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.Most of my life I’ve lived in cities, first in Trenton, and when I was seventeen we moved to L.A.I like the country, though, and have since I was small and was sent to camp.I once thought of majoring in environmental studies—preserving animals, forests, the land, you know.”“Why didn’t you?”“I got good enough grades but my heart wasn’t in staying in college.I was restless with myself.”He pointed to buttercups, then daisies.“Those are oxeye daisies.Do you know what the word means?—the day’s eye, Fanny—beautiful, the sun in a flower.”She fished a plastic case out of her bag—her contact lenses.Fanny wet them with the tip of her tongue, then pulled her eyelids apart and dabbed in each lens with her index finger.“Jesus, what pretty flowers!”He pointed to a cluster of light-blue tiny flowers.“Do you know those?”“Yes, forget-me-nots, I know them.”“Do you know the red ones there—trillium? They’re also called red rooster.”Fanny clucked like a hen.Dubin picked a flower and handed it to her.At first she looked as though she didn’t know what to do with it, then held it in her left hand.“The bright yellow flat open ones are celandine,” he said.“I once knew a girl by that name.”“Did you sleep with her?”“I loved her.”“Is there a Fanny flower?”“Not that I know but there is a sweet William.”“Male chauvinism,” Fanny laughed.Dubin chuckled huskily.He waded into the grass and plucked a white blossom.“This could be wild lily of the valley.I’m not sure, I’ll have to look it up when I get home.” He slipped the flower into his wallet.“Do you have a flower book?”“My wife has a dozen.”Fanny thought she would buy herself one next time she went into a bookstore.“It’s about time I got to know some of them.” Then she asked, “What about the blossoms on those bushes? Do you know the names of them?”Dubin said it was odd about the shrubs there.“They’re cultivated, not wild.The only way I can explain it—I figure this from the depression in the earth—is that once the house I mentioned stood here.The woman had shrubs growing around the place.That’s bridal wreath you asked about.It’s beginning to wither.”“How pretty some of those names are.What do you call those?”“Mock orange.You have to smell the blossoms to be sure.There are others that look like them but have no scent.”“I can smell the orange,” Fanny said.She had picked a blossom and touched it to her lips.“It’s mock orange.”“How do you know them all?”Dubin said he didn’t know that many.“Lawrence seemed to recognize every flower in creation.Thoreau catalogued anything he saw or met in the woods, literally hundreds of flowers.I know few.”“Man, you know all these.”“My lucky day.Some fields I pass I don’t know more than Queen Anne’s lace.My wife taught me most of them and some flowering bushes.When I forget their names I ask her again.”“How is she doing these days?” Fanny wanted to know.“Are her glands still bothering her?”He said she was fine.“You mentioned her yourself just now,” she said slightly stiffly.“Roger happened to tell me she was good in her library work.”He affirmed his wife was fine.“Does she still go around sniffing the gas burners?”Dubin said he was used to the burners.“I try not to say anything when she smells them, and for that I expect her not to comment when I yell at myself in the bathroom mirror.”“She and I never liked each other much.”“Cleaning house wasn’t your act, Fanny.”They were walking a few feet apart, Fanny kicking the flowers.“I’m not criticizing or anything like that but did you know she’d go around smelling the gas before you married her?”“You can’t know everything in advance or what’s marriage for? You take your chances.Whoever marries you will be taking one.”“You can say that again.But I may not want to get married.”“It’s not so bad.In a marriage, after a while you learn what’s given: who your wife is and you are, and how well you can live with each other.If you think you have a chance you’re married.That’s your choice if nothing else was.”“It’s not much of one.”“We met in a curious way,” Dubin explained.“Once I said I’d tell you about it.It was like not really meeting until we were ready to.She had written a letter more or less advertising for a husband.”“And you answered it?” Fanny said in pretend-astonishment.“I happened to read it, though it wasn’t addressed to me, and another she wrote canceling the intent of the first.To make it short, I became interested in her.We corresponded until we had developed some sense of each other.If a man and woman stay around trying to define themselves, at a certain point they become responsible one to the other.So we met, looked, talked, and after a while arranged to be married.”“What do you mean ‘arranged’?”“That’s how I think of it.Kitty may have a better word.”“Were you in love with her? Like with Celandine?”“She was someone I wanted to love.”“Did she feel that way?”They had gone through the flowers and were approaching a small wood of thick-armed dark-green oaks whose trunks were spotted with mold.“I imagine there was an expectation of love.If you feel that, it doesn’t take long to happen.”“Why didn’t you live together first and try it out?”“In those days,” he explained, “few did that, Fanny.You got married.Those who didn’t were rare birds and not always happy ones.Kitty was a widow with a child.I needed to be settled.”“Do you love her now? When I passed you on the road before I thought you looked lonely.”“Some are lonelier than others.My mother, in her sad way, was very lonely; my father had to be.I suppose I’m more than ordinarily a solitudinous type.It’s not a curse if you learn what the pleasures of it are.But that’s another story.”“I can’t stand being lonely.There are no pleasures in it for me.”“You shouldn’t have many worries, you seem to make friends easily.”She wanted to know how he meant that.Dubin said he was not saying she was promiscuous.“You’d better not because I’m not.If I was once I’m not any more.” She looked at him intently.“Do you believe that?”He wasn’t sure but said he did.“What are your questions asking, Fanny?”“About marriage.Everybody talks about it differently.I like to know what it is.”“‘Bear and forbear,’ Sam Johnson defined it.”“That’s not much.”“He was very sensible about marriage as he was in most things.”“What about you?”“In the best of marriages you give what you can and get back as much or more.With the right people it’s a decent enterprise.It gives pleasure
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