He stares at the slightly depressed earth over Adelaide's grave and here comes the pretty white lace dress she loved best, the inequality in the size of her eyes so light brown they were almost yellow. It is happening more and more that when he stands beside a grave, his hat in his hand, part of a person's life story reaches him like the yeasty scent from the bakery he passes every day on his way to the bus stop. It is happening more and more often, this kind of thing. He also thinks she had bright red hair that she wore up, and tiny tendrils escaped to frame her face, which pleased both her and her husband. In the middle of raising her family (Beloved Mother on her tombstone) and then what? Death, of course, but how? Was it childbirth? He thinks that she was doing something in the service of her family, that she was healthy until the moment she died, and then succumbed to an accident or a sudden insult to the body.

Not as heartbreakingly young as the children buried here, but certainly not yet old. He still keeps a nice rose garden in the front of his house the vegetable garden in the back he has let go.īut yes, thirty- two is how old Adelaide Marsh was when she died. Arthur's gift is working the land he was a groundskeeper for the parks before he retired many years ago. 'We all have our gifts,' Nola used to say, and she was right. Sometimes he goes to the bank and they help him, but it's an embarrassment and an inconvenience.

He tries, anyway he gets out his giant- size calculator and pays a great deal of attention to what he's doing, he doesn't even keep the radio on, but more often than not he ends up with astronomically improbable sums. Math has always been difficult for Arthur, even on paper he describes himself as numerically illiterate.

Then he calculates again, because he thinks it would be wrong to stand near someone's grave thinking about how old they were the day they died and be off by a year. Adelaide was born April 3, 1897, died November 18, 1929. Today he lingers near the headstone of Adelaide Marsh, two rows over from Nola, ten markers down. She will be there and be there and be there. He rides the bus to the cemetery and when he gets there, he takes his sweet time walking over to her plot: she will be there no matter when he arrives. In the six months since the November day that his wife, Nola, was buried, Arthur Moses has been having lunch with her every day.

The life of arthur truluv