William continued, “And my father said, ‘That’s junk, William, you’re not to watch it.’ And then my father turned to me and said, ‘What happened in Germany is very bad. I’m not ashamed of being German, but I am ashamed of what the country did.’？” William added, musingly, “He must have thought I was old enough to hear it, I was about twelve. And then he told me he had been in the Hitler Youth, that he had to be, and that he had not thought that much about it, and that he had gone into Normandy, but he wanted me to know he had been in the Hitler Youth. And he told me that he thought he would die in that ditch in France but that those four American GIs didn’t kill him, and that he always wished he could find them to thank them. I mean he wanted me to know that he did not support—at least at the point he was telling me about this—what Germany had done. And I just said, ‘Okay, Dad.’？”
William shook his head as he drove. “Boy, I wish I had talked to him more about it.”
“I know,” I said. “I wish you had too.”
“And Catherine Cole—she never told me anything more about what he thought of the war than what you’ve heard.”
I knew that too, but I said nothing.
* * *
William’s apology about our marriage made me remember this:
Many years ago now, when William first told me about the affairs he had been having, there was one woman he cared for especially, even though he said he was not in love with any of them, it was the woman he worked with—not Joanne—and it seemed to me that he might leave me for her. We went to England, the four of us—I mean William and I and the girls—because he’d thought I always wanted to go there, and so we went, but it was shortly before we went that I found out about this woman, and the other women too. But as I said, there was this one woman in particular. And one night in London when the girls were asleep I went into the bathroom and began to cry and William came in and I said, “Please please don’t leave!” And he said, “Why?” And I said—I remember so clearly sitting on the floor and holding on to the shower curtain, and then holding on to his pantleg—I said, “Because you are William! You are William!”
Later, when I decided to leave him, William wept, but he never said anything like that. He said, “I’m afraid of being alone, Lucy.” I listened but I never heard him say, “Please don’t leave, because you are Lucy!”
After I left there was a time I called him and said: Should we really be going through with this? And he said: Only if there’s not something different you can bring to the marriage.
There was nothing different I had. I mean, I could think of nothing different to bring to the marriage is what I mean.
* * *
About authority:
When I taught writing—which I did for many years—I talked about authority. I told the students that what was most important was the authority they went to the page with.
And when I saw that photograph of Wilhelm Gerhardt in the library I thought: Oh, there is authority. I understood immediately why Catherine had fallen in love with him. It was not just his looks, it was the way he looked, as though he would do what he was told but no one would ever have his soul. I could imagine him playing the piano and then walking out the door. And—slowly—I realized this: This authority was why I had fallen in love with William. We crave authority. We do. No matter what anyone says, we crave that sense of authority. Of believing that in the presence of this person we are safe.
And even through our Difficulties—as I had come to call them—William never lost this authority. Even as I thought of us as being Hansel and Gretel lost in the woods, I always felt safe in his presence. What is it about a person that makes us feel this way? It is hard to say. But when I met William, even after I married him, even after we were having our Difficulties, I still felt it. I remember when I was first married to him, and we had our immediate problems （as I have said）， I said to a friend, “It is like I was a fish swimming round and round and then I bumped into this rock.”
* * *
We passed a sign that said: Welcome to Friendly Fort Fairfield.
William leaned forward to peer through the windshield. “Jesus Christ,” he said.
I said, “Yeah. My God.”
Everything in the town was closed. There was not a car on the street, and there was a place that said Village Commons—an entire building—with a sign on it: FOR LEASE. There was a big First National Bank with pillars; it had planks nailed across its doors. Store after store had been boarded up. Only a small post office by the end of Main Street seemed open. There was a river that ran behind Main Street.