He is startled by her tremulous but loud exclamation.
They are sitting on the porch. The sun is setting. It is a time they always savor, when they speak of all kinds of things, serious or light, but it always feels intimate.
Silent for a long while, he has been reading, she has a notebook by her side and had been quietly looking at the still-naked trees. Suddenly she has exclaimed that phrase.
“That was it! Remember? ‘My God! We’re losing a great country!’ Remember that picture in The Times? With that caption?”
He half sighs, half laughs.
“What on earth made you come up with that? So dramatic! But no, don’t be silly.” He speaks gently. “The New York Times did not say that, and they wouldn’t. You have it all mixed up.”
“I don’t have it mixed up. I have it super clear. In fact, it is unforgettable, that picture. It is heartbreaking. I think I may even remember the date.”
He sighs.
“Of course we remember that day, if not the exact date. Yes, May 1970. Honey, what is wrong with you? Kent State, yes, of course all our generation remembers, and we all remember the picture, her face, we could almost hear her, yes. Screaming from the front page of The Times, the body lying on the ground next to her, and she on her knees, screaming, yes, you could hear her! Her panic, she was screaming from that picture, with her arms extended towards us, sobbing, screaming, ‘My God, they are shooting at us.’ That is what the caption was.”
Despite the intensity of what he is saying, he has been speaking softly, sadly.
And she has been listening intensely.
“It sounds like you are right, but I didn’t invent that sentence, did I?”
“No, sweetheart, no. It’s a great, painful sentence, but you did not invent it. Somebody made a poster. We saw it in the Village, in some hippie store, remember? Perhaps there was even a show with that name.”
She is silent for a moment, thinking.
“Yes, I remember now. It is so strange now. That was the feeling, yes, that we no longer lived where we thought we had lived. We lived in another country. In another planet! Never before had a student been killed by police in an antiwar gathering. I thought of it and then I remembered Eva. She had arrived a few years earlier, from Hungary, remember? I think she had arrived late in 1966. Already there were protests to end the war. But the next year there was the . . . I think they called it the Spring Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam. And I remember what she said. We marched that day, with Josh in his stroller. I was pregnant with Lilly, but we did not yet know it for sure. We had asked Eva if she would join us, being so political. I remember it was a gorgeous day. She did come with us. And at the end of the day she said, with a sad, tender smile, ‘Dear both, I have news for you: This will never work. If you can take babies to a protest and everybody is fine and safe, it means what you are doing is totally meaningless.’ ”
He nods. “Yes, you are right. Because we stayed in touch even after she moved, and after Kent State happened, we spoke on the phone, and she said, ‘I know this sounds awful, but there is bound to be some impact now.’ ”
They both fall silent for a while. Each of them going through the way those events resonate now, each of them with the memories of their specific individual mourning, their many losses, their many political disappointments. And, of course, the more painful personal disappointments — in each other. The memory has also evoked the period of separation, Josh and Lilly being the ones who suffered the most.
And in the brutality of what is happening around them now, they both reflect silently in parallel. Where are those personal disappointments? Do they have any meaning now?
Their children are now parents, of course. And they do not know anything about Kent State. And they are fearful of the present world, the world we all live in. They are fearful for their own children.
He asks, “What made you remember? Why did you think of all that?”
She looks at him tenderly, the way she used to look at the kids when they said something dopey. And then, with a sad smile, “Honey, can you perhaps guess?”
He chuckles. “I guess it was my turn to sound silly.”
Then, after a while, he adds, “I can guess in general, of course, but no, what specifically, really, what was the connection? Why today?”
Almost without thinking, not deliberately but almost accidentally, he extends his hand and touches her arm.
She is quiet for a while, reflecting.
“I am not sure. I do not know if I was thinking of Eva and that’s why I thought of it, or . . . no. I remember now, I was thinking of aging, of how many things get more difficult, and how it is hard to retrieve memories. And I was afraid for me, for both of us. And then I thought of the young man in Minnesota, the I.C.U. nurse, and I could not remember his name. I felt so badly, as if one of the very few, very, very, very few things we can do is to remember his name, as if it was disrespectful not to remember his name. I remembered the film on TV, the woman who saw it all, and she saw him die. He died on television. No, actually he was killed on television, and I guess that short-circuited into the photo in The Times. It’s more than 50 years ago. How dreadful, how terrifying.”
The hand he had extended caresses her arm. He pulls her gently toward him.
“Come, sit on my lap, like you used to do.”
It’s her turn to laugh.
“Too many aches and pains for that.”
He says softly, “It will not hurt, it will comfort you, it will comfort me. There is so little we can do now.”
She is quiet for a moment, then stands up, clumsily sits on his lap. They hug each other.
Then she whispers, “There are still things we can do.”
He thinks, “Other than march?” But he says nothing, pressing her softly against him.
And suddenly, in the context of thinking about what else they could do, what would be effective, Eva’s presence sharpens in both their minds, with the memory of that sad but wise-sounding statement. But those thoughts are too frightening.
Anybody watching would not guess the intensity of their turmoil, of their pain. They would only see the tenderness, and guess, correctly, of their love.
Irene Cairo, a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in private practice, received her medical education in her native Argentina. She lives part time in Springs and in 2022 came out with “Inside-Out: Intimate Voices,” a collection of stories.