Excerpt from No River Wide

Both things first: Greta Steno is two places at once and walking.  She is in a Chicago neighborhood in the early fall on a sidewalk made ramshackle by tree roots, and she is barefoot in Florida on a warm winter evening, the broad leaves of a banana tree swiping at her hair.  She is thirty-nine and forty-two years old.

In Chicago, she wears paint-spattered clothes and walks with her husband to the house of Ellen Riley, who is her closest friend and who is about to move to Florida.  In Florida, she is in a tight black dress and walks beside Ellen, whose last name is no longer Riley, and they are on their way to a party.  In Chicago, the late-morning air still conjures the façade of summer, and Greta’s husband stumbles on the ragged sidewalk, falling to his knees.  In Florida, Greta and Ellen drink scotch from transparent disposable cups, the winter dusk as warm as spring, Greta’s husband two years in the ground.

“A good thing we’re wearing our nasties,” her husband says, examining the tear in the knee of his slacks.  Duncan is slow finding his feet.  The weight of middle age has settled in his trunk and limbs.  He’s been awkward lately, wooden in his expressions.  He’d been a lanky boy in a rock band when Greta met him in college.  Now their son has a gangly build, while Duncan’s body has become thick and ponderous.  Their daughter, thankfully, looks like Greta.    

“It feels like they’re doing this to us,” he says, getting up.  “I know that’s silly.”  He’s talking about the move.  Ellen’s husband, Theo, has accepted a transfer.  He has gone to Florida this weekend to look for a house.    

At the intersection, they can see the top of the great white oak, a landmark tree in a Chicago burg known for its trees. Ellen and Theo’s house was built in the 1920’s, and the architect designed a notch in one corner to accommodate the oak, which even then was enormous.  Today its upper limbs tremble, and though neither Greta nor Duncan mentions it, they understand the destruction has begun.

From The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards. © 2009 by Robert Boswell. All rights reserved.