Lorrie Moore

Like Life

From the short story "Joy."

And she did. Shen went the following Thursday and had dinner with Bridey and Bridey's husband, who was a big gentle man who did consulting work for computer companies. He was wearing a shirt printed with seahorses, like her ex-lover the toymaker had worn when he had come east to visit, one final weekend, for old times' sake. It had been a beautiful shirt, soft as pajamas, and he'd worn it when they had driven that Sunday, out past the pumpkin fairs, to the state line, to view the Mississippi. The river had rushed by them, beneath them, a clayey green, a deep, deep khaki.  She had touched the shirt, held on to it, in this lunarscape of scrub oaks and jack pines, in this place that had once at the start of the world been entirely under water and now just had winds, it was good to have a river cutting through, breaking up the land. In the distance, past a valley dalmatianed with birches, these wee larger trees, cedars and goldening tamaracks --- goldening! --- and Jane felt that at last here was a moment she would take with her into the rest of the life, unlosable. There seemed nothing so true as a yellow tree. 

(Published by Plume 1990, originally 1988, pages 64 and 65.)