“Frank.”

“Dolly.”

After a moment I realized that Gwen, Gwendolyn, could indeed be teased into Dolly.

And any young man would rather be called Frank than Franklin.

They did not forget about me, or Franklin didn’t, except for that one moment.

“You’ve heard me mention Dolly?”

His voice insisted on our going back to normal, while Dolly’s or Gwen’s voice insisted on the enormous or even supernatural joke of their finding each other.

“I can’t tell you the last time when I ever heard myself called that. Not anybody else in the world that knows me by that name. Dolly.”

The odd thing now was that I began to participate in the general merriment. For wonder would have to be changed into merriment before my eyes, and that was happening. The whole discovery had to take that quick turn. And so eager was I apparently to do my share that I produced a bottle of wine.

Franklin does not drink anymore. He never drank much, then quietly gave it up altogether. So it was up to Gwen and myself to chatter and explain, in our newly discovered high spirits, and to keep remarking on the coincidence of things.

She told me that she had been a nursemaid when she knew Franklin. She had been working in Toronto, looking after two little English children whose parents had sent them out to Canada so that they could miss the war. There was other help in the house so she got most of her evenings off and she would go out to have a good time, as what young girl wouldn’t? She met Franklin when he was on his last leave before going overseas and they had as crazy a time as you could imagine. He might have written her a letter or two, but she was just too busy for letters. Then when the war was over she got on a boat as soon as possible to transport the English children home and she met a man on that boat whom she married.

But it didn’t last, England was so dreary after the war that she thought she would die, so she came on home.

That was a part of her life I didn’t already know about. But I did know about her two weeks with Franklin, and so, as I have said, did many others. At least if they read poetry. They knew how lavish she was with her love, but they didn’t know as I did how she believed that she couldn’t get pregnant because she had been a twin and wore her dead sis’s hair in a locket around her neck. She had all kinds of notions like that and gave Franklin a magic tooth—he didn’t know whose—to keep him safe when he left to go overseas. He managed to lose it right away, but his life was spared.

She had a rule also that if she stepped off a curb on the wrong foot the whole day would go bad for her, and so they would have to go back and do it again. Her rules enthralled him.

To tell the truth I was privately un-enthralled when told this. I had thought how men are charmed by stubborn quirks if the girl is good-looking enough. Of course that has gone out of fashion. At least I hope it has. All that delight in the infantile female brain. (When I first went teaching they told me there was a time, not long ago, when women never taught mathematics. Weakness of intellect prevented it.)

Of course that girl, that charmer I had badgered him into telling me about, might be generally made up. She might be anybody’s creation. But I did not think so. She was her own sassy choice. She’d loved herself so thoroughly.

Naturally I kept my mouth shut about what he’d told me and what had gone into the poem. And Franklin remained quiet about that most of the time too, except to say something about what Toronto was like in those teeming war days, about the stupid liquor laws or the farce of the Church Parade. If I had thought at this point that he might make her a gift of any of his writing, it seemed I was mistaken.

He got tired and went to bed. Gwen or Dolly and I made up her bed on the couch. She sat on the side of it with her last cigarette, telling me not to worry, she was not going to burn the house down, she never lay down till it was finished.

Our room was cold, the windows opened much wider than usual. Franklin was asleep. He was really asleep, I could always tell if he was shamming.

I hate going to sleep knowing there are dirty dishes on the table, but I had felt suddenly too tired to do them with Gwen helping as I knew she would. I meant to get up early in the morning to clear things away.

But I woke to full daylight and a clatter in the kitchen and the smell of breakfast as well as the smell of cigarettes. Conversation too, and it was Franklin talking when I would have expected Gwen. I heard her laughing at whatever he said. I got up at once and hurried into my clothes and fixed my hair, a thing I never usually bother with so early.

All the safety and merriment of the evening was gone from me. I made a good deal of noise coming down the stairs.

Gwen was at the sink with a row of sparkling clean glass jars on the draining board.

“Done the dishes all by hand because I was scared I wouldn’t get the hang of your dishwasher,” she said. “Then I got hold of these jars up there and I thought I might as well do them while I was at it.”

“They haven’t been washed in a century,” I said.

“Yeah, I didn’t think so.”

Franklin said he’d gone out and tried the car again, but no go. He had got hold of the garage though, and they’d said that somebody could come up and look at it this afternoon. But he thought instead of waiting around he’d tow the car down there and they could get at it this morning.

“Gives Gwen a chance to get at the rest of the kitchen,” I said, but neither one was interested in my joke. He said no, Gwen had better go with him, they’d want to talk to her since it was her car.

I noticed that he had a little trouble saying the name Gwen, having to push aside Dolly.

I said I had been joking.

He asked if he could make me any breakfast and I said no.

“How she keeps her figure,” Gwen said. And somehow even this compliment turned into a thing they could laugh at together.

Neither gave any sign of knowing how I felt, though it seemed to me I was behaving oddly, with every remark I made coming out like some brittle kind of mockery. They are so full of themselves, I thought. It was an expression that came from I don’t know where. When Franklin went out to prepare the car to be towed she followed, as if she didn’t want to lose sight of him for a moment.

As she left she called back that she could never thank me enough.

Franklin tooted the horn to wish me good-bye, a thing he never did normally.

I wanted to run after them, pound them to pieces. I walked up and down as this grievous excitement got more and more of a hold on me. There was no doubt at all about what I should do.

In a fairly short time I went out and got into my car, having dropped my house key through the slot in the front door. I had a suitcase beside me, though I had already more or less forgotten what I’d put in it. I had written a terse note saying that I had to check some facts about Martha Ostenso and then I started to write a longer note which I intended to address to Franklin but did not want Gwen to see when she came back with him as she surely would. It said that he must be free to do as he wished and that the only thing that was unbearable to me was the deception or perhaps it was self-deception. There was nothing for it but for him to admit what he wanted. It was ridiculous and cruel to make me watch it and so I would just get out of the way.

I went on to say that no lies, after all, were as strong as the lies we tell ourselves and then unfortunately have to keep telling to make the whole puke stay down in our stomachs, eating us alive, as he would find out soon enough. And so on, a berating that became in even so short a space somewhat repetitive and rambling and more and more without dignity or grace. I understood now that it would have to be rewritten before I could let it go to Franklin so I had to take it with me and send it through the mail.