The Briefcase (6 page)

My wife and I often went hiking. We usually hiked smaller mountains, places that were about an hour’s train ride away. Early Sunday mornings, we’d take along a lunch my wife had packed for us and board the train, still empty at that hour. My wife had a book she loved called
Suburban Pleasure Hiking
. On its cover, there was a photo of a woman climbing a mountain with a walking stick, wearing leather hiking boots, knickerbockers, and a hat with a feather tucked into it. My wife had re-created this exact outfit—down to the walking stick—and she would wear it on our hiking trips. This is just ordinary hiking, I would say to her, You don’t need to be so formal about it. But she would reply, impervious to me, It’s
important to dress the part. She wouldn’t break character, even on a trail where people were walking around in flip-flops. She was a very hardheaded person.

This must have been when our son was in elementary school. The three of us were on one of our usual hiking trips. It was exactly the same time of year as now. It had been raining, and the mountain’s fall foliage was beautiful, although many of the brilliantly colored leaves had been scattered by the rain. I was wearing sneakers and had fallen down a couple of times when they got stuck in the mud. My wife had no trouble walking in her hiking boots. But whenever I fell, she refrained from making any sort of sarcastic remark. She may have been stubborn, but she did not go in for cattiness.

After walking for a while, we took a break and each had two honeyed lemon slices. I’m not particularly fond of sour sweets, but my wife insisted that honeyed lemon went together with mountain hiking, so I didn’t bother to argue. Even if I had, I doubt it would have bothered her, perhaps it would just have contributed to the subtle accumulation of anger—the way a succession of smaller waves accumulate into one big wave—that rippled throughout everyday life in unexpected places. That’s just the way married life is, I suppose.

Our son liked lemon even less than I did. He put the honeyed lemon in his mouth and then stood up and walked into a thicket of trees. He liked to pick up autumn leaves from the ground. The boy had a refined sensibility. I followed him to pick up some leaves myself, but when I got closer, I saw that he was stealthily digging a hole in the ground. He hastily dug a shallow hollow, hurriedly spit out the lemon in his mouth, then swiftly filled in the hole with dirt. That’s how much he disliked lemon. He wasn’t the kind of child who wasted food either. My wife had raised him well.

You must really hate it, I said to him. He was a bit startled, but then nodded silently. I’m not very fond of it either, I said, and he smiled with relief. Our son looked a lot like my wife when he smiled. He still looks a lot like her. Come to think of it, he will soon be fifty years old, the same age my wife was when she ran off.

The two of us were crouched over, busying ourselves with collecting autumn leaves when my wife walked up. Even though she was wearing those huge hiking boots, she didn’t make a sound. Hey there, she said behind our backs, and we both flinched with surprise. Look what I found—a Big Laughing Gym mushroom, she whispered in our ears.