Victory

At the party the husband tried to defeat his young son. At croquet, perhaps. Or table tennis.

The wife at the party watched the husband leaning over the game or leaning into talk, setting his jaw, winning.

She turned to a listener. Dusk chilled her. Breezes dragged her hair across her face. She said, “My husband is very competitive.”

The listener watched a highway of loss and fatigue form in her mind, stretch for miles.

All the women in that neighborhood are deciduous wives married to evergreen husbands.

All the men practice a smiling rage. The children seem all right. Hard to say. They are not ready to know they are lost in the forest of fathers and mothers.