In the unrealistic days of their marriage there was a question whether she would read what he wrote. He was a beginner and she is a tougher critic than she meant to be. It was touchy, her embarrassment, his resentment. Now in his letter he said, damn! but this book is good. How much he had learned about life and craft. He wanted to show her, let her read and see, judge for herself. She was the best critic he ever had, he said. She could help him too, for in spite of its merits he was afraid the novel lacked something. She would know, she could tell him. Take your time, he said, scribble a few words, whatever pops into your head. Signed, “Your old Edward still remembering.”

She remembers giving him advice on how to write. How audacious that now seems. She said, you need to stop writing about yourself, nobody cares how fine your feelings are. He replied, Nobody ever writes about anything but himself. She said, You need to know literature, you need to write with literature and the world in mind. For years she was afraid she had killed something in him, and she hoped his turning to insurance meant he didn’t mind. But this book looks like a different kind of answer. She wonders how much contempt or irony lies behind his choice of subject, and she hopes he is sincere.

Despite his fine outer manner, she soon discovered he had suffered a crippling injury: his heart was broken. He had been engaged to a girl named Maria, who had jilted him and married somebody else. Jilted: a good old-fashioned word. He did not seem heartbroken. He seemed vigorous and enthusiastic about the future. But heartbroken was a secret state, which she could share. It occurred to her she was heartbroken too, on account of Jake, who was retaliating for her career choice by a program of worldwide travel and picking up girls. She and Edward could be heartbroken together. It gave them something to talk about, and it protected them from each other, like brother and sister: no need to worry about hearts since their hearts were broken.

I don’t know why or how

Sometimes in August a maple

Will drop through a leaf burned through

Its tender parts with coral

While the veins keep green –

A rare device of color.

When I found such a one

I acted the despoiler,

Taking it from the woods

To give a friend for a trifle,

But her mind was on good deeds

And I turned shy and fearful.

The boobyhatch’s bars, the guards, the nurses,

The illimitable locks and keys are all arranged

To thwart the hand that continually rehearses

Its ending stroke and raise a barricade

Against destruction-seeking resolution.

Many of us in there would have given all

(But we had nothing) for one small razor blade

Or seventy grains of the comforting amytal.

So I went down in the attitude or prayer,

Yes, to my knees on the cold floor of my cell,

Humped in a corner, a bird with a broken wing,

An asked and asked as fervently and well

As I could guess to do for light in the mists

Of death, until I learned God doesn’t care.

Not only that, he doesn’t care at all,

One way or the other. That is why he exists.

   Yet had I not much

who went out – out! – among those

heartless all around, to look

   and talk sometimes and touch?

   In the big lunatic house

I did not fly apart nor spatter

the walls with myself, not quite.

   I sat with madness in my mouth.

   But never, it was never enough.

Else how could all these books

I did not write bend down my back

   grown now so old and rough?