It's not until the night of her reunion that I ask my wife about old sweethearts. We're
already on the way to her hometown, fifty miles upstate in Noble County.

    "What about them?" she says.

    "Any I should know of?" I say.

    "David Tillman," she says.

    "Who's he?" I ask, surprised.

    "He was a boyfriend," says my wife.

    "What's his deal?" I ask, afraid she's going to tell me he owns his own business.

    "He died," she says looking past her own reflection, out at the flat dusk.

    "Recently?"

    "No," says my wife. "While we were dating."

    The radio is off. I wish I had turned it on when we started the drive. Now would be a good time for a song.

    "Ten years ago?" I say.

    "Almost to the day," says my wife. She doesn't meet my eyes. She continues looking out the window, watching the blue sky recede into gray.

    "Well, Jesus Christ," I say, trying to laugh. "Have you gotten over him?"

    "Of course," she says.

    "So, why haven't I ever heard about him?"

    "I don't know," she says.

    "You don't know?" I say.

    "Look, David was a great man," says my wife.

    "What does that mean?" I ask.

    "You remember what it was like in high school."

    "Not yours," I say. I went to school down state, near Laffayette, where we live now.

    "Well, I'm sure it wasn't all that different," says my wife.

    "Why don't you tell me what it was like for you and then we'll compare," I say.

    "What do you want to know?" she asks.

    "I want to know why you've kept this dead boyfriend a secret."

    "His name was David Tillman," says my wife. "And I never kept him a secret."

    "Like hell," I say.

    "If this is going to be a problem..." says my wife.

    "Why would it be a problem," I say. "It's not like the man is going to be there."

    "Not exactly," says my wife.

    "Not exactly?" I say.

    "His name might come up," she tells me.

    "Great," I say. "I can't wait to hear all about him."

    We finish the drive to West Noble High School in silence, no music between us.

    At the sign-in table, we are greeted by a committee of three overweight women, each with names beginning with the letter D. All of them look about ten years older then Sally. For some reason this makes me feel proud, like I picked the best of the herd.

    Debra is the first to recognize my wife.

    "Sally Greenfield?" she shrieks.

    "Actually, it's Houser now," my wife says with a smile and a nod in my direction.

    The three D's look at me. Donna says, "Yes, of course. You must be the husband, Ted." Then she looks over her clipboard and makes two checks while Dee gives me and my wife blank nametags and pens.

    "So," says Debra. "What have you been up to the past decade?"

    "Well, my husband and I tried to start our own business down around Laffayette last year," says Sally.

    "That's great," says Diane with a horsey smile. The woman's either too thick to catch on to my wife's use of the past tense or else she's ignoring it. I can't quite tell. Either way I feel betrayed. My wife and I had agreed not to discuss the business with her classmates and already it's the first thing out her mouth.

    A band of balding men play a bad cover of some sad eighties song on a collapsible stage in the gymnasium. The basketball court is cleared and empty for dancing but no one does. Sally's whole class is divided on the sidelines. Some at tables, some mingling, all drinking. I leave Sally and go to the bar to get us both something strong.

    By the time I'm back some guy has glommed onto my wife's arm. His nametag simply reads, "WIFFER" in quotation marks. I hand my wife her drink and say hello.

    "You must be Ted," says "WIFFER."

    "Nice to meet you..." I say. I stare at his nametag.

    "Wiffer," he says moving his finger under the name.

    "I see," I say.

    My wife takes a sip of her drink. She makes a face. Asks me what it is.

    "Alcohol," I tell her.

    Neither she nor "WIFFER" laugh.

    "Can I get you something different?" asks "WIFFER."

    "Do you mind, Wiffy?" says my wife.

    "No problem. I was heading over to the bar anyway," he says.

    "I'd love a Diet Coke," she says.

    "Coming right up," he says. "WIFFER" pats me twice on the back and leaves.

    Sally hands me her drink to hold once we're alone.

    "I don't know why you have to be such a dick," she says through a smile.

    "What?" I say.

    "You make everything about you."

    "Is this about me?" I ask.

    "No," says my wife. "It's not."

    "Who's it about?"

    Sally looks at me. But before she can answer, "WIFFER" is back with her soda and a new drink for himself.
"So," he butts in. "Sally tells me you two were in the manufacturing business."

    "Yes," I say, a drink in each hand.

    Buying the company was my idea but Sally's parents provided the capital. Colbin Tool. A longstanding and successful little business specializing in stainless steel fixtures for recreational vehicles. It was run out of an old man's basement when we bought it, name and all. The old man died a day after signing it over.

    We were destined to fail.

    Now just the sight of an RV causes tension between my wife and me.

    We see them everywhere.

    David Tillman's name comes up on five separate occasions in the time it takes me to finish my drinks. First when "WIFFER" asks my wife if she's visited his memorial. Then at the boy's memorial, which is nothing more then a poster-size portrait mounted on a wooden tripod at the end of a buffet line, someone asks my wife if she'd like to say a few words about David later. My wife excuses herself to run to the restroom, leaving me alone by the poster. Three different people come up to me and ask if I'm David's relation.

    "No," I tell each stranger. "No," and "no," again.

    But I know why they ask. We have the same face. Heavy-lidded blue eyes, thick smirking lips. Humongo noggins.

    Sometimes Sally likes to tell me I got a head the size of a boulder. As sculpted by Michelangelo, she'll always quickly add to lighten the insult. Looking at the poster of her dead boyfriend I see what she really means. I got the face of a David, all right.

    I go to the bar to get two more stiff ones because I like having something for each hand to hold. Then I scan the floor for my wife but I don't see her anywhere. I do spot "WIFFER" who smiles and waves at me from across the court, then whispers something to a woman standing near him. When she turns around I raise my drinks to her.

    The band of balding men play a slow song that I don't recognize. Maybe it's an original. Whatever it is, it's awful. Two or three couples dance to it all drunk and self-conscious, the men dipping and twirling their women over and over, the women laughing loud and giddy. The sight of them makes me embarrassed. I leave the gym to wander the halls of Sally's old school.

     The only thing my wife ever told me about her high school days was that she was considerably heavier back then. So much so, she said, that it pained her to see a picture of herself from that time, which was why she kept them all stored away in her parent's attic. I never considered there to be boyfriends in those pictures, maybe an effeminate guy pal or two but never boyfriends. That's why I never bothered to ask her about old sweethearts. Chubby girls never have them.

    I listen to the muddled sounds of the balding men beginning an inspirational ballad through the walls of the school. I walk the halls. I wonder what else I don't know about my wife, what else I never thought to ask, question.

    Her high school is dark and still and heavy with stranger's memories, the force of which I can sense like an old dream suddenly remembered.

    I had two serious girlfriends as a teenager. One smart, one pretty. The smart one used to write long, tedious letters explaining the inner workings of her heart and mind. The pretty one use to beat me off in the boy's bathroom between Calculus and Current Events. Both of them promised they'd love me forever. Both broke it off in the end. I wonder how they would've felt if I'd died on them before they'd had the chance.

    I think of David Tillman's dry old skull in a casket underground while his aging buddies dance around like idiots. Then I think of my wife ten years back. Fat Sally crying over young David's grave.

     The balding men stop playing music in the gymnasium. All is quiet for a moment. I get spooked standing alone in the dark hallway with nothing but my thoughts. So I exit the school into a back lot where a guy and a girl are smoking a joint under a dead tree.

    "Ted," one of them calls. It's "WIFFER."

    "Hello," I say, standing still by the door with two empty cups in my hands.

    "Looking for Sally?" he asks.

    "Yes," I say.

    "I don't know where she is," says "WIFFER." The girl he's with laughs, stops, then laughs again, this time coughing as she does.

    "Thanks," I say.

    "That's all right," he says.

    "WIFFER" doesn't offer me a drag of his joint which both relieves and annoys me. Relieves, because I'm getting tight as it is. Annoys, because it means he thinks I'm square. I walk past him and the girl, still holding my empty cups in both hands.

    The night is dark and starless. No light anywhere, like death.

    When I return to the gymnasium my wife is on the stage, crying in front of a microphone. Her classmates applaud.

    I missed what she said.

    I ask her to give me the gist in the car on the way home.

    "I talked about David," she says.

    "You looked pretty emotional up there," I say. She still does too. Her face is raw and pink. Her eyes are dark and wet.

    "I was," she says.

    Seeing my wife cry always gets me stiff.

    "You should know there are things you don't know about me, too," I say.

    "Of course," she says.

    "Secret things," I whisper.

    "Okay," she says, sniffling.

    "Like, I have an uncle who offered me twenty dollars to let him touch my ass."

    "That's awful," says Sally.

    "He said he was joking but, I'm sure he would have gone through with it if I'd let him."

    "I'm sorry."

    "In third grade this girl and I use to take turns watching each other pee at recess."

    "I don't want to hear this," says Sally.

    "Don't you want to know what we did in fourth?" I ask.

    Ahead, the road bends into an old forest of pine.

    "No," she says turning away from me.

    But I can't stop telling her the truth.