Free Luck by Joan Barfoot

choice was an easy one, although not everyone believes that. Why would they want children? They cared for what they each did, and for each other. Other people might rattle on about what a unique form of love children inspire, no doubt true, but there are other unique forms of love, and other constellations for purposeful lives. It was also noticeable that in the lives of others, children were rarely unmixed blessings. They were a good deal more than love, they were often enough heartbreak and wrong turns and decades of fretfulness, not only triumph. “We live as we choose,” Philip used to tell people, which could sound selfish but as he also said, “What’s wrong with that?” He meant they were smart enough to live according to their own natures, mutant or not.
    “So we’re selfish
and
smug,” they could, and did, laugh.
    Lynn was so young when Philip vanished on her, she had no end of fresh chances for her quite different desires. Nora’s hard heart was right; but now here’s a thought: is it proper to advise a first wife of her secondhand, out-of-date semi-widowhood?
    Imagine, she and Lynn might discover sisterhood over Philip’s dead body. Reminisce. Contrast and compare. Lynn might also have tips on how to move on after Philip; because at the moment, Nora can’t make out a future. Life goes on? Yes, she supposes it has to, but how?
    She puts a hand on her chest. Of course her heart is still thumping away in there all to itself. Selfish things, hearts. Focused entirely on their own survival.
    What if Max and Lily hadn’t given Nora reason to celebrate? What if Nora hadn’t run into Lynn in that coffee shop,what if, in the mild spirit of mutual benevolence, they hadn’t made lunch plans, what if she hadn’t knocked on Lynn’s door? Here he is, that young man, with that young man’s grin, full of mischief—fucking Philip, how dare he? Nora’s hand slams back into the bare white wall behind her, hurting her fist. The house feels bursting with one pent-up thing and another—pain and grief and bewilderment coalescing and transforming to fury, sizzling and ripping its way through rooms, hearts and limbs, cracking off doorframes and walls, crashing into windows, ricocheting all around, a great storm erupting—fucking Philip, absolutely.
    There must be thousands upon thousands of ameliorating, tender scenes of sweetness and thoughtfulness, of generosity and kindness. Nora’s just momentarily unplugged from most of her history. She can see perfectly well that beautiful young man at the door, and she can see perfectly well the quite different, middle-aged, marble-ized man on the pillow beside her this morning. What she can’t make out are the Philips in between, the progression that gradually and unmomentously transformed the first into the last.
    Change is grief, grief is rage. Is that true?
    And on the subject of change, grief and rage, what about Sophie, was there anything to that, given Sophie’s plush and available presence? As Nora’s mother said, a man who will break one promise will have little problem with two, and she was, in her small way, an expert. Nora has nothing like proof, only little pricklings sometimes, like last night as they played Scrabble and she saw Sophie and Philip glance at each other when Beth, typically simple-minded, threw down the word “lay.” Surely adults would not be exchanging looks over a dumb word like
lay
, too juvenile and unworthy, but still, sometimes recently there’s beensomething like a faint perfume in the air of a room containing both Sophie and Philip.
    Why would it matter?
    To stoke fury. To ward off more sorrow. To blame Philip further.
    Given time and the right moment, Nora might have tackled Philip flat out. It’s been strangely more difficult to enquire of Sophie if she’s had designs, and moreover hands, on Nora’s husband. Having endured what she has, Sophie might consider Philip fair compensation. Perhaps there are also large price tags for