took the envelope from her, and dropped it in.  The task done, they looked at each other for a moment, then he said, “Where to, girl?”  And she said, “Paradise.”  They both laughed.  But he pulled away from the curb, pointed his car south on Main, and drove away into the night.  She settled beside him, stretched her hand out to his right arm, and rubbed it.  When he was seventeen and driving his first car, she would get in beside him and do that, every time.  It always made him feel good.  Tonight, it made him lose his mind.