On Saturday morning, the day after Anna’s announcement, the sun was already stifling as I parked in the lot at Creekside. As in most southern towns, August slows the pace of life in New Bern. People drive more cautiously, traffic lights seem to stay red longer than usual, and those who walk use just enough energy to move their bodies forward, as if engaging in slow-motion shuffle contests.  Jane and Anna were already gone for the day. After coming in from the deck last night, Jane sat at the kitchen table and started making notes of all that she had to do. Though she was under no illusions that she would be able to accomplish everything, her notes covered three pages, with goals outlined for each day of the following week.

Jane had always been good with projects. Whether it was running a fund-raiser for the Boy Scouts or organizing a church raffle, my wife was usually the person tapped to volunteer. While it left her feeling overwhelmed at times—she did, after all, have three children engaged in other activities—she never refused.  Recalling how frazzled she often became, I made a mental note to keep any requests of her time to a minimum in the week to come.  The courtyard behind Creekside was landscaped with square hedges and clustered azaleas. After passing through the building—I was certain Noah wasn’t in his room—I followed the curving gravel pathway toward the pond. Spotting Noah, I shook my head when I noticed that he was wearing his favorite blue cardigan despite the heat. Only Noah could be chilled on a day like today.  He’d just finished feeding the swan, and it still swam in small circles before him. As I approached, I heard him speaking to it, though I couldn’t make out his words. The swan seemed to trust him completely. Noah once told me that the swan sometimes rested at his feet, though I had never actually seen this.  “Hello, Noah,” I said.

It was an effort for him to turn his head. “Hello, Wilson.” He raised a hand.

“Thanks for dropping by.”

“You doing okay?”

“Could be better,” he replied. “Could be worse, though, too.” Though I came here often, Creekside sometimes depressed me, for it seemed to be full of people who’d been left behind in life. The doctors and nurses told us that Noah was lucky since he had frequent visitors, but too many of the others spent their days watching television to escape the loneliness of their final years. Noah still spent his evenings reciting poetry to the people who live here. He’s fond of the poems of Walt Whitman, and Leaves of Grass was on the bench beside him. He seldom went anywhere without it, and though both Jane and I have read it in the past, I must admit that I don’t understand why he finds the poems so meaningful.

Studying him, I was struck anew by how sad it was to watch a man like Noah grow old. For most of my life, I’d never thought of him in those terms, but nowadays, when I heard his breath, it reminded me of air moving through an old accordion.  He didn’t move his left hand, a consequence of the stroke he’d suffered in the spring. Noah was winding down, and while I’d long known this was coming, it seemed that he finally realized it as well.

He was watching the swan, and following his gaze, I recognized the bird by the black spot on its chest. It reminded me of a mole or birthmark, or coal in the snow, nature’s attempt to mute perfection. At certain times of the year, a dozen swans could be found on the water, but this was the only one that never left.  I’ve seen it floating on the pond even when the temperature plunged in the winter and the other swans had long migrated farther south. Noah once told me why the swan never left, and his explanation was one of the reasons the doctors thought him delusional.

Taking a seat beside him, I recounted what had happened the night before with Anna and Jane. When I finished, Noah glanced at me with a slight smirk.  “Jane was surprised?” he asked.

“Who wouldn’t be?”

“And she wants things a certain way?”

“Yes,” I said. I told him about the plans she had outlined at the kitchen table before discussing an idea of my own, something that I thought Jane had overlooked.

With his good hand, Noah reached over and patted my leg as if giving me the okay.

“How about Anna?” he asked. “How’s she doing?”

“She’s fine. I don’t think Jane’s reaction surprised her in the least.”

“And Keith?”

“He’s fine, too. At least from what Anna said.”

Noah nodded. “A good young couple, those two. They both have kind hearts. They remind me of Allie and myself. ”

I smiled. “I’ll tell her you said that. It’ll make her day.”

We sat in silence until Noah finally motioned toward the water.

“Did you know that swans mate for life?” he said.

“I thought that was a myth.”

“It’s true,” he insisted. “Allie always said it was one of the most romantic things she’d ever heard. For her, it proved that love was the most powerful force on earth. Before we were married, she was engaged to someone else. You knew that, right?”

I nodded.

“I thought so. Anyway, she came to visit me without telling her fiancé, and I took her out in a canoe to a place where we saw thousands of swans clustered together. It was like snow on the water. Did I ever tell you that?” I nodded again. Though I hadn’t been there, the image was vivid in my mind, as it was in Jane’s. She often spoke of that story with wonder.  “They never came back after that,” he murmured. “There were always a few in the pond, but it was never like that day again.” Lost in the memory, he paused. “But Allie liked to go there anyway. She liked to feed the ones that were there, and she used to point out the pairs to me. There’s one, she’d say, there’s another one. Isn’t it wonderful how they’re always together?” Noah’s face creased as he grinned. “I think it was her way of reminding me to stay faithful.” “I don’t think she needed to worry about that.”

“No?” he asked.

“I think you and Allie were meant for each other.”

He smiled wistfully. “Yes,” he finally said, “we were. But we had to work at it.

We had our tough times, too.”

Perhaps he was referring to her Alzheimer’s. And long before that, the death of one of their children. There were other things, too, but these were the events he still found difficult to discuss.

“But you made it seem so easy,” I protested.

Noah shook his head. “It wasn’t. Not always. All those letters I used to write to her were a way of reminding her not only how I felt about her, but of the vow we’d once made to each other.”

I wondered if he was trying to remind me of the time he’d suggested that I do such a thing for Jane, but I made no mention of it. Instead, I brought up something I’d been meaning to ask him.

“Was it hard for you and Allie after all the kids had moved out?” Noah took a moment to think about his answer. “I don’t know if the word was hard, but it was different.”

“How so?”

“It was quiet, for one thing. Really quiet. With Allie working in her studio, it was just me puttering around the house a lot of the time. I think that’s when I started talking to myself, just for the company.”

“How did Allie react to not having the kids around?” “Like me,” he said. “At first, anyway. The kids were our life for a long time, and there’s always some adjusting when that changes. But once she did, I think she started to enjoy the fact that we were alone again.” “How long did that take?” I asked.

“I don’t know. A couple of weeks, maybe.”

I felt my shoulders sag. A couple of weeks? I thought.  Noah seemed to catch my expression, and after taking a moment, he cleared his throat. “Now that I think about it,” he said, “I’m sure it wasn’t even that long. I think it was just a few days before she was back to normal.” A few days? By then I couldn’t summon a response.  He brought a hand to his chin. “Actually, if I remember right,” he went on, “it wasn’t even a few days. In fact, we did the jitterbug right there in front of the house as soon as we’d loaded the last of David’s things in the car. But let me tell you, the first couple of minutes were tough. Real tough. I sometimes wonder how we were able to survive them.”

Though his expression remained serious as he spoke, I detected the mischievous gleam in his eye.

“The jitterbug?” I asked.

“It’s a dance.”

“I know what it is.”

“It used to be fairly popular.”

“That was a long time ago.”

“What? No one jitterbugs anymore?”

“It’s a lost art, Noah.”

He nudged me gently. “Had you going, though, didn’t I.”

“A little,” I admitted.

He winked. “Gotcha.”

For a moment he sat in silence, looking pleased with himself. Then, knowing he hadn’t really answered my question, he shifted on the bench and let out a long breath.

“It was hard for both of us, Wilson. By the time they’d left, they weren’t just our kids, but our friends, too. We were both lonesome, and for a while there, we weren’t sure what to do with each other.”

“You’ve never said anything about it.”

“You never asked,” he said. “I missed them, but of the two of us, I think it was worse for Allie. She may have been a painter, but she was first and foremost a mother, and once the kids were gone, it was like she wasn’t exactly sure who she was anymore. At least for a while, anyway.”

I tried to picture it but couldn’t. It wasn’t an Allie that I’d ever seen or even imagined possible.

“Why does that happen?” I asked.

Instead of answering, Noah looked over at me and was silent for a moment. “Did I ever tell you about Gus?” he finally asked. “Who used to visit me when I was fixing the house?”

I nodded. Gus, I knew, was kin to Harvey, the black pastor I sometimes saw when visiting Noah’s property.

“Well, old Gus,” Noah explained, “used to love tall tales, the funnier the better. And sometimes we used to sit on the porch at night trying to come up with our own tall tales to make each other laugh. There were some good ones over the years, but you want to know what my favorite one was? The tallest tale Gus ever uttered? Now, before I say this, you have to understand that Gus had been married to the same gal for half a century, and they had eight kids. Those two had been through just about everything together. So anyway, we’d been telling these stories back and forth all night, and he said, ‘I’ve got one.’ So then Gus took a deep breath, and with a straight face, he looked me right in the eye and said, ‘Noah, I understand women.’ ” Noah chuckled, as if hearing it for the first time. “The point is,” he continued, “that there’s no man alive who can honestly say those words and mean them. It just isn’t possible, so there’s no use trying. But that doesn’t mean you can’t love them anyway. And it doesn’t mean that you should ever stop doing your best to let them know how important they are to you.” On the pond, I watched the swan flutter and adjust its wings as I contemplated what he’d said. This had been the way Noah talked to me about Jane during the past year. Never once had he offered specific advice, never once had he told me what to do. At the same time, he was always conscious of my need for support.  “I think Jane wishes I could be more like you,” I said.  At my words, Noah chuckled. “You’re doing fine, Wilson,” he said. “You’re doing just fine.”

Aside from the ticking of the grandfather clock and the steady hum of the air conditioner, the house was quiet when I reached home. As I dropped my keys on the desk in the living room, I found myself scanning the bookshelves on either side of the fireplace. The shelves were filled with family photographs that had been taken over the years: the five of us dressed in jeans and blue shirts from two summers ago, another at the beach near Fort Macon when the kids were teens, still another from when they were even younger. Then there were those that Jane had taken: Anna in her prom dress, Leslie wearing her cheerleader outfit, a photo of Joseph with our dog, Sandy, who’d sadly passed away a few summers ago.  There were more, too, some that went back to their infancy, and though the pictures weren’t arranged chronologically, it was a testament to how the family had grown and changed over the years.

In the center of the shelves right above the fireplace sat a black-and-white photograph of Jane and me on the day of our wedding. Allie had snapped the picture on the courthouse steps. Even then, Allie’s artistry was apparent, and though Jane had always been beautiful, the lens had been kind to me as well that day. It was how I hoped I would always look when standing by her side.  But, strangely, there are no more photographs of Jane and me as a couple on the shelves. In the albums, there are dozens of snapshots that the kids had taken, but none had ever found its way into a frame. Over the years, Jane had suggested a number of times that we have another portrait made, but in the steady rush of life and work, it never quite claimed my attention. Now, I sometimes wonder why we never made the time, or what it means for our future, or even whether it matters at all.

My conversation with Noah had left me musing about the years since the children left home. Could I have been a better husband all along? Unquestionably, yes.  But looking back, I think it was during the months that followed Leslie’s departure for college that I truly failed Jane, if an utter lack of awareness can be characterized that way. I remember now that Jane seemed quiet and even a bit moody during those days, staring sightlessly out the glass doors or sorting listlessly through old boxes of the kids’ stuff. But it was a particularly busy year for me at the firm—old Ambry had suffered a heart attack and was forced to drastically reduce his workload, transferring many of his clients’ matters to me. The dual burdens of an immensely increased workload and the organizational toll Ambry’s illness took on the firm often left me exhausted and preoccupied.  When Jane suddenly decided to redecorate the house, I took it as a good sign that she was busying herself with a new project. Work, I reasoned, would keep her from dwelling on the kids’ absence. And so appeared leather couches where there were once upholstered ones, coffee tables made of cherry, lamps of twisted brass. New wallpaper hangs in the dining room, and the table has enough chairs to accommodate all our children and their future spouses. Though Jane did a wonderful job, I must admit that I was frequently shocked by the credit card bills when they started arriving in the mail, though I learned it was best if I didn’t comment on it.

It was after she finished, however, that we both began to notice a new awkwardness in the marriage, an awkwardness that had to do not with an empty nest, but with the type of couple we’d become. Yet neither of us spoke about it.  It was as if we both believed that speaking the words aloud would somehow make them permanent, and I think both of us were afraid of what might happen as a result.

This, I might add, is also the reason we’ve never been to counseling. Call it old-fashioned, but I’ve never been comfortable with the thought of discussing our problems with others, and Jane is the same way. Besides, I already know what a counselor would say. No, the children leaving didn’t cause the problem, the counselor would say, nor did Jane’s increased free time. They were simply catalysts that brought existing problems into sharper focus.  What, then, had led us to this point?

Though it pains me to say, I suppose our real problem has been one of innocent neglect—mostly mine, if I’m perfectly honest. In addition to frequently placing my career above the needs of my family, I’ve always taken the stability of our marriage for granted. As I saw it, ours was a relationship without major problems, and Lord knows I was never the type to run around doing the little things that men like Noah did for their wives. When I thought about it—which, truthfully, wasn’t often—I reassured myself that Jane had always known what kind of man I was, and that would always be enough.

But love, I’ve come to understand, is more than three words mumbled before bedtime. Love is sustained by action, a pattern of devotion in the things we do for each other every day.

Now, as I stared at the picture, all I could think was that thirty years of innocent neglect had made my love seem like a lie, and it seemed that the bill had finally come due. We were married in name only. We hadn’t made love in nearly half a year, and the few kisses we shared had little meaning for either of us. I was dying on the inside, aching for all that we’d lost, and as I stared at our wedding photograph, I hated myself for allowing it to happen.