Read The Last Time I Saw You for Free Online

Do whatever you’re doing and then talk, is what she thinks. Otherwise, it’s like trying to listen to two conversations at once. In college, she once watched a porn movie with a couple of her dorm mates. One scene showed a woman lying beneath a man saying, “Oh, do it to me, do it to me, fuck me hard ,” and Mary Alice had no idea why the man didn’t rear up and say, “I am !”
    Mary Alice stares out Einer’s bedroom window and decides that she’ll wear the low-cut top and the starry skirt, and she thinks with it she’ll wear big silver hoop earrings and many silver bangle bracelets. But then she worries how her glasses will look with that. Oh, enough! She’ll decide what to wear on the night she’s getting ready for the reunion: an answer will come to her.
    Einer has taken one more bite than she asked him to, and she rewards him with a kiss on the top of his head. Then she helps him out onto the porch and begins to read the newspaper’s front-page stories to him—he can no longer see to read. She’s barely gotten through a paragraph when he starts in: “Oh, what the hell is Congress doing ? In my day, a man had a thing between his ears called a brain, and guess what? He used it!” He’ll settle down by the time she gets to the advice columns. They like to talk about what advice they’d give before Mary Alice reads the answers the columnist actually wrote.
    Today, when she gets to the advice columns, she makes up a question. She keeps her eyes on the newspaper, as though she is reading, and says, “I am a middle-aged woman who has been invited to a high school reunion. I was not very popular in school and was often picked on. Should I expect that I might have a good time anyway?” She lets the question hang in the air, then says, “Hmmm. What do you think?”
    Einer scrunches forward. “Don’t you even think about going. Don’t give those bastards the pleasure of your company.”
    “That’s what you’d tell her?”
    “That’s what I’m telling you .”
    She looks away, and he says, “Everything’s shot but my mind. You of all people ought to know that. Don’t forget my wife taught music at that high school. She knew what went on. She used to tell me about how those kids treated you and your sister. So, they’re having a reunion, are they? Coming back to the old hometown they couldn’t wait to get away from. You’re not going, are you?”
    “Well, yes. I am.”
    He grunts, adjusts himself in his chair. Then he leans forward and says, “I’m going with you, then,” and she laughs, though a part of her thinks, Well, why not? This could be exactly what she needs: an ally who won’t get in the way of anything.
    “When we’re there, if anyone says one snide thing to you, you help me out of my chair and I’ll give them what for.”
    “Okay, Einer.”
    “I’m serious about this. You think I’m kidding? I’m serious! Where is it, anyway? At the school?”
    “No, it’s at the Westmore Hotel, out on Thirty-three.”
    “That’s not but ten, fifteen minutes away. Short drive.”
    “Right.”
    “When is it?”
    “Next weekend.”
    “Well, if I’m still here, I’m going.”
    “You’ll be here,” she says, though she’s aware that he might not be, actually.
    He sits back in his chair. “Punks,” he mutters.
    “Some of them were nice,” Mary Alice says. “A lot of them were.”
    “Yeah. We’ll sit at their table. All two of them.”
    Rita, Einer’s caregiver, pulls up to the curb, and Mary Alice goes to help her carry in groceries.
    “You will not believe what happened at the grocery store,” Rita says. “I met the nicest man, over by the lettuce; he was all confused about what kind to buy. I helped him out and then we just got to talking, you know? When I said I had to go, he asked for my number, and I gave it to him. Oh, I hope he calls. I hope he does! Do you know how long it’s been since I went out with a man?”
    Mary Alice doesn’t answer, thinking the