His Wife Leaves Him

~ ~ ~

The time he blew up at her for taking the wrong entrance onto the Massachusetts Turnpike. Everything was going well till then. They got an early start. So far, not too much traffic and no tie-ups. It was the middle of June and a beautiful mild day. They had two months before they had to be back in Baltimore to await the birth of their first baby and he had almost three months till the new semester began. They were going to stop overnight at a motel in Kennebunk, first time they’d be breaking up the trip. She thought that nine to ten hours on the road in one day would be too hard on her. He liked that they wouldn’t be exhausted by the end of the trip and also wouldn’t be getting to the cottage after dark when they’d still have a lot of things to do. They were going to have dinner at the Breakwater, which a friend recommended, and breakfast, also in Kennebunkport, at the Green Heron Inn, which a recent article in the travel section of the Times said was the best place for breakfast in Maine. She’d made reservations at both places, to make sure they wouldn’t have to wait long for a table. He said he wouldn’t mind the wait at The Breakwater—“I’ll have a drink and we can watch the sunset from their porch”—but that he understood: it might tire her. Next day they’d stop at Farmer Jones’ or Brown’s shed along the Belfast road for pound-bags of cashews and roasted peanuts in their shells, and a quart of strawberries from a stand on the same road, if they were still in season. Then, about an hour later, lunch at a very simple café they liked on Main Street in Bucksport. He already knew what he’d get there — same thing he got last year: a haddock fishburger and cole slaw and onion rings. She hadn’t decided what she’d get, when he asked. “I think last year you just got clam chowder and blueberry pie a la mode from the previous summer’s blueberries and shared my onion rings.” He was sleeping in the front passenger seat when she took the wrong entrance. They’d had lunch a half-hour before at a restaurant right off 84 in Holland or Tolland, Connecticut, same one they always stopped at for lunch and gas. She had a hamburger and he a cup of lentil soup, and they shared a garden salad. And coffee, always coffee, and she asked for hot water for the herbal teabag she brought in. Before he closed his eyes to nap, he said “If I do conk out, wake me when you pull into the first rest stop on the Pike — it’ll be just two or three miles after you get on it — and I’ll take over and you can nap.” Once she got the ticket at the tollbooth, she said, she was confused as to which entrance to take—“The signs were unclear. They didn’t say New Hampshire and Boston one way and Springfield and Albany the other, as I remember them. Just ‘East’ and ‘West,’ and I wasn’t sure which direction I should go.” “You must have missed the other set of signs that said Springfield and Boston,” and she said “I could have. Maybe the tree branches were blocking them. That can happen up here. But by the time I realized that ‘West’ was the wrong direction, it was too late to correct it — I was boxed in by other cars and had to keep going.” “Let me see the toll ticket,” and she gave it to him and he said “Damnit; twenty-three miles to the next exit. That means forty-six miles to get back to where you made your mistake, plus getting off this road, paying the toll, getting a new ticket and getting back to going in the right direction. We’re talking about losing more than an hour,” and she said “it shouldn’t take that long. Speed limit’s sixty-five on the Pike.” “Believe me,” he said, “it’ll take, altogether, at least an hour. I wanted to get to the motel by four so I could get our stuff into the room and the cats fed and settled, and still have time to go to Kennebunkport for a run on the beach and maybe a snack. But that whole plan has been screwed up. You screwed it up. If you were so confused at the tollbooth, why didn’t you ask me which direction to take?” and she said “Because you were sleeping. I didn’t want to wake you. You seemed tired this morning, when we had to get up so early, and also at the restaurant. That’s why I was driving.” “You were driving because we were sharing the driving. What a mistake that was,” and she said “Please don’t be mean. I don’t know how you can talk to me like this, especially when I’m carrying our child.” “Oh, don’t lay that one on me. You’re pregnant with our future daughter and I’m not supposed to get angry at you for making a dumb, costly mistake,” and she said “It was a simple mistake, resulting in the loss of an hour. Big deal. Instead of a run on the beach, which you can do tomorrow morning, you can take a shorter run around Kennebunk and maybe even have time for a snack. But why would you want a snack, other than the trail mix we brought with us, if we’re going to Kennebunkport for dinner at 6:30?” and he said “I also wanted to have time to shower and have a drink in the room while I read the newspaper. Most of that’s off,” and she said “It doesn’t have to be. You just make things shorter.” He squeezed his eyes shut. She’s right, of course, he thought, but now he doesn’t have it in him to admit it and apologize. He kept his eyes shut. “You giving me the silent treatment because of my so-called dumb mistake?” “Yes,” he said “and I don’t want to talk about it. And right now that’s all there is to talk about, so I’m going to stay silent, all right? Better for both of us, considering what could come out.” She said “I’ve never seen you be so mean to me. You’ve been harsh and rude sometimes and angry, but never like this, saying things expressly to hurt me. So selfish. And so foolish. I feel like crying but I’m driving and I don’t want my tears to affect my vision. I feel now, though, that I almost wish I wasn’t carrying your baby. Three months to term. I can’t believe you could be so insensitive and destructive. Good, let’s not talk. And when I get us off this dismal road, you take over. I want to sit in back with the cats and try to sleep so I won’t have to think how awful you’ve been.” “Fine,” he said, “I’ll take over. But again, I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Wake me up when you’re approaching the next exit. I don’t want you making another wrong driving move.” “Drop dead,” she said. “Go fuck yourself. You’re disgusting to me; repulsive. Did that sink in?” and he said “Yes,” put the toll ticket in the storage space in front of her and turned to his side window and shut his eyes. He thought: How stupid could you be? Even you didn’t know how much. What do you say to make things better? Because you have to say something. He faced front and, eyes still shut, said “Sleep is stupid. We’ll be at the turnaround exit in ten minutes. And look, if it helps any, you were absolutely right and I was absolutely wrong and I apologize for what I said,” and she said “It doesn’t help one bit. You’re just saying that to get out of it. Typical of you: to quickly get past the harm you’ve done and I’m supposed to get past it too. But you’re dead to me now and will be till I don’t know when. No more talk. I mean it. Just leave me alone.” They made it to the motel in plenty of time to get set up there and still go to the Kennebunkport beach for an hour. When he suggested it, she said “Last place I want to be with you,” though at lunch she said she was thinking how nice it’d be to sit by the shore there and get some late afternoon sun and maybe walk out a ways on the long breakwater they have there. Now, she said she’s going to stay in the room and read and maybe see what’s on television. He said he’ll take a short run around here and she said “What you end up doing doesn’t interest me.” “Okay, but are you hungry for something other than trail mix, or thirsty? I can get you a juice and snack while I’m out, or make you tea here — there’s a coffeemaker, so I can heat up water in it for you,” and she went into the bathroom with a book and locked the door. He drove to Kennebunkport, thought of getting her a lobster roll, which she loved, but knew she’d refuse it; ran barefoot on the beach a little, walked out about twenty feet on the breakwater, then thought he didn’t feel like doing anything when she was so hurt and mad at him, and drove back to the motel. She didn’t want to have dinner but he convinced her to—“For the baby,” and she said “Yeah, a lot you showed you care.” At the restaurant the only words she said to him were “No,” when he said “Do you want a couple of my scallops? They’re the best I’ve ever had and they gave me plenty,” and “No” again, when he asked her if she wanted dessert; “Let’s just go.” That night she wouldn’t let him hold her in bed from behind. “Please, Martin, don’t touch me. And try to sleep as far away from me as you can. I appreciate, though, that you replaced their sheets with our cotton ones,” and he said “Anything for you,” but she didn’t say anything after that. Next morning she dressed in the bathroom with the door closed and didn’t want to go for breakfast. “I’m just not hungry.” “You got to eat,” and she said “I will later on at the rest stop. You go, if you want, but don’t bring me back anything.” “Boy, are you making me pay for my mistake,” and she said “You deserve worse, believe me, if I only knew how to be as mean as you.” She ordered a hamburger at a clam shack along the way. “Sure you don’t want a lobster roll? It’ll be your first of the summer,” and she shook her head. He had a crab roll, and a fishburger for later, since he’d skipped breakfast too. “You know,” he said, when they were sitting at a picnic table eating, “we didn’t call the Green Heron to cancel our reservation,” and she said “Interesting how concerned you are about others.” “I’m concerned about you,” and she pretended she didn’t hear him. He drove the entire way from Kennebunk to the cottage they rented every summer in Brooklin. She sat in the back seat, her head on a bed pillow, mostly sleeping or looking like she was. She let him hold her from behind two nights after they got there, but said, when he started stroking her breasts, that she wasn’t ready yet to let him make love to her and didn’t know when she would be. “Sometime, of course, but not now for sure.” They walked along the road to the point the next morning. He grabbed her hand and held it as they walked. “Did I ever tell you there used to be a sardine canning factory on the point?” and he said “No, you never did. Before you first started renting the cottage?” and she said “Long before.” He picked a wildflower and said “Do you know what this is called?” and she said “There’s a Maine wildflower book at the cottage, if you want to identify it.” “I do. I’m going to look it up and all the others I find that I don’t know. That’ll be my non-writing project this summer,” and tucked the flower carefully into his back pants pocket. “Maybe you should take two or three of them, in case the one you have falls apart in your pocket.” “Good idea.” Then he said “Will you let me kiss you? A little or big kiss?” and she said “Whichever you want. I’m okay with you now but will never forget what you did. Did you ever figure out why you acted to me like that?” and he said “No. Or I must have been temporarily crazy. But that doesn’t answer it and is too facile an excuse. I guess I was too intent on getting to the motel in time because I wanted to take advantage of the beach. No, none of that explains it. Can’t a person, for no fathomable reason, lose his head like that once?” “What frightens me is that it might not have been an isolated incident. But let’s not get into an argument over it. That’s all we need.” “My kiss?…you said you were willing,” and she let him — he thought it best to make it a quick light one — and he took her hand again and they continued their walk.

They crossed the Bay Bridge and were driving on Route 50, he thinks, to Washington College for a reading he was giving that night. The school was putting them up at an inn: he, Gwen and Rosalind, who was still nursing. Tallis’s Lamentations of Jeremiah, he thinks it’s called, was playing on the radio, or is it by another English composer of the same period — Byrd, maybe? The music was beautiful and he said to her “What a moment. Gorgeous music, infant sleeping peacefully after a long tantrum, sky lit up in several pastel colors by the setting sun.” Then he heard geese overhead and said “Listen,” and opened his window all the way and motioned for her to roll down hers and they heard the geese honking louder and then saw a flock of about a hundred of them flying in formation. “Oh, this is too much, too wonderful, all of this at once. I almost feel like waking the baby so she could hear and see this too.” She said “It is wonderful, all of it. But the best part to me is that Rosalind’s finally asleep, so please don’t wake her,” and they drove without talking and with the sky getting even more beautiful and the geese flying in the same direction as them. Then the geese flew off to the side and they couldn’t see them anymore and only heard them faintly and then not at all. At almost the same moment, the music ended, and he turned the radio off. “That was truly something,” he said. “It was,” she said. “I don’t think I’ll ever forget it,” and she put her hand over his on the steering wheel. “Better on my shoulder, so I can drive in absolute safety,” and she put her hand on his shoulder and they drove like that most of the rest of the way.

Whenever they drove back to Baltimore from their apartment in New York, he got off at exit 7 on the New Jersey Turnpike, got on 295, and a few miles south on it pulled into a rest area run by the state. He’d get from the back a take-out container of basil rolls or sushi he’d bought at an Asian fusion restaurant before they left New York and give it to her with a couple of napkins. Then he’d go into the building and use the restroom and get a cappuccino or hazelnut-flavored coffee out of a vending machine there and sometimes either peanut butter crackers or a bag of salted peanuts from the candy machine. He’d sit in the car with her or, if it was a nice day, outside on a bench or at a picnic table and drink his coffee and eat about half his crackers or all the peanuts while she finished her sushi or basil rolls. Sometimes he’d get her both, but she’d only eat one at the rest area — usually the sushi because she was afraid it’d spoil — and save the other for home. Once or twice, after he told her they had them, she asked for an ice cream sandwich from another machine. He doesn’t ever remember her coming into the building. And she never had anything to drink. She didn’t want to have to pee so soon after, she explained. If the kids were with them, they’d get what snacks and drinks they wanted with the money he’d give them, or wait in the car till they got to the big rest stop in Delaware on 95, where they’d always get a plate of spaghetti and a garlic roll with it and iced tea and he’d get another coffee. At the New Jersey rest area, Gwen once said “This is the best part of the trip. Thank you for always thinking of getting me this food. Coffee smells good. Is it?” and he said “Not bad, coming from a machine. And certainly cheap enough, cappuccino for a buck.” Then, about three years ago, they saw a sign a few miles after they got on 295, saying something like “Public rest area open, facilities permanently closed.” “Do you think that means the building?’ he said. And she said “Probably everything but the benches outside, if we’re lucky.” “Damn,” he said. “No restrooms and vending machines and the end of our little traveling ritual. You could still eat your basil rolls there, which is what I got for you today, but it wouldn’t be the same for my bladder.” “Just get the container for me and I’ll eat out of it while you drive.” “It might be too sloppy,” he said, “and it’ll also mean stopping and getting it from the back. Let’s wait till the Delaware rest stop. It’s the nearest one to here, unless we want to get back on the turnpike, and I’ll get gas and maybe something to eat and the kids can get their usual, and we can all pee, if I’m able to hold out that long. If I’m not, I don’t know what.” She said “How disappointing. I hate sounding pessimistic, but it’s like bread in Baltimore. Just when we think we’ve found a good place to buy some, it closes.”

He thinks it was at Alice Tully Hall. Anyway, Lincoln Center. They were at the first of a series of five Sunday afternoon concerts of the complete quartets and Grosse Fugue of Beethoven. It was May or June, they were both done teaching and he was back living with her in their apartment in New York. They sat high up in the balcony, which was all they could afford. He was looking around before the concert began and saw someone he knew. “What do you know,” he said, “Adam Nadelwitz — the bearded guy there,” pointing to a man two rows down and about ten seats over to the right. “He handled my work for a couple of years. First-rate rep as an agent and a really nice guy. So nice, that he didn’t have the heart to tell me my work was unsalable — afraid, if you can believe someone thought this of me, of hurting my feelings — so I had to ask for it back myself. I want you to meet him.” They went over to him at intermission — Adam stayed in his seat, was reading the program — and he said “Adam, hi; Marty Samuels,” and Adam said “Why hello there,” and they shook hands. “My wife Gwendolyn Liederman,” and Adam said “Nice to meet you, Gwendolyn,” and they shook hands. “So how are you? How’s Ellie?” and he said to Gwen “His wife represented my one Y.A. novel and also had no luck in selling it. Well, not much to sell. I went to some great parties they gave at their apartment for their writers — Adam handled the adult fiction and Ellie the juvenile.” Adam said “You’ll have to forgive me, Martin, I thought you knew. I don’t know why I assumed all my former clients did. But my dear wife died a little more than a year ago,” and gave the date in March. Then he seemed about to cry, said “Excuse me,” and covered his eyes with his program and then wiped them with a handkerchief. “I’m so sorry, Adam,” he said, and Adam said “As am I for making you uncomfortable by springing the news. I thought I was finished with falling apart and making a terrible scene when I meet someone who knew Ellie but didn’t know she had died. It was of something rare to do with one of her organs, if you were about to ask. Very quick. I won’t go into it. Please excuse me, you two. I have to go to the restroom. If I don’t see you after the concert, Martin, we should get together someday, although I know it’s difficult for you to, living down South. You see, I’ve kept up with you.” “We still keep our apartment here. Gwen hasn’t moved down yet but will in August, when we’ll be waiting out the birth of our first child.” “I thought so,” Adam said to Gwen, “not that you’re showing much. This is wonderful, just wonderful. Good luck to you both,” and he went up the steps to the exit. “Damnit,” he said when they got back to their seats, “I wish I had known about Ellie before I so smilingly approached him. And I called myself ‘Marty.’ I don’t know why; I never do. Was there a memorial for her and I wasn’t told? I would’ve gone, if I were in New York. They were very close, personally and professionally. Had no children. He was very open about it. Said they’d tried for years and she wanted to adopt and he didn’t. So it must have been a combination of you being visibly pregnant and that we seemed so obviously happy, that upset him so much.” And she said “I’m sure his reaction to seeing you for the first time since she died would have been the same, especially when he had to tell you she was dead. I can’t imagine such a loss,” and he said “Neither can I, and I don’t want to.” Adam didn’t come back to his seat. They looked for him at the next concert and the one after that. “It’s possible he only had a ticket for the first concert,” she said, “or is sitting downstairs,” and he said “Maybe, but I bet he bought for all five. And like us, the same seat, which was empty the last time till someone, probably from higher up in the balcony, took it during intermission, and all the seats in that row are taken today, which could mean he gave his ticket away. Nah, when we weren’t talking about why publishers weren’t taking my work, we talked about music. He was as much a lover of it as I, and Beethoven was his favorite.”

They were in Aix-en-Provence, had just attended an organ concert in an old church, were walking out of the church when he saw what looked like notices, a couple with drawings of hearts on them, pinned to a message board on the wall. “What are these?” he asked her, and she said “Banns — public notices of the couples announcing their engagements.” “What a nice idea. Let’s post one,” and she said “You can’t, unless you’re going to get married.” “Let’s get married, then: here, in Aix,” and she said “Are you crazy?” “Why? Linda and Lewis will be here in two days. So before we all drive up to Paris together, they can be our witnesses as well as best man and maid of honor.” “You’re really talking foolish, Martin. If we ever did marry, I’d want my parents to be there and I’d think you’d want your mother and a number of our friends there too. But the point is, if I’m to take you seriously, that I’m not ready to marry you,” and he said “Too bad — but think of it, though. Married in this sweet-smelling ancient city, birth and burial place of Cézanne and I think just the birthplace of Milhaud. A quiet simple ceremony. A delicious dinner that night of just the four of us, with the best wine and champagne and maybe an accordionist to play a few traditional Provençal tunes. Chartres and Paris and various chateau towns along the way for our honeymoon. And then flying home as new bride and groom and, if you want, a wedding reception we’ll give in our apartment for family and friends. And you say you eventually want children, so we could even arrange your being pregnant before we get back. I wish we didn’t have to pass up this opportunity,” and she said “We have to. Sweet an idea as it is, it’s ridiculous.” “When can I propose to you then, where you’d most likely say yes?” and she said “We’ll talk about it in four to five months. If we’re still a compatible couple and we feel about each other the way we do now, it’s possible I’ll accept. But, you know, you might change your mind by then,” and he said “Never. You’re the only girl for me.”

It was their second summer together. They were driving back from Maine, on the Belfast road to Augusta. She was driving and he was trying to pick up either the Bangor or Portland public radio stations, when a dog ran out on the road and she hit it. The dog flew over the right side of the car and landed on the shoulder. She pulled over, was crying, saying “Oh, my God, I killed a dog. I didn’t mean it. I was driving carefully, but it jumped out on me,” and he said “I know; it wasn’t your fault; take it easy.” He unfastened their seatbelts, put his arms out and she went into them and he hugged her. “It’ll be all right. Don’t think you’re responsible. The dog’s probably done this with cars a number of times and this was the only time it was hit. But we have to deal with it. You’re too upset, so you stay here. I really don’t want to look at it, but I’ll go see how it is. Though at the speed we were going — and it wasn’t excessive — and hitting it front on — I’m sure it’s dead.” Other cars had stopped on both sides of the road. There were already a few people around the dog when he got out of the car. “I saw it all,” a woman said. “You’re not to blame for it. It’s its owner for letting it roam free like that.” A girl of about fourteen sat beside the dog, rested its head on her lap and petted it and felt its nose and chest and said “It’s not breathing, poor thing.” “My friend was at the wheel,” he said to the woman. “She was driving well below the speed limit. She’d be out here now but she’s too upset over it.” “I can imagine,” a man said. “I saw it too, but from the other way. The dumb dog just zoomed in front of your car as if he wanted to kill himself. I’ll vouch for your friend too, when the trooper comes.” “How will we get one?” and the man said “I’ll turn around and call from the convenience store no more than a mile from here. But you see, if you kill an animal on the road — even a deer but not something like a skunk or fox or raccoon — you got to stay with it till an official report’s made.” “Will that take long?” and the man said “It could. Not a top priority for a trooper to attend to, especially during vacation season. I hope you don’t have someplace you have to get to right away.” Then the dog stirred. “It’s alive,” someone shouted. Raised itself on its front legs and then stood on all fours, wobbly at first and then straight, and ran into the woods. “Well, what do you know,” the man said. “Here we were about to conduct funeral services for it, and it scoots away. Smart fella. Didn’t want to be buried alive.” “Did it look okay?” he said, and the man said “I didn’t see wounds or blood. I’d say you and your friend are off the hook. I know I feel good about it, and nobody has to wait around.” “Thank you all,” he said. “You’ve been very kind.” They went back to their cars. He checked the car they’d rented to see if there was any damage. There was some shit on the front bumper, but no dents or anything. He told himself he’d wipe it off the next time they stop for gas or to pee, if it didn’t fall off first. He got in the driver’s seat. She’d moved to the passenger seat. “Did you see?” he said, and she said “I saw. I’ve never been so relieved in my life. The dog must have been in shock. Did it seem all right when it ran away?” and he said “A bit slower, which is to be expected after such an accident, but everything else looked okay. Resilient little cuss. Gave us quite a scare and could have kept us here for hours.” “You were wonderful,” she said, and he said “Thank you,” and she took his hand and kissed it.

New Year’s Eve. They had three parties to go to. The first was at her parents’ apartment in the West Seventies. “They give it every year,” she said, “and it’ll be nice for you to first meet them in a festive setting.” The second was at the SoHo loft of her best friend and her friend’s husband, both artists. “There’ll be lots of music and fine wine and champagne. Vincent, and I know you’ll want to say it’s an appropriate name for him because of what I’m about to tell you, is a wine maven of the most extravagant sort. He has a wine cellar in their building with more than two thousand bottles, and the best of them will be out tonight.” The third, a few blocks from her apartment, he was invited to yesterday by the host whom he’d bumped into on Broadway. She was once married to a very old friend of his. “I don’t really see the point of our going to her party,” she said, “as you’re not friendly with her anymore and you haven’t seen her in years. But since you’re going to two of mine, I can go to one of yours, but can we make it short?” “If we feel we’re over-partied by then,” he said, “or just over-champagned and over-kissed, we can even skip it.” Going up the elevator to her parents’, she said “We’ll stay no more than an hour, have some kippers and herring and lox to minimize the effects of too much to drink later on — the Russians swear by the pickled and smoked fish antidote — and then head downtown.” One woman there — a research scientist; in fact, they were all, woman and men, professionals — said to him “May I steal you for a while to question you as to who you are? So far, you’re an unknown quantity, and we’re all curious about you.” She led him to the kitchen and asked where he was raised and educated and were his parents born here and what does he do for a living and what are some of the titles of his books and in what magazines may she find his stories. “I belong to a good library, and when it doesn’t have what I want, there’s an excellent bookstore in my neighborhood. This is a reading crowd we have here, all very intelligent and high-minded about literature, so if you’re a serious author, I think we can sell some of your books.” He said he only had three titles and they’re short ones and easy to remember, and gave them. “Now I’d like to ask you a personal question,” she said. “What are your intentions to Gwendolyn? You have to understand, we are all former refugees, almost all of us Holocaust survivors, met in New York City after the war, and are like family to one another to replace the ones we lost, and Gwendolyn is like our own child.” “We’ve only known each other a month,” he said, “though for the last week and a half have seen each other almost every day. So I’d say I like her a lot and enjoy her company, and that what I find particularly appealing about her is her gentleness and intelligence and warmth,” and she said “Does it go deeper than that? I can say that for most of us here, outside of our own, she is our favorite child, so we would be greatly upset if any hurt was done to her.” “You don’t have to worry. Women usually end up hurting me, which I’d think is better than the reverse. But you should speak to her and see what she thinks,” and she said “I plan to, but not tonight. So, my opinion, after speaking to you, is that you are a pleasant, serious and honest person, with a good sense of humor, so I can only hope that something long-lasting materializes between the two of you. As you might know, and if not, will surely learn, her one marriage was a catastrophe.” That night he met her best friend and her husband for the first time too. As with her parents at their crowded party, he didn’t get to talk to them much. “Another time,” her father had said. The food, wine and champagne were very good. But the music was too loud and the living room where the dancing took place too dark and the cigarette and cigar and pot smoke were stifling and smelling up his clothes and probably his hair and the strobe lights hurt his eyes. After an hour, he said to her “Do you think we could go?” and explained why. “If you want to stay longer and dance with someone — music’s too fast for me and I’d look silly dancing dances I don’t know, and there seem to be a couple of guys who want to dance some more with you — I’ll stay in the kitchen and nurse a glass or two of wine. You were right; it’s really good stuff — everything they served.” “No, I’m ready to go. Four times on the dance floor are enough for me. Do you want to go to your friend’s party?” and he said “We don’t have to if you don’t want. We could go to a nice bar around here, order champagne and toast the new year in there.” “That’d be depressing. Let’s go to your friend’s, and it’s close to home. New Year’s isn’t important to me.” “Except for whom you’re with,” and she said “I like being with you tonight, but who I’m with on New Year’s Eve isn’t that important too.” It was a small party. Maybe eight people. They sat on chairs or the floor in the living room — there was no couch — and talked about the middle school in the Bronx they all seemed to teach at and how angry and tough so many of the students were and incompetent the administrators. Food was a few leftover pastries, and the only things to drink were hard cider and cheap wine. “Don’t go into the kitchen,” someone warned. A while before, someone from the SRO building that faced the women’s kitchen shot a bullet through the window. “Fortunately, everyone was in the living room at the time,” the woman said. They found the slug in the wall—“From a.22, a gun expert here said, which is why it only made a tiny hole in the window, with little cracks around it.” “I don’t know how you can live here after that,” Gwen said, and the woman said “At the rent I’m paying, I can’t afford not to.” “Did you call the police?” and she said “I was advised it’d be an exercise in futility. For what are they going to do — go through every room facing my window? There must be a hundred.” “Wouldn’t they be able to tell which window it came from by the trajectory of the bullet?” and the woman said “You’ve been watching too many TV shows,” and Gwen said “I don’t watch any.” “Maybe you’re right,” she said. “But I’ll just keep my kitchen shade down for a few weeks and the kitchen dark when I’m not in it, and hope the shooter moves out — the turnover in these flophouses is very high.” Soon after, Gwen got him alone and said “Please let’s leave. This place gives me the willies, and I don’t want to have my first kiss of the new year here. I’m also afraid one of the guests — the one with the Hebro; he’s been eyeing me — is going to use the New Year’s excuse to kiss me.” “What time is it?” she said on the street, and he said “Three minutes till twelve.” Just then they heard horns blowing and cars honking and people shouting “Happy New Year,” and he said “I guess my watch is a little slow.” She took her hand out of his and said “Well?” and he kissed her. When they got back to her apartment, he said “Not a great evening, except for meeting your parents and friends, however brief, but New Year’s Eves never were.” “I had a good time, other than for the bullet through the window and, I’m hesitant to say, your friend and her friends,” and he said “And I very much enjoyed being with you. I can’t imagine what kind of evening it would have been without you. I probably would have gone to that last debacle and left after half an hour, claiming I had some other place to go to or didn’t feel well, and gone home and opened a good bottle of wine, or let’s say one of my two bottles of wine, and read the newspaper. But I couldn’t have gone to that party if I didn’t know you. I was only in the Columbia neighborhood, where I bumped into her and we got to talking and she invited me to her party, because of you. So I just would have visited my mother around eight, instead of six, which I did, and had two or three drinks, instead of one, from the bottle of Jack Daniels I brought her, and then gone home too early to buy the next day’s Times. While you, you might have met a new fellow at your friends’ party. Some of them were handsome and spiffily dressed and quite polished looking, and good dancers and more your age than I am, and New Year’s Eve parties tend to bring out the mating instinct in unattached people,” and she said “There could always be that chance — I think I’ve met half my boyfriends and also my future husband at parties — but I doubt I would have gone if I didn’t have a date. It’s not a good night to be a single woman riding the subway.” “You could have taken a cab,” and she said “I could have, but who’s to say I would have been able to get one coming home.” “Did any other men call you to go out tonight?” and she said “To be perfectly honest, yes, two — men I’ve been close to — but I said I was taken.” “That’s nice to hear — the last part. But you wouldn’t have even gone to your parents’ party?” and she said “For an hour…for that one I could take the bus. They’d be disappointed if I didn’t come, and I love all their friends. After, I would have taken the bus or a cab home long before midnight, when they’d still be available.” “Incidentally,” he said, “did one of the women there — I think her name was Riva, or Eva — talk to you about me?” and she said “Riva Pinska…yes, and I know she talked to you about me. We don’t have to tell each other what we told her. I hope you liked her and didn’t think her questions were too nosy. As she must have told you, as with my parents they all lost most to all of their families in the war, so they’re extremely protective of me.” “I told her I would never kick you down a flight of stairs. No, that’s a bad joke. First of the year, and a lulu. I’m sorry. I don’t know where it came from. No, I wanted to tell her I think I’m falling for you, but didn’t think she should be the first to hear that,” and she said “A good recovery from a rather strange gaffe. Now, do you want a nightcap — I don’t — or should we just wash up and go to bed? I’m very tired.” “But what else do you have to say?” and she said “I’m thinking about it.”

The first time she saw him cry. They were eating dinner in her apartment. A particularly sad part of a Corelli concerto grosso was playing on the record player. It was still light out and the windows were open and they were both in short-sleeved T-shirts. So it was late spring or early fall, around or a couple of months more than a half year after they met, when the phone rang. She answered it, and said “It’s for you — Pearl Morton,” and he said “Pearl? Rob Heimarck’s old girlfriend? Uh-oh; bad news,” and he took the phone and said “Hi, Pearl. How are you?” and she said “Not good. And I’m sorry for disturbing you at your friend’s place. I originally wanted to get you at home. You’re not listed?” and he said “No, I’m listed,” and she said “Well, I couldn’t find it. Roberto had an address book on a chair by his bed, it had an old number of yours — must have been from when you were still living with your mother, because that’s who I spoke to and she gave me this number and your apartment’s but said chances were you’d be here. As you probably guessed by now—” and he said “He died?” and she said “Had a heart attack in bed when he was trying to call someone, probably for help. The phone was off the hook when they found him and the address book was open to the letter G. But that doesn’t mean anything. The pages may have turned themselves. You know he had diabetes,” and he said “I knew he was sick with something but I didn’t know with what.” “I’m surprised,” she said. “It wasn’t as if he kept it a secret, and you two were once pretty close. Had it for twenty years. Gave himself an insulin shot twice a day, or did when I was living with him. Lately, because he was getting so weak, he had a visiting nurse or a friend do it for him. The diabetes is what gave him the heart attack.” “I’m sorry, Pearl. Very sorry. I know what you meant to him and what he meant to you,” and she said “Yeah, well, I thought you should know. Happened three days ago. His body’s been given to science, as was his wish and because he knew he had no money to be cremated, and his ashes will be scattered around Mt. Tamalpais, which is what he really wanted. But there will be a memorial, and I’ll let you know. He liked you, you know — your fortitude and your work,” and he said “Thanks for telling me that, and of course, same goes from me to him.” “That’s not what Roberto told me, and it sort of hurt him. But okay, he’s dead, so we won’t go into it. Will you be able to say something at the memorial? I’m lining up people now. I figured, you being a writer for so many years, you’d be able to scratch a minute or two out and read it.” “I’ll try. As you might not know, nonfiction doesn’t come easy to me,” and she said “So lie, what the hell. Now I’ve got to make some other calls,” and she said goodbye. He sat back at the table. “You heard,” he said. “Roberto was a good friend of mine. Met him summer of ’61 at a writers’ conference we went to at Wagner College. Saul Bellow was the fiction teacher. Then, the late sixties, we stopped meeting as often, I forget why. I think it was more on my part than his. I know he lived so slovenly that I hated going to his apartment because I thought I’d come home with cockroaches in my clothes. I actually used to shake out my coat after I left his place. Later on I only met him for coffee or beer once, at the most, twice a year, and for the last few years, not at all. But we should finish dinner.” He picked up his knife and fork, started crying, and put them down. She took his hand and put it to her cheek. “I don’t know why I’m crying. I never would have thought I would. The music’s not helping, meaning, it’s helping,” and he got up and shut it off, and sat back down. “He was such a nice guy and always a big booster of my work. One time, I remember, he came over to my apartment when I lived on East 88th Street. I told him I was going to send my new novel to New Directions or Grove Press — anyway, one of them near where he lived in the Village — and he said ‘Don’t trust the mail with your manuscript,’ and volunteered to drop it off there instead. Next day he calls and says he started reading my novel on the subway, couldn’t put it down, read it till four in the morning, could he have another day to finish it? He calls the next day and says he finished it that afternoon and made the delivery. ‘It’s fantastic,’ he says. ‘They have to take it, and that’s what I told the receptionist I gave it to,’ and went on and on with his praise. I should have done the same thing with him, after I read a story of his in a magazine, and then his only published novel, which he gave me, rather than being stingy with my praise and a bit nitpicky. That could have been what stopped us from meeting as much. That he thought I didn’t like his work. And he’d be right — he wasn’t a good writer, at times he was even a lousy writer, but I never said anything close to that. Was I jealous that he got a book out before me? Not with the book he got out, but I got to admit I was a little sore. So maybe the falling-out was mostly my fault. But too late to smooth things over and make amends. And what a way to go. In bed, trying to phone someone for help, Pearl said. A very decent guy and a much better friend than I was, and I’ll miss him, even though I didn’t see him for so many years,” and he started crying again. And the first time he saw her cry? At the same table. He’d finished wiping his eyes with his handkerchief or table napkin and saw her crying. “What are you crying about?” he said, and she said “You. I hate seeing you sad.” “C’mere,” he said, and he moved his chair closer to hers without getting up from it and hugged her and she hugged him. Then he started crying again and she started crying again. So also the first time they cried together.

It makes him think of another time he said something that made her cry. Maureen, no more than four at the time, ran into the room and said “Mommy, Mommy, don’t cry. What’s wrong? Does something hurt?” and Gwen stopped crying and said “No, it’s nothing, my darling.” “It’s something,” Maureen said. “People don’t cry for nothing. Is it something Daddy said?” and Gwen shook her head. “I was angry,” he said, “and said something I shouldn’t have,” and Maureen said “You have to say you’re sorry to her.” “I’m sorry, Gwen,” he said. “I was wrong,” and she nodded. “Don’t make Mommy cry again, Daddy. Listen to me. Don’t get angry anymore,” and he said “You’re right, I won’t,” and looked at Gwen and started shaking his head and then laughing at what Maureen had said, and she smiled and mouthed “I know.” “Good,” Maureen said. “Now I can go away,” and she left the room. “God, that kid is great,” he said. “Both of them. Two great kids. And I got off easy,” and he made a move to try to kiss or just hold her, but she opened and turned the pages of the book she was reading a minute before she began crying.

He doesn’t know why but he suddenly thinks of her Cuisinart, which she had even before they first met. One of only three food appliances they used, the others being a toaster and coffeemaker. Of course a stove and refrigerator, but he means the ones that sit on a kitchen countertop. Maine, that’s it. They used to send it there every summer by UPS, and at the end of their stay send it back the same way, at first to her New York apartment and then to their Baltimore apartment and next to their house in Baltimore and finally to this one in Ruxton. It’s a big Cuisinart, so no room for it in the car and later in a succession of vans, what with his two manual typewriters, which he didn’t trust sending up, and her electric typewriter and then her computer and printer. And her two cats to one carrier and her parents’ two cats in theirs. And their manuscripts and some writing supplies to start off with before the UPS boxes arrived. Also, for a while, a kid’s stroller and whatever that infant carrier’s called that he used to carry the kids in on his back. And a case of good wine. Wouldn’t send that up and didn’t think he could by law. Would have taken two if he had the room. And a suitcase and boat bag or two of clothes and some of her mother’s things for when she came up, since she didn’t like to carry too much on the plane, and necessary books. Dictionary, thesaurus, French and Italian dictionaries and scholarly works she was writing. Cat supplies: litter box and ten-pound bag of kitty litter for the overnight motel stay in Kennebunk and then Kennebunkport and for the house in Maine. Cotton linen for the motel — Gwen had trouble sleeping on polyester pillowcases and sheets. Blankets and quilts and pillows and other things, like a four-cup coffeemaker, which they didn’t send up by UPS but often sent back. Plus they needed room in the car for three to four shopping bags of food and other goods, which they’d buy at the Bucksport Shop ’n Save thirty or so miles from their destination, for their first night and morning in the Brooklin cottage they rented for seven summers and the Sedgwick farmhouse for close to twenty. Gwen taught him how to use the Cuisinart. Which blade did what, and so on, but he only used the sharp metal one for things like hummus and pesto and chopped salad and smoothies and to puree soups. They had about four toasters and maybe as many coffeemakers in the time they had this one Cuisinart. The toasters and coffeemakers were cheap and always broke down in a few years, while the Cuisinart never stopped working or needed fixing. About a year ago she said “Do you think we should get the Cuisinart serviced before we send it up to Maine again?” and he said “Why, it’s not running well?” “No, it’s just that we’ve had it for so long, altogether for more than thirty years,” and he said “We’ll see; we’ve plenty of time. It must have been a big investment for you when you bought it,” and she said “It was. I didn’t think I could afford it at the time. I was just a graduate student, barely getting by. But it’s proven to be worth every cent I spent on it. But what do you think if we bought a much smaller one for Maine — the one we have was the only model they sold then — and leave it at the farmhouse every summer? If it’s not there when we come up the next summer, and I don’t see why it wouldn’t be, at least we’d know it didn’t cost much — Cuisinarts of all kinds are much cheaper than they used to be. And think how much we’d save by not shipping it back and forth every summer, especially so because UPS rates have gone way up.” He said “Good idea — we don’t need one so big up there — and the box you originally bought it in is on its last legs. We can buy it at Wal-Mart in Trenton on our way to Acadia Park. Might as well get it at the cheapest place possible, and while there we’ll buy a couple of reams of copy paper for your printer and my typewriter. That way we’ll also be creating a little extra space in the van by not bringing all that paper up with us.” “You think we need that much paper?” and he said “There hasn’t been a summer that I remember, except two of them when you were still using your typewriter and we had to cut our vacation short to get back early to have our babies, when we haven’t gone through as much as that. I alone use a ream and half.”

They were sitting in the balcony of a Broadway theater, waiting for the curtain to go up. Or maybe the curtain was up when they took their seats or there was no curtain, and they were waiting for the houselights to dim and the actors to come on stage. Pinter’s Betrayal, and he thinks it was the St. James Theater. That’s what pops into his head. “Look,” he said, “two available seats in the first row of the orchestra. I know they’re not going to be taken. It’s getting too late to and they’re the last seats to sell because they’re all the way over to the right. Let’s grab them before somebody else does.” “No, I couldn’t do that,” she said. “It wouldn’t be right and I’d be too embarrassed if we were caught,” and he said “It’s done every day, at the opera and here, and we’ll see and hear the actors better and enjoy the play more. And there won’t be any embarrassment. If we’re stopped, I’ll do all of the explaining, and we’ll just go back upstairs or find two other available seats down there that I can’t see from here.” “Suppose the real ticketholders are late and want their seats while the play’s going?” and he said “Slight chance, and they’re two end seats, so easy to leave. Come on, follow me,” and took her hand and led her out of the row and balcony and down a flight of stairs, maybe two, and down the right aisle of the orchestra, not letting go of her till they sat in the seats, she the second one in, he on the aisle. Nobody stopped them. And an usher up the aisle even wanted to give him a playbill, but he showed her the one he already had. The actors came on stage but didn’t speak for a while. He doesn’t think there was an intermission. He could tell by glancing at her every now and then how engrossed she was in the play. After it was over and they were standing by their raised seats to let some people farther in get by them — he’s not sure why they didn’t move out to the aisle to make passing them easier — he said “That was terrific. Play, performances and from where we saw it from. So much better than the balcony. I bet it’d be like seeing a somewhat different play from up there, and all the lines and facial expressions you’d lose. But I’m always giving my opinion first. What’d you think?” and she said “The same; I loved it. And I haven’t sat so close to the stage since I was a little girl and saw Peter Pan. Here, you could see the spit flying. And it was exciting what we did, taking these seats. I never would have done it if it wasn’t for you. I don’t even think I ever thought of doing it before. Good thing you held on to me. My heart was racing when we came down the aisle and I thought for sure we’d be caught, so I doubt I could ever do it again,” and he said “Sure you will, if you stick with me and we get another chance to, and you saw how nothing happened. Maybe sometime when we have enough money to spare we’ll buy our own orchestra seats to a play we really want to go to, though the way Broadway ticket prices keep rising, I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to. Maybe for your birthday or mine, if we’re in town, or our wedding anniversary — then, we’re always here on winter break,” and she said “That’d be nice. Exciting as it was, I’d rather buy them, and every so often we can splurge.”

They were out for a walk. It was Sunday, around five, getting dark, and when they still lived in the Baltimore apartment on West 39th Street. Rosalind was in a sling on his chest. He was holding her head up with one hand and holding Gwen’s hand with the other. They passed a neighborhood Chinese restaurant on the way back — The Poison Dragon, he started calling it after the incident, when its real name was The Golden Dragon — and he said “Like to get takeout tonight? We’ve never had any from this place and we should try it,” and she said “I already have dinner prepared — salmon and a quinoa dish and you said you’d make a salad.” “Then just soup. We’ll have it when we get home. It’ll warm us up. But not egg drop or hot and sour. Something different.” They went into the restaurant and ordered a large container of the “neptune house soup,” with scallops and shrimp and rice noodles and black mushrooms and baby corn. About a half-hour after they ate the soup — maybe fifteen minutes: he knows it was an unusually short time — he got stomach cramps and felt nauseated and he said “Oh, no, shrimp again,” because he’d got sick like this twice before from bad shrimp, and she said “You too? Cramps? Nausea? It has to be the soup. I’m so glad we didn’t give Rosalind any. Both of us have to induce vomiting before it’s completely digested.” “You mean to stick your finger down your throat?” and she said “It’s briefly uncomfortable and disgusting, but it can save days of being sick.” “I can’t do it. Never could. I don’t know what it is, but something stops me, even though I know it’s for my own good.” “Well, I’m certainly going to do it. One of us has to stay well to take care of the other and Rosalind,” and she went into the kitchen bathroom and he heard her throwing up. He waited a minute and said through the bathroom door “Gwen. I’m really not feeling well, so I’m going to lie down,” and she said “I’m sorry, my sweetie. I only wish you had done what I did. I’m already feeling better.” “Just so you don’t think I’m a complete chicken, I did try to in our bathroom, gagged a little but nothing came up,” and she said “Maybe you didn’t go down far enough. Try again. It’s always worked for me,” and he said “I’m just going to have to hope it doesn’t get worse than it is.” “Well,” she said, “yell for me if you need anything. I’m going to wash up, change Rosalind and get her set for the night, and then treat myself to a very weak tea.” He rested on their bed, tried to fall asleep but couldn’t, had to rush to the bathroom several times to vomit or because of the runs. She came in every half-hour or so, felt his head, said “No temperature, but I wouldn’t have expected any,” asked how he was and he said “Much worse,” or just looked at him and said nothing and left. Then she came in and turned on the TV to the public television station. A promo was on for a Masterpiece Theatre series starting next Sunday. He said “What are you doing?” and she said “It’s the final episode of the James Herriot program — the English vet. I know you don’t like it, but I’ve been looking forward to it all week.” “But I’m sick; very sick. Been doing nothing but vomiting and shitting diarrhea the last two hours. The TV noises and flickering — just the voices — will make me feel even worse. I need quiet and rest,” and she said “I hate saying this, but if you had done what I first suggested you do, you wouldn’t be feeling this bad. Now it’s too late, and I don’t think I’m asking too much. An hour, that’s all.” “There’ll probably be a rerun of it sometime this week. Isn’t that what they normally do with a series?” and she said “I checked the monthly program guide. If it were on this coming week I wouldn’t have come to watch it now, but it isn’t scheduled again. I’ll keep the sound low and you could turn over so you don’t see the screen. But what you should do is go into the guest room and try to sleep there.” “I like our bed,” he said. “I feel better on it and in this room,” and she said “Listen, Martin, I’m sorry you’re so sick. But you have to give me a little too. This is the only television I’ve watched since the previous episode last Sunday. If we had another television set in one of the other rooms, I’d watch it there. But we don’t, and now the program’s starting. So, my poor little sweetheart, I’m afraid I’ll have to watch it here. Now please let me.” “Okay,” he said, “go ahead. But I have to say I’ve never seen you act this way to me before. You’ve never shown such inconsiderateness, such…well, you know, lack of sympathy…everything,” and she said “Oh, if you want to call what I am asking for here that, which I don’t think I’m being, then I’ve shown it. Maybe you just didn’t pick up on it before.” “No, you’re wrong,” he said. “I won’t forget this, Gwen, I won’t.” Then he felt sharp pains in his stomach again and got up and rushed to the bathroom. The television volume was much lower when he came back. He got into bed, lay with his back to her and the set and stayed in that position and said nothing to her till the next morning. When she came to bed she said things like “Want me to sleep in another room? Are you feeling any better? Can I get you anything? Do anything for you? I’m sure you’ll be much better in the morning. I certainly hope so. All right. Goodnight, dear.”

The time he slapped her hand. This was long into their marriage. She was sick with a stomach flu and he was spoonfeeding her soup from a bowl. They were at the dining-room table. The kids couldn’t have been in the house or else they would have come when they heard him yell and her crying. He held the spoon to her mouth and her hand jerked up and knocked the spoon to the floor, some of the soup splattering his face. “Damn you,” he yelled, and slapped her hand. Then: “Oh, shit, I didn’t mean to do that. I swear I didn’t.” She looked at him as if she was about to cry. Then she cried. Some of the soup had got on her neck and he wiped it away with the cloth napkin on her lap and then wiped his face. “Do you want me to wipe your neck with a damp towel?” he said, and she shook her head and continued crying. “I’m really sorry, Gwen. I’ve never done anything like that to you before. With Maureen, once, when she was around two and got out of her stroller and I caught her just as she stepped into the street, and I slapped her hand and told her what she’d been slapped for so she’d know not to do that again. I regretted slapping her that one time. I’ve told you. I should have made my point in a nonphysical way. But this with you is much worse. Please say you forgive me. I don’t know where it came from. For sure not some up-till-now hidden animosity to you that even I didn’t know was there, and I promise it’ll never happen again.” She stopped crying and wiped her eyes with her napkin. He picked up the spoon, went into the kitchen and washed it, and came back to the table. She pointed to the floor. There were a few drops of soup on it — he thought that was what she meant. He went through his side pants pocket for a paper towel — there was usually one there; wasn’t any, and he wiped the drops up with his handkerchief. He held up the spoon and said “Here, let me get you some more soup. It’s light, more like a broth — it has a little miso in it; brown rice miso, the kind you like — and you need liquids in you and nourishment.” She shook her head and looked away from him. He put the spoon back on the table. “I understand,” he said. “You’re angry at me now, and for good reason. I can’t tell you enough how sorry I am. And that I did it when you were still so weak and feeling so lousy. I’m so ashamed, Gwen. But you’ll forgive me sometime for it. Isn’t there something I can do for you?” She pointed to the spoon. “You want me to resume feeding you,” and she shook her head. “You want to feed yourself?” and she said “Let me, but I can’t reach the spoon.” He gave her the spoon, moved the bowl closer to her, straightened out the place mat under it and said “Excuse me, I’m sure you don’t want me sitting here, so I should probably leave you alone for the time being. If you want something, just yell for me.” He got up. She put the spoon into the bowl, brought it to her mouth, swallowed the soup and put the spoon in the bowl for some more. “It must mean you’re getting better,” he said. He went into the kitchen and got himself a glass of water and drank it. “Like me to put on some water for tea for you?” he said. She didn’t say anything or look at him. “I’ll be in the living room,” he said, “reading.”

Here’s one that’s come back a lot of times. He doesn’t know why, but it just stuck. They’re in the minivan. Left Belfast about a half-hour before and were heading south on Route 1 toward Bath and 95, which they’d take to the Kennebunkport exit. They’d spend the night at an inn there and next day drive to their apartment in New York and the day after that to Baltimore. He was driving, she was in the passenger seat next to him. The kids and cats were in the back. They’d stopped in Belfast for sandwiches and toasted bagels at the food co-op there, and rain forest crunch coffee for him — he always got it when they stopped there; no other place seemed to have it — and carrot juice for her and other kinds of juices for the kids. The van’s windows were open. He doesn’t think the radio was on. They were passing a long lake on the right. It was beautiful sunny day, temperature in the mid-seventies, the air dry. People were driving and jumping off floats in the lake and others farther out were kayaking and canoeing. Lots of people on a sand beach and there was laughing and squealing from the kids in the water and he thinks he even heard splashing. It was a happy lake; that’s what he thought. And no motorboat noises — not even in the distance — so those boats were probably banned on that lake. It was Saturday. They always left Maine for home on a Saturday. That way, they could drive into New York on Sunday, when traffic would be lighter in the city and there’d be far fewer trucks on the road and it was easier finding a parking spot on their block, or at least it always seemed like that. If they left New York around ten or eleven Monday morning and took the George Washington Bridge, traffic would also be lighter all the way to Baltimore. They never traveled on the Labor Day weekend. Too much traffic, and most times the kids started school the week before. Anyway, they were driving past the lake, whose name he looked up on a road map but now doesn’t remember, and he had that “happy” thought and he looked at her and smiled and felt good about himself and her and everything. She turned to look at him, as if she’d seen from the side he was looking at her or just sensed it, and smiled and seemed happy and content too. This is a good moment for us, he thought. He’ll no doubt forget it, but it’s good to have it now. Then he faced front and concentrated on his driving. He looked at her again soon after they were past the lake. China Lake, was it? No, that’s the one going the other way from Belfast to Augusta. She was looking at him, smiling the way she did before. Did she look away after he’d looked back at the road? he thought. Probably. He just didn’t see her continuing to look and smile at him after he’d stopped looking and smiling at her. No matter. She’s feeling good about me, he thought, and I’m feeling good about her, but especially good. It’s going to be a nice stopover in Kennebunkport. They’ll go to the beach. He and the kids will run around on it and jump in and out of the water and she’ll read. Maybe they’ll all walk out to the end of the breakwater together. When they get back to their rooms, they’ll shower one at a time and wash the sand off their feet. He’ll have a couple of vodka on the rocks before dinner while he reads yesterday’s Times. She’ll have a cup of tea. They’ll go to a good restaurant within walking distance of the inn. He’ll order a bottle of wine and drink most of it. He’ll say to her when they’re having dessert “This has been a great day, one of the best, and it isn’t over yet, and I continue to love you more and more each day.” She’ll say to the kids “Same with me to your father. And although I believe him, I think he’s had a little too much to drink.” Later at night, after the kids are asleep in the other bed, they’ll quietly make love.

Didn’t he go through this one before? They were driving back from Meyerhoff Symphony Hall. Seems familiar. She was at the wheel and he was in the passenger seat. That part’s different. Usually he drives. But he had a large vodka martini in the lobby during intermission, so she insisted she drive. “But I said I’m okay,” and she said “Listen to me, Martin,” and he said “Whenever you call me by my name, when it’s not something like ‘Martin, phone call for you,’ I know I’m not going to change your mind. Okay, and I do this most grudgingly,” and he gave her his keys. This took place as they walked to the garage. They didn’t speak again till they pulled onto 83 and she said “So, what did you think?” and he said “Oh, we’re talking? Think about what?” “Did you enjoy yourself tonight? Any particular piece and how it was played? Did you get any good ideas during the concert for the work you’re working on? Did you at least get a good snooze in during part of it or wish you were home reading and drinking or getting ready for bed, but anyplace but in the Meyerhoff? In other words—” and he said “You want the honest truth or just the truth?” “Are you still upset with me for taking away your driving privileges for the evening? All I thought at the time was how dumb it would be to get into an accident or near miss that could have been easily avoided by my driving us home,” and he said “No, you were anxious — probably thought about the kids — so you were right. And the truth? Not about my ability to drink, I mean drive — that was intentional — with one watered-down drink in me, but the concert? The Mahler was bombastic and the Mozart schmaltzy. As for the Elgar. Well, enough with that guy already. He wrote one terrific piece, but I’ve heard it so many times on radio, I’m sick of it.” “So you didn’t like anything of anything? You’ve said you like the slow movements of all the Mahler symphonies and Mozart and Beethoven piano concertos. That’s why I got us tickets for this concert, even though it wasn’t part of our subscription series,” and he said “Oh, what do I know? You play, I just listen,” and she said “You know a lot about classical music, much more than me, and you’ve heard a lot more too. I think your anger’s coming less from my dragging you to a concert you might not have wanted to go to than from my, you thought, indirectly criticizing your drinking. Next time I’ll invite a friend to come with me, instead of having to put up with your puerile crap.” “Wait. ‘Puerile.’ Where’s my dictionary so I can look it up.” “You’re still sounding immature. But I loved the concert. I don’t think I’ve loved one more. The Mahler, almost every part of it, though he’s never been one of my favorites as he has been one of yours. The Elgar, even if I’ve heard it on radio dozens of times, always moves me. And the Mozart, and not just the slow movement, which I thought to be pure heaven. It transported me to a place in my head I’ve never been to before. And you knew I loved the playing of all three compositions — you could tell by my expression during and after each piece and what I told you at intermission about two of them — but you still couldn’t help trying to ruin it for me as fast as you could. You can be a bastard, do you know that?” and started crying. “Are you crying?” and she said “You know I am. Not bawling, just crying. So why ask such a stupid question?” “You’re that angry at me?” and she said “You know I am. Why ask such a stupid second question, as if there was any doubt about it?” “You know,” he said, “we’ve played this scene before. Except I was driving, if I remember — no, I had to be, because I almost always drove when we went someplace together — but it was in the first minivan we had and you were in the seat I’m in now. I was angry at you for something you said — you were probably right, but anyway, I was angry — and you asked me if I was angry and I said ‘What an inane’ or even ‘stupid question; you can see how angry I am.’ And then you said ‘Well, I’m sorry for making you angry and ruining your good time. I apologize.’ and you took my hand off the wheel to kiss it and I pulled it away and said ‘I need two hands to drive.’ Are you still angry at me, Gwen? I’m apologizing,” and she said “Are you still angry at me?” and he said “No,” and she said “Neither am I.” “And actually, I was lying before,” he said. “I did enjoy the concert, especially the Mozart, which I didn’t think schmaltzy at all. Also, most of the Mahler, the adagio particularly. And as far as the Elgar goes, I’ve never heard it played live and it was quite stirring. I’m going to have to read the program notes to learn again what he meant by that title. I did only say I didn’t like them because I wanted to ruin, as you said, your post-concert euphoria for taking away my car keys and implying I can’t hold my liquor, which sometimes I can’t, at least not enough to drive. Truth is, I was a little high at the end of the concert from that one drink, probably because I hadn’t had anything to eat tonight but the sandwich we split in the lobby before the concert began and a single olive. And I don’t want you to go to the next unsubscribed concert with a friend. I want you to go with me, although you can bring along a friend. Next time we’re there — in fact, all the next times — I won’t even drink a beer during intermission. If I do have a martini or beer there, it’ll be with more food in me than half a sandwich and a whole olive and before the first half of the concert begins. Finally, and I’m not making this stuff up, whenever you don’t think I’m fit to drive because of how much I had to drink that night — even just one martini — or how little I had to eat before or while I drank, I’ll go along with it without taking it as some sort of rebuke, for that’s how fair-minded I think you are and how much I respect your judgment. So what do you say? Everything okay with us again?” and she said “Everything’s settled. And you can kiss my hand, Martin, but make it quick because I’m driving,” and she held out her right hand and he kissed it.

On the windowsill across from his work table is a three-by-five-inch Plexiglas frame with a photo of Gwen giving Rosalind her first bath. He doesn’t have to get out of bed and turn on the light to see what’s in the photo. He’s looked at it so many times he’s practically memorized it. Sometimes when he’s at the table he’s taken the frame off the sill and stared at the photo for a minute or so. A number of times he’s looked at it through the magnifying glass he also keeps on the sill, to see if there was anything he might have missed in it. There wasn’t, the last two times, though he’s still trying to identify one object on the ledge behind her: an orange blob the size of a baseball. He once showed her the photo and asked if she knew what the blob was and she said that was a long time ago and it doesn’t look like anything she remembers using in the bath or shower. He just thought of something. Maybe it’s a sponge to drip water over Rosalind’s head after Gwen washed it. He also once asked her if she minded his keeping the photo in such a visible place and she said “Why would I? My breasts are discreetly concealed and my genitals and pubic hair are underwater. And who sees it but you and the kids and the cleaning woman every other week, and if a plumber has to go through the room to get to our bathroom, I’d want you to put it facedown. Besides, it’s as much a photo of Rosalind as it is of me, isn’t it?” and he said “No. I mean, it’s a sweet domestic scene of mother and child, but it’s my favorite of you. Although there is one of you I like as much. You’re at an outdoor cafe in Deauville with your boyfriend Hendrick, three years before we met. Your hand’s covering his, he’s got his other arm around your shoulder, you’re both giddy with happiness, so it’s not one I’d want to see every day unless I snipped him out of it, which’d ruin the part with you.” She looks beautiful in the bath photo, but there are others where she’s as if not more beautiful. Maybe he likes it so much because she also looks so happy in it, sitting in the tub and holding a calm-looking Rosalind halfway out of the water. It could also be something to do with her being nude, the only one he has of her that she let him keep. He did once have a full-frontal nude Polaroid of her when she was seven months pregnant with Rosalind, taken behind the cottage in Maine they rented, but she found it about ten years later when she was looking for photos for a family album she was putting together and tore it up. “It wasn’t only my ugly bloated belly and what seemed like pubic hair crawling up to my navel, but my fat face and thighs and cantaloupian breasts,” and he said “It wasn’t that bad and you looked so shtark and radiant in it. I used to pull out that photo several times a year to look at it and now it can’t be replaced.” Her back’s a few inches from the curved end of the tub. Her long blond hair, brown in the photo because it’s wet, hangs over her left shoulder into the water in a single thick strand she made with her hands. The ledge is at the same level as the top of the tub and has a number of things on it besides what he’s almost sure now is a sponge. Five bottles of shampoo and conditioner, a small bottle of Johnson’s baby shampoo, a bar of red soap in a plastic soap container, the bottom part fitted into the top; two hairbrushes, one, he thinks, for taking knots out of wet hair. Two identical tubes of something, one squeezed a lot more than the other. In fact, the second one looks unused and he has no idea what the tubes were for. A baby’s comb, a washrag glove, he’ll call it, that they bought two of — one for each of them — on their first trip to France together in June ’81. In the recessed soap dish in the tile wall above the tub, a bar of Ivory soap, which he always used — it’s still the only soap he uses — when he showered in the tub. The red one was Gwen’s, bought in a health-food store. A bath toy — a book with a plastic cover and pages — floated behind Rosalind in the tub. At the bottom right corner of the photo: part of a folded-up gray towel leaning against the rim of the tub, probably on a clean bathmat. How he came to take the photo. They were in the bathroom. The heat in the apartment had been turned up and the bathroom door closed to make the room even warmer. He was holding Rosalind, who was naked. Gwen took off her bathrobe and hung it on the door hook, felt the water with her hand, got into the tub — he’d filled it to about six inches from the top and dropped the plastic book in — and dunked her head in the water. “To make Baby less afraid of the water,” she said when she came up, and then wrung her hair and shaped it into a strand. “All right; I’m ready for Baby’s first bath and shampoo,” and she held her arms out and he handed her Rosalind. Then he got the idea to take a few photos. “Be right back,” he said, got the camera off the fireplace mantel in the living room, where they always kept it so they’d always know where it was, came back, got the camera set for shooting, held it up to them and said “Okay? A little smile?” She said “I’ve no clothes on; what are you doing?” and he said “Nobody but us will see it and this is a major event in her life.” “Just one, then, but I don’t want the flash going off in her eyes.” She splashed the water with her feet, said “Look, Rosalind, look.” Rosalind looked down at the splashing or maybe at the book floating past because of the splashing, and Gwen said “Take it now,” and he took three quick pictures with the flash but only this one came out.

She dropped him off at his building. He’s previously thought of this tonight. They’d spent the entire day driving back from Maine. He got his things out of the car and she said “I have to tell you something. You’re not going to like it, or maybe not.” “You want to end our relationship,” and she said “That’s right.” “It was the argument I had with your mother,” and she said “That contributed to it, but it wasn’t only that. It’s just not working out. And I don’t see it working out. No, I definitely don’t.” “Okay,” he said, “I’m not going to argue with you. I think it could work out and I’ll be sad for a few days that I won’t be seeing you anymore, but I’ll be okay. So long, Gwen,” and he picked up his typewriter in its case and a knapsack and a shopping bag with his things and went into his building. She called, he’s almost sure now, around two months later. “Hello,” he said, and she said “Hi.” “Oh, Gwen, what a surprise. How are you?” and she said “I’m doing well; and you?” “Good.” “How’s your teaching going?” and he said “Well, you know, it’s continuing ed, so not real teaching like yours. They’re all adults, most of them around my age or ten to twenty years older, though there is a couple in their mid-twenties. They come in together, leave together, but sit at opposite ends of the room during class. Nice people, all. Intelligent, mostly woman, and a few are pretty good writers but not yet of fiction. I also try to do a short story a week from an anthology of contemporary European writers I had them buy, but I don’t lead the class discussion well and I have little to say about these stories, so I might stop assigning them,” and she said “But it’s a good idea, getting them to analyze and comment on fiction by accomplished writers. And it’s a break from just talking about their own work,” and he said “That was my intention, but it isn’t working. ‘The Adulterous Woman’ was one of the stories we read. That was the only one I had a lot to talk about, no doubt because you and I once discussed it and I remembered what you had to say. But then I started in about how at the end she seems to be fornicating with the firmament and getting a release from it, and they all thought I was nuts. I’m not a literature teacher. I’m a literature reader, and only for my own enjoyment and to pass the time in a quiet, simple way. And after I read something, even if I liked it a lot, I forget it and go on to the next. I’ve even taken to reading criticism, if I can find it, on the stories we read, but it hasn’t helped. I think I’m doing a little better by them with their own writing, though, and I have lively literary conversations over coffee with some of them after class, primarily the ones who don’t have to go back to work. But if teaching’s the career I’m to fall back on for the rest of my writing life, I’m in trouble. But how are your classes going?” “Very well, thank you. Easier than last year, but same heavy load.” “And your parents?” and she said “They’re fine. Thank you for asking.” “Your mother still angry at me?” and she said “She never was. She saw it as a minor spat too and half her fault. And I hope your mother’s doing well,” and he said “She’s fine too, thanks. I’ll tell her you asked.” “Listen, Martin, you must be wondering why I called,” and he said “I thought maybe just to see how I’m doing; catch up on stuff and things like that. It’s been a while. I’ve been curious about you too.” “That’s part of it. I also wanted to know if you’d like to meet for coffee, so we can have a more extensive talk,” and he said “Sounds good to me.” “Then I suppose the next step is to arrange it. What’s a good time and day for you and where would you like to meet? Your neighborhood, mine, somewhere in between?” and he said “Any place convenient for you. I teach at noon Mondays and Wednesdays on 42nd Street off Sixth — they’ve taken over five floors of an office building there — so we should probably avoid those days unless you teach a full load on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday.” “This Tuesday would be all right. For coffee? A drink?” and he said “Coffee would be best. If I have a glass of wine or beer, I’ll have two, and I want to keep my head clear.” “You know, another possibility is my apartment. I can make Turkish coffee and also provide cookies from Mondell’s.” “I’d feel funny,” he said, “saying hello to one of the doormen I knew. Better a nice unfrenetic coffeehouse. What about the Hungarian Pastry shop? I love that place,” and she said “So do I. I remember you did most of the galleys for your last book there. Okay. This Tuesday, at three? and he said “Perfect. I’ll be through rereading my students’ manuscripts for Wednesday and also done with my own writing for the day.” “So I’ll see you then,” and he said “Tuesday, three, Hungarian Pastry shop. I look forward to it,” and she said “Thanks. So do I. Bye-bye, Martin,” and he said “Good-bye,” and she hung up. “Oh, God, oh, God,” he said, after he put the receiver down, “this is wonderful.”

He got a call. Late afternoon, January 10th, 1983, their first wedding anniversary. He was in their New York apartment with Rosalind. They were planning to go out for dinner that night with another couple in their building, who also got married on this day but a few years before them. Gwen’s mother was going to come over at six to babysit. He forgets what restaurant he made a reservation for — he wanted it to be the one Gwen and he had gone to on their first dinner date — but she didn’t think it good enough for a wedding anniversary and said that the other couple wouldn’t think it good enough either. He knows it was in the neighborhood so they could rush home in case her mother needed them. It was the first time they were going to leave Rosalind alone with anyone. The first time they actually did leave her was about a half year later with the college-age daughter of a French couple they’d become friends with in Baltimore. The caller identified himself — Tiffany’s, Security, last name was Duff — and asked if he was speaking to Martin Samuels. “Yes, why?” and the man said “And you’re the husband of, her driver’s license says, Gwendolyn Liederman, four-two-five Riverside Drive, New York City?” “That’s correct. What is it? Anything wrong? She okay?” “She’s all right. No injury happened to her. I’ll put her on the phone after I inform you she’s being detained in our security office here till a police van takes her downtown to be booked for the charge of shoplifting. Tiffany’s—” and he said “Are you kidding me?” “Tiffany’s, I’ll have you know, prosecutes all shoplifters no matter how small the intended theft.” “But this is absolutely crazy. You’ve arrested the most honest person alive. Shoplifting? For what?” and the man said “If you mean the item, a handbag, or shoulder bag. A small leather bag hanging on her shoulder by a strap, which we caught her leaving the store with in her possession without having paid for it.” “But you’ve made a mistake. She was probably trying it on, seeing how it looked, decided against it, and absentmindedly left the store with it still on her shoulder. Look, whatever the damn thing’s worth, I’ll pay for it over the phone with my credit card, not because she might want the bag but to get her out of this jam.” “I can’t do that. Maybe you didn’t hear me, sir. Tiffany’s prosecutes all shoplifters, and your wife left the store with a stolen item in her possession,” and he said “And I explained to you. She’d never in a million years take something that wasn’t hers. Come on, let her go. She’s got a four-month-old baby at home. The kid’s got to be fed. That means mother’s milk. And today’s our first wedding anniversary. One year. I know it’s ridiculous, but it’s so. We were going to go out to celebrate tonight. Her mother’s on her way over here now to babysit for us.” “Your wife should have thought of all that before. But nothing you say, sir, will change the situation for her. The police van’s already been called.” “Then call it off,” and the man said “I’m sorry, Mr. Samuels. I can’t do that either.” “Please put my wife on,” and the man said “You’ve got one minute,” and to Gwen: “Make it quick, Mrs. Samuels.” Gwen got on. “I’m so sorry, my darling, I must have thought I put that bag back. But I suddenly realized how late it was and that I had to get home to feed Rosalind, so I just ran out of the store. If this takes long, you know where my expressed milk is in the refrigerator. If you run out of that or she’ll only drink a little of it, use the formula, but make sure she’s not flat on her back while she drinks it. How is she?” and he said “Chattery, playful, not interested in being put down for a nap.” “It was such a dumb mistake on my part. I heard you trying to convince Mr. Duff to let me go, but it seems an exercise in futility. Against company policy. That old fall-back-on. Call off dinner with the Skolnicks. Don’t tell them why yet. Just say we think Rosalind’s coming down with something and we’ll do it another time. And call my mother and tell her not to come and to stay by the phone in case I need her. She might have to bail me out with cash. Mr. Duff wants me to end the call. Some paperwork still to do for the paddy wagon. That’s what it is. Imagine, me in one. But we’ll get a lawyer and it’ll all eventually be straightened out.” “I should get the phone number where you are and address and phone number of the police station you’re going to,” and she said “I’ll give you Mr. Duff for that. Am I ready for this? I better be. But don’t worry about me. I’m in relatively good spirits, and Mr. Duff and his associates have been very courteous. He even offered to get me a sandwich and soda from the Tiffany commissary if I got hungry. Bye-bye, sweetheart. Kiss Rosalind for me,” and she gave Duff the phone. She got back around four in the morning. He had dozed off on the couch — Rosalind was in her crib in the bedroom — and jumped up when he heard a key being inserted in the lock and opened the door for her. “Oh, so good to have you home,” and hugged her. “My mother says to say hello,” and he said “Thanks. Are you hungry?” and she said “I’m sleepy.” “So show me your new shoulder bag,” and she said “You don’t mind if I don’t laugh?” and she laughed. “How’s it been with Rosalind?” and he said “Great. We had lots of fun. So tell me, how was it?” and she said “Let me wash up first. The toilet facilities there were filthy and communal, with no privacy or soap. I had to pee in front of a dozen women. For bowel movements they led you to a tiny W.C., where they left you alone but they had to flush it.” “Probably so you wouldn’t just use it to pee in privacy,” and she said “No, that makes no sense. They’d know that lots of times, when you think you need to defecate, nothing comes out,” and he said “Then I don’t know.” She undressed, put all her clothes into the laundry hamper and went into the bathroom. He followed her. “Please let me pee in peace?” and he left the room and shut the door. She showered, water-picked, no doubt flossed and brushed her teeth, and came out in her bathrobe and said “I should have a large glass of water.” He said “I’ll get it,” and she said “No, I’m fine. They didn’t torture me there. They had a water cooler, but no cups, and I was reluctant to drink from it. Miss Priss. Who knew?” She was the first one picked up by the police wagon and had a nice chat with the officer in back. “He said he was a big reader too, particularly Moby-Dick multiple times and everything about Melville and it. I had to confess I never could get past the part just before they first board the ship. I asked him if the wagon ever got unruly — that I was a little afraid. He said ‘In all my times doing this, never a rumble or even a hint of back talk. Maybe they think I’ve some influence at the station, so they stay on their best behavior. Be very careful, though, once you’re in lock up. Don’t go to sleep or show your wallet.’“ They gradually picked up more people: prostitutes, male and female, a three-card monte dealer and a man who peed in front of a movie theater. “‘I had to go,’ he said. ‘New York ought to have more public toilets, especially in crowded Midtown. What did they expect me to do, buy a movie ticket just to piss?’ A few of them in the back knew each other from previous rides, and this guy was a repeater.” She was fingerprinted, more paperwork, put in a holding cell with the women from her van and others who were already there. “Most of them said to me ‘What are you doing here, honey? You look like you belong in a church or leading a choir.’ One of the prostitutes said she could help me make good money on the street, if I ever wanted to give up teaching or use it as a sideline or cover. That I’ve the right face and body and hair for it. ‘What do you do to get it that color?’ a couple of the women asked. When I told them it was real and that my being arrested was a mistake, you can guess the reaction I got. Lots of eye-rolling and ‘Sure, baby’s.’ I’ve never been in a situation before where absolutely nobody believed me. They did say I did one smart thing for myself and that was to bring a big book with me to read, because it was going to be a long night for me. ‘We’ll be out of here in a few hours,’ one prostitute said. ‘You, because your crime’s not victimless, could see two to three days.’ The woman said she was once a lawyer, and that’s when I didn’t believe her. But I’m very tired. I’ll tell you more tomorrow. I have a bunch of quotes and detailed notes written on the title and dedication and copyright pages of the book I never got to read.” When they were turning the couch into a bed, he said “Okay, the truth now—” and she said “I know what you’re about to say, and I swear, it was an accident. I’m surprised at you for having even a shred of doubt.” “I didn’t at first,” he said. “But then I thought, with the bag hanging off your shoulder and you by the door, that you might have done it for the excitement for the first time in your life of getting away with something like that. Then, when you were home, you’d send the store the money and also the sales tax for it, anonymously and in cash, of course, and maybe ten extra bucks just to play it safe.” She said “It was an attractive bag but too expensive and really too small for what I wanted it for. But I’ve never stolen anything in my life and never will. You know me. If a waitress doesn’t list some item that should have been on my check or a store clerk makes a mistake on the bill in my favor, I always correct them. It was something my parents drilled into me and I’ve always believed. You know, though, it’ll cost us to get the charges dropped, and if they’re not, then expunged. My father already consulted with two lawyer friends, but told them the information was for a tax client of his. As an experience, I’d say it was almost worth what I went through. It was exciting. The paddy wagon and petty criminals I was thrown in with in it and then the holding cell, a world I was aware existed but had never come near to experiencing. Have you ever been in a holding cell?” and he said “If I had, you wouldn’t have heard about it by now? I did once see one when I went to the 20th Precinct on 83rd or 84th Street, years before I met you, to report my license plates had been stolen. There it was, for everyone to see, very small, though, maybe big enough for three men to stand in — nothing the size you say yours was — with one skinny hysterical man inside shouting ‘Let me out,’ and the policeman recording my license plate theft saying ‘Shut up!’” “Well, I met some interesting people, none of them hysterical, some of them quite articulate and bright and all of them very nice. One even brushed my hair.”

Free range chicken jokes. They usually made them up on long car trips between Baltimore and New York and New York and Maine. He thinks the first time was when she said, just after they crossed the bridge from Portsmouth into Maine, that what she wants to do soon as they get settled in the house is go to Sunset Acres Farm in North Brooksville for goat cheese and a free range chicken. “I’ve been longing to roast one for a while and theirs are the plumpest and freshest.” One of the kids said “What’s a free range chicken?” and she told her. That’s when he, out of nowhere, it seemed, came up with the first of about a hundred free range chicken jokes they made between them, or, as he once put it, “laid.” He said to Maureen, he thinks it was, “That’s not all you should know about free range chickens. Did you know that free range chickens love opera? And do you know what their favorite opera is?” and she said “I don’t know opera,” and he said to Gwen “You?” and she said “No.” He said “La Bohen.” “Oh, that’s terrible,” she said, and he said “So do one better, though I didn’t think it so bad. The free range chicken joke world is rich with bohential.” “Now I get it,” Maureen said, and Gwen said “That one’s better. All right. What’s a free range chicken’s favorite musical?” and he said “I don’t know,” and she said “Maureen? Rosalind?” and Maureen said “We don’t know either,” and she said “Bye Bye Birdie.” He said “That’s a joke? It has to relate more to free range chickens, or just chickens, like my ‘La Bohen.’ Because what do you mean, a free range chicken flying away? Chickens might flap up and down a few feet, but they don’t fly.” “I could have just meant saying goodbye to one, it’s off to the oven. You can be so hard to please sometimes. But I have another one. What’s a free range chicken’s favorite opera in German?” and he ran through his mind operas by Wagner, Richard and Johann Strauss, Berg, Gluck, Fidelio, the German ones by Mozart, couldn’t come up with one, tried thinking of other German composers, finally said “It’s taking my attention away from my driving. What is a free range chicken’s favorite German opera?” and she said “The Three Henny Opera.” “Now you got it,” he said. “I was going to say The Chickolate Soldier, by Oscar Straus, which my father took me to when I was around eight, but that was an operetta and nowhere near as good a choice as yours.” It went like that. They might have made a few more that first time. Favorite actor: Gregory Peck. Favorite actress: he forgets what that one was, but one of them came up with someone. He thinks he said, after her opera jokes — he knows he said it sometime, and if he said it then, then probably prefaced it with “As long as we’re on music”—“What’s a free range chicken’s favorite orchestral composition?” and she said “I don’t know,” and he said “The Eggmont Overture.” “That’s good,” she said: “Clever; erudite,” and Maureen or Rosalind said “I never heard of it.” He said “Beethoven, but not as famous as the Leonore Overtures.” One time he said, again in the van and probably while he was driving — he used them to pass the time if they hadn’t spoken for a while and there was nothing worth listening to on the radio—“You know what? We’ve never done a literary free range chicken joke,” and she said “That should be easy for us, but I can’t immediately think of one.” “So we’ll assume I’ve asked one about its favorite novel,” he said, “And you’ve given up and my answer is The Egg and I.” “Who’s it by?” and she said “Betsy or Betty MacDonald. In the forties. American. It was a popular work. And along those same lines, what’s a free range chicken’s favorite movie?” and she said “Bye Bye Birdie,” and he said “I thought we disqualified that one. The Egg and I. Also in the Forties. I think with Fred McMurray and Irene Dunne. God, how come I’ve stored these things? I never saw the picture.” Another time — one of them was driving — she said “I have a good one,” and he said “Free range chicken joke?” and she said “Uh-huh,” and he said “So let’s hear it.” “What’s a free range chicken’s least favorite song?” and he said “Ah, we’re changing the format around a little; good. I don’t know. What?” and she said “‘Home in the Range.’” “Now you’re cooking,” he said, “and I didn’t mean that to be a pun. It just came out.” “I’ve another,” and he said “You’re really rolling. What?” and she said “What’s a free range chicken’s favorite play by Shakespeare?” “Henry the Fourth?” and she said “That’s too easy and not very funny.” “Henry the Fourth, Part Two?” and she said no. “Henry the Fifth?” and she said “From now on, no more ‘Henry’ answers in free range chicken jokes.” “Then what is its favorite Shakespeare play?” and she said “Omelet,” and he said “Your best yet. Maybe the best from either of us. Can’t be beat. Oh, I did it again. And I have one related to that. What’s a free range chicken’s favorite Shakespearean food when it’s not an omelet?” and she said “I won’t even try,” and he said “Try, because mine’s not too good,” and she said “I can’t; my last two wore me out,” and he said “Eggs Benedict,” and she said “It wasn’t that bad.” Another time she said “What’s an unkosher free range chicken?” and he thought Eggs? Hens? Pullets? Capons? Poultry? Chickens? Chickies? Chicks? and said “Chickse,” and she said “Right.” “I have one close to that. What’s an inebriated free range chicken called?” and she said “Tell me,” and he said “A chicker.” “I don’t get it,” and he said “Shikker. Drunkard,” and she said “I never heard the word,” and he said “You must have.” Another time, he was driving, and she said “Martin?” and he looked at her and she was smiling and he said “Free range chicken?” and she said “What do you call one who’s crossed the road?” and he said “A busy road?” and she said yes, and he said “A dead free range chicken?” “Quick. Another. When is a free range chicken not free?” and he said “When it doesn’t cross the road? When it’s living in North Korea? I don’t know. Probably has nothing to do with incarceration. When?” and she said “I don’t know either. I thought you might. We’ll think of something.” “How about when it’s in the range? On it, trussed, ready to be put in?” and she said “I think we should give up. Did I already ask what’s a free range chicken’s favorite nightshade vegetable?” and he said “You did.” “Skin inflammation? Not favorite but just is?” and he said “After the eggplant one, and because the possibilities are pretty thin, I’d have to say eggzema.” “Then a free range chicken who’s also a petty thief? As you can see, I’ve been thinking about these when we weren’t doing them,” and he said “Peckpocket?” “Favorite brandy? No, skip that. Favorite gum?” This went on for years. Less often on her part after her first stroke because she had trouble getting out what she wanted to say. He doesn’t think they did them anyplace but in the minivan. Just once, when he was in bed recovering from an appendectomy and the painkiller wasn’t working and she tried to take his mind off the pain and he said “Sweetheart, I’m sorry, but you might be making it worse. To change around an old nonfree-range-chicken joke a little, it’s not only when I laugh that it hurts.” But what’s he getting at with this? She once said, after they exchanged a few free range chicken jokes or one of them was on a roll: “I hope you never tire of doing this, because I love our recurring routine. It’s something just between us, not that we couldn’t bring other people in, but I wouldn’t want to. It’s also as if we’re two other people when we do them,” and he said “I think I know what you mean. But there have been so many and some really good ones, usually yours, like ‘omelet’ and ‘notherclucker’ and ‘chickanery,’ that we ought to write the best ones down.” “No, that’d ruin it. We’d start making them up for posterity rather than just for a good time,” and he said “I don’t think so. We’d be saving them for our old age — at least mine, since it’ll come long before yours — when we might not be as quick and funny and could use a little humor, but I’ll go along with anything you say.”

He wrote only one letter to her, about a month after she broke up with him the first time they came back from Maine, but never sent it or told her about it. It read something like this: “Dear Gwendolyn,” it began. Not sure why he didn’t say “Gwen,” which is what he always called her. Maybe to sound somewhat formal and indifferent. If so, his tone was a guise. He cared a lot about how she’d receive the letter and would have been upset if she didn’t answer it the way he hoped, or just not answered it. Next: something like “I hope this letter finds you in good spirits and health.” Again: formal, distant, reserved; all fake. “I’m fine, working hard at my writing, and my two classes at NYU’s continuing ed program seem to be going well. I got off to a shaky and incoherent start — chalk that up to nervousness and inexperience, or nervousness because of my inexperience. But my confidence picked up once I began reading their fictions four times instead of first two and then three, so that now I almost give the impression I know what I’m doing. It became embarrassing missing not only the finer points of their stories and novel excerpts but the most obvious ones too. The classes and preparations for them take a lot of my time and the job doesn’t pay well — comes out to a hundred dollars a week for two classes of two-hour sessions with a ten-minute break for each. Not quite enough to get by on, though I’m not complaining; I’m glad to have found work. The students, of all adult ages — a few of them write almost exclusively about their grandchildren and married kids — seem to appreciate my input and like me personally. There are even laughs. To help out on the grammatical and punctuational end (never my strong suit) of my detailed typewritten critiques — some of them longer than their fictions — I rely on The Gregg Reference Manual. Are you familiar with it? Much simpler and easier to find things in it than The Chicago Manual of Style, which I also bought, and more helpful than Strunk and White’s thin outdated book. Anyway, sorry to get into all of that. I don’t know why I did. I don’t typically run on. The main reason I’m writing you is to say I’ve been thinking that if you ever want to meet for coffee, though the unlikelihood of that happening should by all intents and purposes dissuade me from even suggesting it, let me know. I can’t speak for you, but I’d welcome a nice chat, not to try to smooth things out between us but to see that things have turned out all right. I know I’ve adjusted completely to our splitting up, think you were right to want to do so, so no need to worry about that. I’d also, of course, love to hear what you’ve been up to. If you’d prefer to drop me a line rather than make a call, that’d be fine too. Whatever you wish. And if I don’t hear from you, I’d understand that too. So, all the best to you, and my apologies for this overlong letter.” He signed it “Martin,” put the letter in an envelope, addressed, stamped and sealed it, kept it on his dresser a few days and then thought Does he really want to send it? Not only is it a dumb and phony letter, but what’s the use? If she wanted to see him, she’d have written or called. That’s how she is. She’s certainly not waiting for him to initiate it. He put the letter in his top dresser drawer — wasn’t sure why he didn’t just throw it out. Came upon it a week later — it had somehow worked its way under a stack of handkerchiefs — when he was looking for a pair of socks; he was down to two — and said out loud as he shook it in the air “You never answered; I thought at least a brief polite note,” and tore it up. For a couple of weeks after she broke up with him he wrote poems about her almost every day. He wrote ten, got them copied and thought of sending them to her, then thought she’d only get angry at him and think he’d become a bit twisted — some of them were sexually graphic and a few were hard on her — so he stored them away in his file cabinet of abandoned and unfinished manuscripts. About a year after they got married — he was teaching and she was mainly taking care of Rosalind and translating at home — she asked if he’d mind looking over a long modern French love poem she translated. He read it several times, said “It’s great; doesn’t need anything, far as I can tell. It’s clear, sexy, full of feeling, and I loved it. You know, I don’t think I ever told you this, but shortly after you broke up with me that time I wrote a series of poems about you that I called my ‘G-Poems.’ ‘G-1,’ ‘G-2,’ and so on, till ‘G-10.’ At first I thought of sending them to you, or even dropping them off with your doorman. But parts can be quite harsh, which is maybe understandable, maybe not, though they do show how much I was in love with you. I’d let you see them now, if I could find them and you had the time. I think our marriage is on safe-enough grounds to withstand an unfavorable reading of them. Remember, I’m not a poet, which I believe is a line right out of one of the poems, ‘G-4.’ That one’s my favorite because it’s the funniest and least self-pitying of a pretty terrible bunch.” “Then just give me that one to read,” and he said “Nah, let’s get everything out. You have anything you’ve written about me that’s scornful or supercritical and worse? and she said “I’ve never written about you. Maybe in a couple of years. That’s how I write.” He got the poems, said “I don’t want to be in hearing distance of you, knowing how much you’re going to hate the poems,” and took Rosalind for a stroll in her baby carriage. Came back an hour later and said “So?” and she said “They weren’t as bad as you pretended they’d be, but they’re not very good either. To be honest — can I say this?” and he said “Sure,” and she said “They’re heartfelt and clever every so often, but too hastily written and as a group kind of slight. I thought ‘He’s a better writer than this.’” “Well, I asked, so I got. But what do you think your reaction would have been if I had sent them when I wrote them?” and she said “I would have thought ‘I can’t read these now and I don’t want to put them away for later,’ so I would have thrown them out. I was already feeling sad about what I knew I must be causing you, so reading them — after all, it’s poetry — would have made me feel sadder. Are you thinking of working on them to try and make them publishable? Of course, these were written more than three years ago, so maybe you’re a better poet today.” “I had no intention to. I know they’re lousy and unsalvageable, so that wasn’t why I gave them to you — for close criticism and to see if you’d mind them being published. In fact, I’m going to reduce by ten pages the amount of literary junk I carry around with me,” and he shoved the poems into the wastebasket under her desk. “Do you have copies?” and he said “Just one set, but I have no idea where it is and I don’t care if it’s lost.” “Maybe you should empty the basket. It’s already overfull and one of your poems just fell out,” and he said “Let me change Rosalind first.” “I’ll do it,” and he said “No, I should have done it right after I got back. She’s wet.” “Then I’ll empty the basket. Last chance to rescue your poems, Martin,” and he said “Go.” Doesn’t remember much of what he wrote in those poems except for “G-4.” That one he thought at the time he wrote it was the best poem he’d ever done. He made several copies of it and did try to get it published for a year or two before he showed it to her—The New Yorker, Salmagundi, Paris Review—but had no luck. Doesn’t even think he got a response. He probably still has it around somewhere, maybe in a couple of places, but it starts off with something like “I can’t write poetry but if I could I’d write a poem to you.” A bit flat, but clear. And a few lines later — the poem’s about twenty-five lines long — something close to “Poems have been known to express the ineffaceable, I mean the untraceable, I’m saying the inexpressible and ineffable, and that’s what I’d like to try to express to you.” And near the end, something very much like “It would be nice to be a poet and write words down like ‘I love you like a red red nose,’ and know the person you’re writing to, which would be you, would know that in those seemingly insipid words would be the heart’s deepest feelings and sentiments.” And ends “But I’m no poet and could never be, so I have to settle for prose that matter-of-factly says inexactly how I musically feel about you: My love is in boom again, tra-la, tra-la.” The last, except for a missing or added word or two, is a direct quote from the poem and the part — maybe of the entire “G-Poems,” though too late to find out if that’s still so — he liked best of all. In this same period after they broke up he thought of calling her. When she answered, he’d say “Oh, my God; Gwen; what a surprise. I’m sorry, I wasn’t calling you. You’re not going to believe this but I was calling a fellow teacher-writer at NYU, Harold Axelrod. You both have the same three numbers for a prefix, 6-6-3, and I must have — this had to be it; some automatic reflex — dialed your number instead. But as long as I got you, how are you?” and after she said how she was, or whatever she said, and probably she’d ask about him — how teaching’s going; his mother, perhaps — he’d say “Well, even if this call was by accident, would you like to meet for coffee one of these days?” Some months before they got married, or maybe it was on their two-day honeymoon at an inn with the word “Rock” or “Rocks” in its name. No, it was during their first trip to France together — on the train from Paris to Nice, he remembers, when he said “I have a confession to make, but with an ulterior motive in mind,” and told her about the “accidental” phone call he never made to her and was curious if she would have fallen for it. “There actually was a guy named Harold Axelrod teaching poetry at NYU at the same time and on the same floor as me and he lived in your Columbia neighborhood and had a 6-6-3 prefix and I felt we were becoming friends. But after a couple of months he got a much better-paying teaching job at Middlebury and I think moved there, but I never saw him again. Called him, but his line had been disconnected.” She said she wouldn’t have believed his call was an accident, as good an actor as he could be, and it also would have been too early in their breakup to meet. “You were smart not to make that call. I knew you were a fabricator sometimes, but now I would have thought you were a schemer, which I think would have been too much of a realization for me to ever hook up with you again.” He remembers they were eating their packed lunch on two of those pulled-out trays they had in the train compartment, and drinking bottled water.

For around three years now almost every time he leans over the cutting board in the kitchen and cuts up lettuce and other vegetables for a salad for that afternoon or night, he gets the same picture in his head. He mentioned it to Gwen once and she said she didn’t know what to make of it other than it being a good memory and of course the association of lunch in the picture and food he’s preparing, and salad more go with summer than any other season. Some six months ago she came into the kitchen while he was cutting up vegetables for a salad and said “Still getting that picture you told me about?” and he said “Same one, just a minute before you asked me about it. Weird, isn’t it. Keeps replaying and replaying.” The picture he gets is of them in Maine, five or six years ago, on the patio of Goose Cove Lodge a few miles out of Stonington, having lunch with Robin and Vincent, her best friend and her husband. And Vincent, holding up his wine glass, saying “This is just delightful; perfect. Beautiful day, wonderful company, delicious wine and food, absolutely magnificent setting, gorgeous view of the bay, heavenly smell of balsam or pine or both, and if we stayed around longer, no doubt a spectacular sunset. But let’s not talk of what’s not here. There’s more than enough that is. I can see why you come to Maine every summer. Who needs to go to Europe? Or the Hamptons or Vineyard? It’s all right here and then some. Thank you, dear friends, for allowing us to share it with you for a week. I am honestly and I hope convincingly moved,” and they clinked glasses — he, his coffee mug, as it was too early in the day for him to have wine and he had to drive them all back to the farmhouse — and drank, he just pretending to. He looked over at Gwen. She had that proud smile of hers again, as if saying to him “You see? You see?” and said to Vincent “What you said is what I, perhaps a little more than Martin, have always believed. What place could be better?” and he said “What are you talking about, sweetheart? I’ve always loved this part of Maine and want to come back to it with you forever.” “I said ‘perhaps a little more,’ but all right, I concede,” and Vincent said “I thought they’d never stop arguing. But good; peace at last.”

Maureen was spinning herself around the kitchen, to make herself dizzy, she later told them, when she lost her balance and slammed face-first into the refrigerator. “Oh, no,” she cried out, “my tooth; I lost my front tooth,” and started bawling. Gwen and he were still at the table. He remembers saying just a few seconds before “Don’t run around so, Maureen. Let your food digest a little.” He jumped up from his chair — Gwen put her hands over her eyes and stayed seated — and got on the floor beside Maureen and said “Wait; don’t panic; let me look at it. Maybe it only feels as if it’s come out,” and she opened her mouth and blood dripped out and he saw that half of one of her top front teeth was gone. “I’m so sorry, my darling, so sorry,” and pulled the dishtowel out from the refrigerator handle and put it to her mouth and with his other arm held her close to him and now both were crying. “I know how terrible this is for you,” he said, “but we’re going to make it all right,” and she said “Why are you lying? It’s my second front tooth, my permanent. I’ll be ugly all my life,” and took the towel from him and ran into her room and slammed the door. He ran after her and said through the door “Maureen, do you need any help?…Are you taking care of the bleeding?…Let me speak to Mommy.” “It’s her permanent one, she says,” he said to Gwen, showing her the half broken part of the tooth he found on the floor,” and she said “Don’t you remember? Both front teeth fell out almost on the same day and she had this huge cute gap for months. Let’s see what I can do.” She called the emergency number of the kids’ dentist, left a message with the answering service. Called some of her friends with children and one said the same thing had happened to her son, but with a bat, and at around the same age. If the half that Martin found on the floor can’t be cemented back because the break was below the nerve ending, she explained, then the rest of the tooth will have to be filed down so a temporary tooth can replace it. Then, when her mouth’s fully developed, she’ll get a permanent tooth. Both will look and can be used like a real tooth and won’t discolor. They knocked on Maureen’s door, said they have some good news about her tooth. She let them in and they told her and she said “Then that’s what I’m going to do, even if it hurts a lot, if they can’t cement the tooth together. I want to look normal. You understand, Mommy,” and Gwen said “Daddy does too. When Dr. Dworkin calls I’ll tell him I need an appointment for you tomorrow. I’m sure he’ll make room for you when I say how urgent it is.” “But no tooth fairy this time because I don’t want this tooth put under my pillow. Okay, Daddy?” and he said “If you see me as the go-between to the tooth fairy rather than my being the tooth fairy himself, then okay: I’ll speak to him.” “Or her,” she said. Gwen later said to him “What a reaction you gave when she had the accident. You immediately knew what the loss of that tooth meant to her. My empathy is so much quieter and slower than yours and I think in the end less responsive. Sometimes I think I’m emotionally cold to you and the kids, while the three of you tumble into tears if I’m hurt or very sad, or you respond close to that. What’s wrong with me?” He put his arms around her neck and said “You? Nothing’s wrong. And all I did was hold and try to comfort her for the moment, and as you saw, really didn’t do much good. I didn’t have the right words or just my holding her wasn’t enough. While you were probably thinking of ways to make things better, and you did,” and she said “Now you’re trying to comfort me.” “No, it’s true. Your phone calls. I wouldn’t have thought to make them, not even to Dworkin, at least tonight. I would have just continued to feel awful about how miserable she was, while you used your big beautiful brain and saved the day. Once more, we’re a good team. Together we handled both aspects of a sad situation.”

They were at Dick’s Cafe or “Restaurant” or “Diner” on Water Street, he thinks it is, the one that runs perpendicular to Main Street, right off the bridge, in Ellsworth. Or maybe it was only called “Dick’s,” which is all they used to refer to it as, with no what-it-is after the name. Rosalind, at the time, was almost two. And why’s he bringing up all this? Well, he’ll see. They were having lunch there, as they had a number of times the last few years, when Dick, the owner and cook, came over and introduced himself and said to him “Don’t take this wrongly, but whenever I see you walk in here I think ‘Mr. Fishburger,’ because that’s what you always order,” and he said “I like it, think about it long before I get here, and the cole slaw that comes with it.” And to Gwen “And when I see you I think ‘Mademoiselle Quiche,’ because that’s what you always seem to order,” and she said “I’ve had other things. Lobster roll. Crab meat roll. And once a hamburger when my obstetrician told me to eat more food with blood.” “Then I apologize, but I know I’m not wrong with him. As for your daughter, so far she’s ‘Little Miss Grilled Cheese,’ and because last year you brought in your own food for her. But I want her to try something new,” and from behind his back he brought out a fork with two French fries on it, and Gwen said “Thank you, but we don’t think she’s old enough for things like frankfurters or fries. She has such a darling small mouth, she might choke.” “Trust me. I’ve had young daughters. She won’t. And I know a thing or two about a special gentle Heimlich maneuver for kiddies if she does.” Gwen looked at him and he gave an expression “I don’t know what to do; you decide,” and Dick said “It won’t kill her,” and held the fork in front of Rosalind’s hand and she took the fries off and ate one and then the other and said “It’s good. I didn’t spit it out.” “You see how she did it too,” Dick said. “One at a time; didn’t stuff her mouth. Smart girl. Her first French fry. I feel privileged to be the cause of it.” Next time they came in that summer Dick waved to them from behind the grill. “I should have something different than a fishburger,” he said, “but I don’t want to,” and she said “Then don’t.” “Maybe I won’t ask for mustard this time.” Dick came over after they’d been served and said “I’ve a new treat for my little pal,” and brought out from behind his back a milk shake with a straw in it. “It’s very kind of you,” he said, “but we don’t think she’s ready for it — no ice cream or extreme sweets,” and Dick said “Where’d you come up with that? French vanilla. From Hancock Dairy. She’ll love it and it’ll go down like water,” and held the glass up to Rosalind’s mouth and she sipped through the straw and then said “Me,” and took the glass in her hands—“Watch it!” both of them said and started to get up — and finished most of it. “There you go,” Dick said. “And I don’t mean to boast about your child, but she knew straight away what to do.” “Her first drinking vessel with no handles, Gwen said. “Her first straw too.” They next came in the following summer and Dick said from behind the grill “Welcome back, Samuelses, and congratulations.” He later came over to them with one hand behind his back, they talked about how their winters had been, then he said “What surprise you have for her now?” pointing to Dick’s hidden hand, and Dick said “Don’t worry. Nothing for the new one,” and produced a small dish of something they didn’t recognize. “Finnan haddie,” Dick said. “It’s got to be a first for her and it’s one of the house specialties. I make it myself. Doesn’t come from a supplier.” “Now that,” he said, “I have to put my foot down on. Too salty,” and Dick said “Not salty. It’s smoked. From wood. No chemicals,” and held some of it out on a spoon to Rosalind. “You folks going to give me a green light?” and Gwen said “Half of that.” He dumped most of it back in the dish, Rosalind ate what was left, spit it out and said “No good.” “Another first,” Dick said, wiping Rosalind’s chin with a napkin, “but not one to brag about.” So? So times when they always had a good time, isn’t that it? And when they ordered — he thinks this happened every time — Gwen asked Ruby — Dick’s daughter and their waitress on the side of the restaurant they always tried to sit on because it had windows and there were open tables and not confining booths — to save a slice of whatever was the seasonal pie on the blackboard: raspberry, blueberry, strawberry-rhubarb, and if they stayed into early September because both of them were on leave and the kids were still young enough to start school late, peach.

Not much to this one. Good times and feelings again, maybe, but he suddenly thinks of something else. Whenever he had trouble getting or keeping an erection when they made love or one that was full, he’d say “We should probably forget it for now” or “take a rain check, as you like to say,” and she’d say “Maybe I can do something,” or “Let me see what I can do” or “if I can help,” and what she did — it took no more than a minute once they got settled — always worked. That’s all there is to it? “Thanks,” he said a few times, and once: “I’d do the same for you with your erectile tissue, but you never said you needed it,” and she said “I don’t like it done as much as you, and it never seemed crucial.” He finds he’s holding his penis, jiggles it a little, nothing happens and he lets go. Does he think he’ll ever make love with another woman? With Gwen it was more than every other day, two hundred to two hundred fifty times a year for around twenty-seven years. Never even kissed another woman romantically in that time and she said same for her with a man. “I’ve had fantasies,” and she said “So have I, but what of them?” “Masturbated maybe twenty times since I’ve known you,” he said, “and most of them when we were split up that first year or I was out of town doing a reading and you were home,” and she said “I don’t think I’ve done it once since we met, not even when we were split up, and I didn’t have another man then.” But the memory he started. It was with her parents. Had to do with food. Whenever he and she and the kids drove to their New York apartment from Baltimore or came back to it after their long stay in Maine, her parents would come by that night around seven, even if it was raining hard or there was a light snow, with food from Zabar’s. Always shrimp salad, which he didn’t eat because he’d got stomach poisoning three times from shrimp, but Maureen and Gwen and her parents loved. And Nova, kippered salmon or smoked sable (they seemed to alternate), creamed pickled herring, two gefilte fish balls with a small container each of white and beet horseradish, potato knish and half of a rotisseried chicken, which he had to warm up in the oven — hated that in the summer because of the heat it generated — because her parents had bought all this that morning to avoid the store’s crowds and nobody liked the chicken or knish cold. “Chicken’s too much,” he used to say, “and we already have potato salad so don’t need the knish,” and her father would say “Freeze what we don’t eat and take it back with you to Baltimore.” Cole slaw, potato salad, bagels, a sliced Jewish rye, a whole apple strudel or chocolate babka, which he’d freeze most of — by then they were all full — and throw out the next time they came to New York. As he said, they were all glad to see one another and had a good time. Around nine, her parents would say they should go — her mother had a patient coming early tomorrow morning, her father had several tax extensions to look over tonight, the “children,” as they called them, have to get to sleep soon, “and both of you must be tired from the long drive in.” He’d call the private car service that brought them there — it was an easy number to remember because it ended with 6-6-6-6,” get nervous they wouldn’t make it downstairs in time — the dispatcher always said “Two to three minutes; the driver’s just a few blocks away”—and go with them to the car, hold an umbrella over them one at a time if it was raining or their arms at the elbow if it was snowing and kiss them both on the cheek and help them into the car. Just before he shut the door, her mother would say to him “I kiss you, my darling.” One time, after the car had left, Rosalind, who’d come downstairs with them, said “Why’d Nona say that about kissing? She did kiss you, and he said “She meant it another way. That I’m a good son-in-law.” Once, when he got back to the apartment, Gwen said “You’re very nice to my parents,” and he said “Because I love them, but that’s not the only reason why.”

He thinks they were discussing grammar. One of them said “Not me.” Then one of them said “Which is it? ‘Not me’ or ‘Not I’?” Then she said she saw the play. “What play?” and she said “Beckett’s Not I, and another short play of his with it. Footfalls, I think, or Where There or something. “At Lincoln Center?” he said. “The Vivian Beaumont? Summer of ’77? I wanted to see it, particularly Not I, very much. More than any play for years. I wouldn’t have cared what play was playing with it. I went to the box office, even though I knew the cheapest ticket would be expensive, but they were sold out for the entire run. I didn’t have much money then, but would have paid anything for a ticket. I even twice hung around the theater lobby before the performance began to see if anyone had a spare ticket to sell, but nobody did.” “I went with my mother,” she said. “She ordered the tickets weeks before.” “I couldn’t order anything. No credit card then. Lucky. That you got to see it and to have a mother who’d buy tickets for you and who’d want to go to a Beckett play. My mother would never buy the tickets. It’s not that she’s cheap; she’s not. She’d just never think to. And if I bought tickets for her, she’d only go because she’d want me to have company or she’d think her going would please me.” “To tell you the truth, both plays were a little wearisome but well done. My mother hated the first one — you know how she is with movies, sometimes within minutes if she doesn’t like them — and left halfway through it and never came back.” “Wouldn’t have been wearisome or anything but wonderful for me, especially if that was where we first met. Was it a matinee you saw?” and she said yes. “That’s what I would have wanted to go to too and those days I went down to the theater for spare tickets were all afternoons. I never liked going alone to movies or the theater at night. But, hey, suppose we had? In the lobby during intermission, for instance. There was one, wasn’t there?” “An intermission?” she said. “Of course. Two plays, different scenery, spare as it was. For Not I, a giant screen showing a woman’s mouth moving throughout the play till near the end when it abruptly closes.” “No, it never stops moving or talking till the house lights up.” “So you’ve seen it?” she said. “I read it and it had to end the way I read it did, since he was a stickler about the play following his stage directions. But I thought they might have done something unusual with the two plays because it was Beckett and ran them intermissionless, with only a brief blackout or lowered and raised curtain.” “No curtains at the Beaumont,” she said. “Theater in the round. You remember Arcadia and Six Degrees etcetera, plays my mother bought us tickets for. She did that lots of times when we came to New York. The Beaumont was convenient to their apartment and we could drop the kids off with her, which she loved, and walk down to it and have a good time. But what were you saying?” “I’d go over to you in the lobby during intermission, as I wanted to at the party when we first met.” “It was at the elevator where we met, just after we left the party separately.” “I know,” he said. “I followed you there.” “You did?” “I’ve told you that,” he said. “I’ve kept nothing back. You were gorgeous and looked so bright. It was my last chance. But since your mother left during the first play and wasn’t waiting for you in the lobby…was she? If she was, the fantasy I’m concocting is going to have to change.” “She went home. She whispered she was going to just before she left her seat.” “So you’d be alone in the lobby during intermission and the chances of you bumping into someone you know there would be very slim. I’d notice you, be immediately attracted to you, and see you were standing alone. So would other men, so I’d have to move fast. Oh, I forgot. Did you leave your seat during intermission? If it was only to go to the ladies’ room, I’d come up with something to make us meet. Both of us leaving — not going into — our restrooms at the same time. But this fantasy has to stick to the facts.” “I don’t have the restroom problem you do, going to it every two to three hours to pee. I went to the lobby just to walk around and perhaps there’d be something interesting to see there or a cool nonalcoholic drink to drink. Lemonade. I think they had good lemonade.” “Did you get one? If you did, I’d have to include it.” “I don’t think so.” “So I’d go over to you and I know almost exactly what I would have said. ‘Hi. Enjoying the play?’ Or rather ‘Enjoy the first play?’ But ‘enjoy’ is so stuffy. ‘Did you like?’ No doubt something trite or inane to get me started. Then, ice broken I could even say ‘What did you think of it?’ Then we’d talk about the play, Beckett. You’d maybe say you found the play a bit wearisome. If you did, I’d say I liked it, which I’m sure I would have. If you didn’t say anything about the play being wearisome, I’d still say I liked it. ‘Been looking forward to seeing it for weeks. And a ticket wasn’t easy to get.’ I’d probably also say, if I didn’t think I was being too windy, how much I like his short plays, including the radio ones. All That Fall. Others. More than his longer works, plays and prose, and I like a lot of his poetry too. ‘Cascando,’ especially. That great passage ‘terrified again of not loving…of loving and not you…of being loved and not by you…’ and so on. ‘I can recite very little poetry by heart,’ I’d say, ‘but I read that one so many times, and the language is so simple, I remember it…that part, I mean, and a little more.’ Then the bells to get back to our seats would ring and I’d say ‘Like to meet for coffee after?’ And so convenient your mother went home, but I would have invited you both for coffee if she had come back to the theater to have a snack with you after the performance. That would have been a year and a half before we met. Think what we both would have been spared if we’d got together then. Me, not two but three quick bad relationships, which made me more and more disillusioned about myself when each of the women — two, actually — broke up with me, and the third — she was married, so it was ridiculous — didn’t want to have anything romantic to do with me. And you, a pointless relationship with a man you didn’t love but for some reason kept seeing whenever he flew into town and called.” “Not pointless. He was interesting, very smart, witty, fun to be with, treated me well and was a good lover. He fit my needs and limitations perfectly at the time, and I used to phone him too.” “Glad to hear it, for your sake. One thing. We probably would have married sooner and had babies sooner too.” “I don’t think so. You needed a decent-paying job first, and that didn’t come till September, 1980, or we’ll say, July 1st, since that’s when your academic year began. But if we had got married and had a baby sooner, that would have meant no Rosalind. Though I’m sure the one we had sooner, daughter or son, would have been as wonderful. And Maureen, three years later, since that’s the time spread we chose to have our children, would have been our Rosalind, but then we wouldn’t have had our Maureen.” “We could have had a third. I would have loved it.” “We almost did,” she said, “if I hadn’t miscarried. But now you’re going to say I wouldn’t have miscarried, because the third would have been our Maureen. Don’t. It’s gotten too morbid and complicated for me.” “I would have gone to Maine with you later that summer and also the whole summer of ’78, instead of your sometime-lover English architect for a week. But I’m wondering if you would have been interested in a forty-one-year-old man when you had only recently turned thirty, rather than the forty-two-and-a-half-year-old man a year and a half later when you were thirty-one and a half.” “Forty-one would have been cutting it close then, but I guess all right, and you rarely looked or acted your age except when you were working.” “What else do you think we would have done together if we had hit it off that summer of ’77?” “It’s all down in my journals. More plays, parties, poetry readings, dinners, lectures, symposiums, maybe a weekend at Mohonk Lodge, and of course lots of movies. And since I wasn’t in any kind of serious relationship at the time, I probably would have agreed to having coffee with you and later started seeing you.” “And your needs and limitations?” “I might have changed them for you,” she said. “You had many of the same positive qualities as my English friend, and in addition you were Jewish, a writer, and lived in New York.” “And I would have quietly flipped over you that first day when we had coffee after the plays, and I’m sure we would have continued it till today.” “Why not?” she said. “It’s only a year and a half more. But you know, if we didn’t begin anything then—” “If you didn’t want to have coffee with me after the plays, or anything more to do with me after we did have coffee—” “We would have had another opportunity to become more acquainted at Pati’s party a year and a half later. But this time, since we’d spoken to each other once before at the theater and maybe even had coffee together after the plays, we would have started talking inside the apartment and not at the elevator after we’d separately left the party. That would have been where I gave you my phone number, or how to get it, and not on the street in front of her building.” “And if we did start seeing each other after the plays and got serious, I wouldn’t have gone to Yaddo ’78, where I met Pati; Maine would have been my Yaddo. I would only have known her through you and come to her party as your boyfriend.” “Seventy-seven and ’78 in Maine with you,” she said. “I could have gone for that. Also as a distraction and breather from the three-hundred-page dissertation I was still working on those summers. I also would have tried to enlist you as a second reader of it, less for ideas than for looking out for possible mistakes and simplifying my language in places.” “Just as you, in a way, would have been a nice distraction from the stories I was writing then. But by the summer of ’78 they wouldn’t have been the same stories I ended up writing, because by then I’m sure I would have already been writing about you. I wouldn’t have let you see them so quickly, though. Not because you’d be in them or that I also couldn’t use help in catching mistakes. It’s just I never liked anyone reading my work before it was published but literary agents and magazine and book editors. Although I had nothing against reading out loud a line or word or two from a work in progress if I thought there was something really wrong with it. Or if there were two good ways of saying the same thing and I wanted to know which one this person thought was best. You’ve done that for me,” and she said “A number of times,” and he said “And you were always right.”

He drove into Augusta with the kids and Gwen and got gas at the first service station along the main street. After he filled up, he said “Well, people, I’m going to use the restroom here and pay for the gas. Anyone else have to go?” and they all said they could wait. He went inside, paid, peed, and bought a New York Times—something to read with his drink later — and a bag of cornnuts for himself and a bag of roasted sunflower seeds for Gwen. Back in the van, before he started up, he said “You kids must be hungry by now. Pizza okay? It’s quick and it’s just a few stores down.” He parked in front of the pizza shop he saw from the service station, gave them money for pizza and chips or a cookie and a drink—“Even soda, if that’s what you want,” and they went inside. “Oh, I forgot; I wasn’t thinking,” he said to Gwen. “You want something besides the sunflower seeds? I doubt you’d go for the pizza here, but you do like the veggie subs at Subway. There’s one on this side of the street on the way out of town.” She said “I’m happy. Maybe you want one. You like them too,” and he said “I do, but I’ll wait till Kennebunkport till I get anything. And those things can get messy when you’re driving.” “I’ll take over,” and he said “No, you said you were tired before, so you sleep.” They held hands and looked out the windows and every so often smiled at each other till the kids came back. “No mess, please,” he said. “Napkins on the lap; all that. And drinks, when you’re not drinking them, in the cup holders and with the lids on,” and he drove to the I-95 entrance about a mile away. “There’s the Subway,” he said to Gwen. “Last chance,” and she said “Thanks, but I’ll be all right.”

Their first trip to Maine together took the entire day. Long delays on the Cross Bronx Expressway and on the highway through Hartford and then Worcester, and getting through the New Hampshire tollbooth on 95 took another half-hour. And before they got on the road they stopped at her parents’ apartment for their Siamese cats, mother and same-litter brother of the two females Gwen owned, and the male was hiding and it took an hour to find him. They’d picked up the rental car in Yonkers the day before and loaded it with their belongings and parked it in a garage overnight near Gwen’s apartment. One back window was missing and the other couldn’t be opened, so they were able to get it at a reduced rate. She’d wanted to get to the cottage while it was still light out so he could see it from the outside when they got there. “Most people are bowled over by it. I’m just hoping you’ll like it,” and he said “I know I will. Everything you described. And Maine for two months? And out of the sweltering New York heat? And of course, being with you. As my dad used to say — I’ve told you, though I think he was referring to making money—‘What’s not to like?’” The front door was unlocked. “There are keys of an ancient kind,” she said, “but I’m not even sure if they still work. Whenever I asked Stan, the caretaker, for them, he stalled me, making me think he’d been given instructions by my eccentric landladies to withhold them. He’ll be here tomorrow morning around six with a container of souring crabmeat he’ll say his wife just picked. Always does, I always throw it out or bury it, and that’ll be the last we see of him, except by chance at the Brooklin general store, till the day we leave, when we’ll drop by his shack on our way out to say goodbye and tip him.” “It’s safe, though, to go to bed with the doors unlocked?” and she said “Break-ins around here only occur in winter. Antique thieves, who spend the summer selling their booty at flea markets in the area. The cottage has lost two precious wind-up clocks and most of its rare books.” They brought in the cats, put out food and water for them, set up the litter box and a wicker basket piled high with old towels for them to sleep together. Then they emptied the car of the rest of their things. She took him for a quick tour of the cottage and said “So be honest. What do you think?” “It’s beautiful,” he said. “The wood, stone fireplace, whatever those little diamond-shaped window panes are called, cathedral ceiling, the what looks like Shaker and Adirondack-style of just Maine-lodge-like furniture. Even the ceramic plates and bowls, I see. Nothing tawdry. Everything elegant. And you said a great view of the bay from the upstairs bedroom window? What a treat. Thanks for inviting me,” and she said “Thanks for coming and paying half the rent,” and she kissed him. “Now, lots of work to do before dinner and, for you, a pre-dinner drink, unless you want to fall asleep smelling mouse droppings and winter nests.” She swept the entire cottage. He wanted to help her, but there was only one broom. “Next summer,” she said, “if we’re still together, we’ll make sure there are two. You can strip the newspapers from the furniture and beds and burn them in the fireplace. And I guess you can hang up and put away our clothes upstairs and make our bed with the linens and pillows we brought up. But first clean out the mothballs and mouse droppings, if there are any, from the dresser and desk drawers. And as long as you’re up there, set up your work space. Mine will be the living room desk, where I always work. The table’s a bit wobbly upstairs, but maybe you can fix it. Do I sound too bossy? I don’t like it when I act like that, but I want to get everything out of the way tonight so I can get back to my writing tomorrow morning,” and he said “That’s how I am about my work too, and I’m glad for whatever I get here.” After they finished, she showered and he prepared dinner. Opened a bottle of Chianti from the case they brought from New York, poured himself a glass, put water on for green fettuccine, made an ajo e ojo sauce for it, salad, dressing, grated fresh Parmesan into a dish, sliced bread, got out the butter, put some cookies and grapes on a plate, set the dinner table. “Ready to eat?” he yelled upstairs, where she went after her shower. “Starving,” she said. “Be right down.” She put two candles in silver candlesticks on the table and lit them. “I know you don’t like them—‘dangerous’ and ‘mawkishly romantic’ and they smell and eat up the oxygen and give off heat you don’t want — but just for tonight and when we have guests?” They sat next to each other, ate and drank. “Oh, I forgot to toast to a great summer,” he said, and she said “It goes without saying. Though tomorrow night we should make more room for us at this table. Too cozy, and my elbow keeps bumping yours. I love you but I like to eat apart.” Vivaldi’s Winter was on the Bangor public radio station. “This’d be more appropriate music for the morning,” she said. “You’ll see. You’ll have to wear your flannel shirt and, if you’re the first one downstairs, light the kindling in the cold stove to warm up the kitchen.” “Is that what that big old cast-iron thing is called?” and she said “I think so. Remember, I’m from the Bronx. Maybe I heard it wrong and it’s ‘coal.’ No, couldn’t be. Only takes wood. Probably ‘cold.’ It can get hot enough to bake bread.” They washed the dishes and put them away. She showed him how to get a fire started in the cold stove and made sure the cats were in their sleeping basket. “You going to shower?” and he said “If you want me to,” and she said “Not if you think you’re okay. The shower — well, you’ve been to the toilet, unless you just peed in the grass, so you know they’re both in the cabinet off the porch. That can be a problem when it’s raining. And never shower during an electric storm. The floor’s metal and it’s not grounded well,” and he said “Then I’ll call in an electrician to fix it and pay for it myself if the landladies don’t cough up,” and she said “They won’t, so we’ll share.” They went to bed. “Good, no mosquitoes yet,” she said. “The one drawback of a cottage by the water. In a week they’ll be keeping us awake unless we plug up the window screen holes that have materialized since last year, though they also come down the fireplace.” “There are kits to stitch up those holes or I’ll just staple new screens on, but leave it to me. As for the fireplace, let’s get a glass shield or screen that completely seals the opening. It’d be worth it, not to lose even one night’s sleep, and again, I’ll pay for it out of my own pocket. After all, we’ve got more than two months here.” “You’re full of good ideas tonight and so generous,” and he said “Are you being sarcastic? That’d be so unlike you,” and she said “Not at all. Fact is, I feel remiss I didn’t think of taking care of the fireplace that way before.” “Nah, come on. You think of things that I don’t and I think of things that you don’t and we also both add to the other’s ideas. We’re what’s called a couple.” Stan came around six in the morning with the crabmeat. “Find everything in order? I left a lawnmower and can with enough gas in it in the woodshed, in case one of you feels inclined to cut the grass. I wanted to, but got busy opening a half-dozen houses.” They went back to bed and stayed in it till seven. “Gets light here so early,” he said. “What was it, five?” This is the routine they fell into. They each made their own breakfast, read a little — he, the Times from the previous day — and worked at their desks till around one, when they stopped for lunch. She: a soup and bread and dessert or a sandwich and salad; he: a few carrots and celery stalks and a piece of cheese and more coffee. They’d eat lunch at the small wood table in the kitchen or sitting on the porch and talk about the work they’d done that day. That’s how it went for a week. Nobody she knew was up yet, so they were just by themselves and he loved it. After lunch: walks on the road, or along the shore with three of the cats. Kitya, the mother, liked to stay home. Or a drive to Naskeag Point to look for sea-polished or unusually shaped stones and to watch the lobster and other boats come in or leave. Or a drive to the library in town or the general store there for essentials they were out of. Their big shop they’d do in Ellsworth next week, and have lunch there, and one of these days, she said, they should go to Acadia National Park and have popovers and tea at the Jordan Pond House. She didn’t know it had burned down the previous winter. Before or after dinner, they drove several times to an ice-cream stand about ten miles away on Deer Isle. After they finished their cones, he hugged her from behind — it was already getting chilly — as they watched the sunset. “This is already my favorite thing to do up here,” he said. “The sky, delicious ice cream, cone’s good too, holding you, and of course gushing about it.” “I knew you’d like this particular spot. Ice cream’s local, I want you to know. Made in Ellsworth, where we’ll be going to,” and he said “I’m looking forward to it.” “A friend here calls it Asphalt Acres,” and he said “Then maybe it isn’t too great.” Then something happened to spoil the good mood for a while. It was a couple of weeks before he got into an argument with her mother, when she was visiting, so maybe this also contributed to her breaking up with him the day they got back to New York. Just thought of that but now doesn’t see how it couldn’t have. He wanted to mow the grass around the cottage before the caretaker took the lawnmower back. “He said we could have it for a few days and it’s been way more than a week.” “He might leave it in our woodshed all summer. That’d be just like Stan,” and he said “Still, I’d like to get it done at least once. It really needs it, and it’ll give the mosquitoes less place to hide.” She said “Before you do, let me point out the places I don’t want mowed because of the flowers.” She had driven somewhere for something. He thought he’d surprise her by mowing the grass before she got home. He was finished, putting away the lawnmower, when she drove down the driveway and got out of the car. “I could smell you mowed, all the way from the road. Looks nice, but I asked you to wait till I showed you what I didn’t want mowed,” and he said “I was very careful to stay at least a few inches away from all the flowers.” She looked around. “Well, you didn’t get the peonies, thank goodness.” Walked around the woodshed; he followed. “Oh, no,” she said. “You destroyed every one of them.” “Where? What?” and she said “My foxgloves.” She pointed to an area about ten by fifteen feet, and he said “There were foxgloves there? I don’t know what they look like, but I saw no flowers. Just weeds.” “They were just coming up, were going to flower in a few weeks. Damn, that was so willful of you. You don’t listen. You do what you want. Not just willful. Pigheaded. Stupid. Stupid.” “I’m stupid?” he said. “I’m not saying you are, but I’m not. That’s what my father used to call me when he got mad at me, and I hated it,” and she said “Maybe he was right. For look what you’ve done. You cut them clear to the ground. They’ll never come up again. They took so much doing to get them started two summers ago, and when a few appeared last summer, I knew they’d taken. I planted them from seeds, did all sorts of things to make them work.” “So we’ll do it again this summer so they come up next. Or you’ll tell me how and I’ll do it alone,” and she said “I don’t want to wait two more summers to see a big patch of them. If you knew what they looked like and how hard they are to grow and to keep coming back, you’d understand.” “What I don’t understand is why you’re going so crazy hell over it. In the end, beautiful as they might be, they’re just flowers; flowers.” “I can’t believe you sometimes,” and she went to the car, got a big paper bag of something off the front seat, started crying and headed toward the house. “Are you crying over the flowers?” and she said “Shut up.” “Listen, Gwen, I’m sorry, truly sorry, which I forgot to tell you, but I truly am.” She went inside without looking back at him. So maybe this was the first time he saw her cry, or over something he said or did. She was cool to him for a few days. They ate dinner together and slept in the same bed, but she kept as far away from him on it as she could, and when he touched her shoulder once from behind, she flinched. “Don’t worry; I’m not in the mood either. It was just my way of saying goodnight.” Her mother called every night — her father would get on when her mother was through — and probably asked how things were, because he overheard Gwen say “Not that great,” and another time: “Same as before. No, it isn’t my health or work. I’ll explain when you get here.” “Funny,” he said, when she seemed to be feeling better to him, “how fast things change.” “The foxgloves?” and he said “Yes, and I’m not saying it was because of nothing,” and she said “Please don’t remind me of them or I’ll get angry and sad all over again. It won’t be easy to forget what you did.” “It’d be best for both of us if you did, but okay. And they might come up again next year without our replanting them. But we got pretty close to ending things, didn’t we?” and she said “Martin; I asked you; please.”

There were two other incidents similar to that, maybe three, but little to no crying. One took place just a few months after they met. Seventy-nine; February, or March. It was on the park side of Riverside Drive, right across from her apartment building. In fact, there was even another incident outside, much like this one, but he already went over it. It had snowed, was still snowing. Maybe ten inches. He watched it from her living room window and said “What do you say we go out and walk in the snow? I’ve always wanted to do that with the woman I loved and kiss her with snow on our noses.” “That’s sweet,” she said. “I don’t know about the snowy nose part, but I’d love to,” and they started to get dressed for the outside. “Boots, too,” he said, “so your feet don’t freeze. I’ll just put on two pairs of socks, if you loan me one of yours.” They didn’t walk far, maybe a block and back. Then at the wall separating the Drive from the park, she turned to look at the snow coming down over the river. He made a snowball and threw it at a tree. “Missed,” he said. “What?” and he said “The tree. Snowball.” She still hadn’t turned around. She was wearing a cap, gloves, her coat buttoned up to her neck. He had a cap on but had left his gloves in his apartment and his hands were getting cold. Time to go in, he thought. But first a little fun. He made a much smaller snowball, one not so compact as the one he threw at the tree, and lobbed it underhand at her. He’d aimed at her backside but it hit her just above her coat collar and got down her neck. “What are you doing?” she said, brushing herself off. “That’s cold and I can’t get it out. And I wasn’t prepared for it and could have slipped. I could break a leg here.” “I didn’t think I was doing anything bad, and hitting you so far up wasn’t where I was aiming. So, sorry once again,” and she said “What other time were you sorry for something with me?” and he said “Then this is the first. Here, let me help you,” because she had taken her gloves off and was trying to dig out the snow from in back, and he put his hand down her coat and got out what snow he could find. “Enough, already,” she said. “Your hand’s as cold as the snow. Thank you, but I’ll get out what’s left when we get home.” “Now, instead of that snowball, if I had grabbed you — that would have been something else,” and he pretended to cackle and put his arms around her and bent her back as if he were going to drop her into the snow. “What’s with you?” she said. “Let me up. You could slip, and my coat’s new,” and he lifted her back up and let go of her. She picked up a glove that had fallen and said “We better go inside.” “You’re angry,” and she said “Yes. I don’t like being bullied or scared or treated roughly or falling on my back. I didn’t think you were being funny, no matter what you might have thought,” and she stepped carefully over the snow — he put his hand out to help and she said “Don’t give me your hand; I don’t want it”—and waited for some cars to pass before she crossed the street to her building. In the elevator going up, he said “I’m sorry again, and this time it is again,” and she said “You should be. You acted like an immature kid.” “I know,” he said, “and also like a dope. But that’s not the first time I heard that in my life. Am I forgiven?” “I’ll think about it.” “Can I get the kiss I didn’t outside?” and she said “If you want. But do it before the door opens.”

He’s not sure where the second one was. Either a railway station in London or one in Paris. Waterloo? Gare de Lyon? He’s just pulling names out of the air. Says to himself: Let me think. The name of the station he might never come up with. It was the end of May, 1985. Gwen was five months pregnant with Maureen. She and Rosalind and he had been to several countries the past month — Germany (really only Munich), Czechoslovakia, Poland, Austria — and were either heading to London, after a week in Paris, or to the QE2, after four days in London. He remembers wanting to buy a book at the railway station. Faulkner’s Collected Stories, Penguin edition. So it almost had to be the London railway station, where they were waiting to board a boat train to the QE2. He thought it might have been at the French railway station because he complained to her there how she was always running late and they could have missed the hydrofoil to Dover, which they had unrefundable tickets for, if they’d missed the train to it. They did get there late, but the train wasn’t there yet and they were told the hydrofoil would wait for it or another one would honor their tickets. “Saved by a tardy train,” he said, “but I’ll take anything,” and they each had a sandwich and Gwen and he shared a beer and they checked out the magazines at a newsstand and souvenirs at a gift shop and bought Rosalind a Mickey Mouse doll and got on the train. No anger or crying and in their passenger car Gwen rested her head against his shoulder and slept all the way to the dock. The argument at the London railway station was much worse. They were running late again because of her. “I’m heavy and slow and lack my old energy, what can I say?” she said. He ran to the train station from the cab, carrying Rosalind in one arm and with the other their larger bag. “Come on, come on, hurry; we’ll miss it,” he said to Gwen. She was walking as fast as she could behind him and pulling a bag on wheels. He was afraid they’d miss the boat train and the QE2 would sail without them. It turned out she got the train departure time wrong and they had more than two hours to kill. “I can’t believe you sometimes,” he said. “What am I going to do the next two hours? You know I hate waiting for anything very long, and we’ve already stuffed ourselves at lunch.” “I don’t know what you’re going to do, but I’m happy just to sit here. I’m tired and I can use the rest. Walk around, have another cup of tea,” and he said “I don’t want to walk around. Where would I go?” “Then buy a Herald Tribune and sit beside me and read me the news. Or take Rosalind outside and get her some sweet tea. But whatever you do, don’t start with me again. I’ve had my fill of your blaming me.” “Don’t blame Mommy,” Rosalind said. “Be nice,” and he said “Okay, I won’t. I’ll blame you. Only kidding, my little putchky. How’s Mickey today? Better?” and she waved the doll in the air and said “All better,” and he patted Mickey on the head and said “Good.” And to Gwen: “If only you’d gotten the train schedule straight. I ran so hard from the cab, my shirt’s soaked.” “Look,” she said, “you might have been the one to get our visas in New York and who’s done most of the heavy carrying, but I’ve done practically everything else to make this trip work. Hotels, reservations, itinerary, planes and trains, the QE2 standby fares, and all the confirmations and translating and who knows what else. So give me a little credit, will you?” and he said “I do. I’m just saying—” and she said “I know what you’re saying, so stop it.” “I will when I’m sure it’s registered with you, because I don’t know how many times we almost missed a train or plane.” “But we never did, did we?” and he said “But it got too close — you could even say with that hydrofoil — and it makes me nervous and I don’t want it to happen again. Prague, for instance, giving the cab driver the name of the wrong train station. And the plane out of Kraków and forgetting our passports at the hotel there for a few minutes and we had to go back.” “That was you as well as me, right?” and he said “Right. You were in charge of the passports, but I should have been covering for you. And I know I can be a bit obsessive in getting to places on time, but you could be a lot more careful.” “Oh, screw you and your anxieties and taking part of the blame only when you’re forced to. Why do you always have to act this way and then make me act as bad as you?” and he said “I wouldn’t if you got things right and prepared your departures from the hotels better.” “You want to win the argument? All right, you won. But I can’t stand this. I told you, I’m tired, I’m pregnant, but look at you. You’re always complaining about me,” and he said “No, I’m not,” but she started crying. Rosalind took her hand and said “Don’t cry, Mommy,” and he said “It’s the baby that’s making her cry,” and Gwen said “It’s not; it’s you. You can be so awful. I wish I weren’t married to you.” He remembers again the time they were driving to Maine and she was six months pregnant with Rosalind and she took the wrong turn to get onto the Mass Pike so that they headed toward Springfield instead of Boston and he complained and, he thinks, cursed her with something like “Damn you,” and she cursed him back with something like “Fuck you,” and brought up that she was pregnant and look at the way he’s treating her when they’re supposed to be happy with her carrying their first child, but he doesn’t think she cried. Maybe she did. He thinks she said something about how her tears were affecting her vision, or they would if she cried. Now she was crying. Not heavy sobs and, really, no sounds. A few tears, which she wiped. And that crying look. Her nose got red. It always did when she cried, even at movies, if there was enough light to see her nose, or when she heard a particularly sad piece of music. The Tchaikovsky String Sextet, he thinks it is, at a Kneisel Hall concert in a church in Blue Hill. Other chamber music at the Hall. And once while they listened to Bach’s St. John Passion on a record or CD at home. They had it on both. He said “I’m sorry. Very sorry.” Rosalind still held her hand and said to him “You shouldn’t be mean to Mommy,” and he said “I know. — I’m glad I’m married to you,” he said to Gwen. “Please don’t think what you said.” “It’s the truth,” she said. “Maybe we’re not suited for each other. This happens too often.” “When, often?” and she said “We should think seriously about it. Now leave me alone. We have plenty of time before they let us on the train, so why don’t you take the walk you don’t want to? It’d be good for Rosalind and me.” “Do what Mommy says,” Rosalind said. He got up and said “I won’t go far,” and walked around outside and got a beer at a pub and thought “Why do I say those things? Why do I do those things? Idiot. Asshole. Moron. Fool,” and went back inside the station and stopped at the bookshop there and saw the Faulkner collection, which he’d never seen in the States and he thinks he would have if it were there, and wanted to buy it but it cost too much, he thought, so he put it back on the shelf. He went back to where they were sitting and said to Gwen “I saw a book I wanted to buy — Faulkner’s Collected Stories. It had stuff in it I’d never seen before, but it was very expensive. Maybe I should buy it anyway. It’s a big book and it might only be sold in England, and we have a five-day voyage ahead of us,” and she said “Do what you want. What do I care? But don’t talk to me again till after we board the ship.” “Don’t be mean to Daddy,” Rosalind said. “Be nice,” and Gwen said “All right. Your father deserves it, but all right. And don’t worry, my darling. Everything will turn out okay.” “You’re not going to go away from Daddy?” and she said “No.” He tried to talk to her on the train. She said “Please”—Rosalind was asleep in his lap—“I don’t want to speak to you now.” “I just want to say how relieved I was at what you said to Rosalind,” and she said “Good for you.” It was her birthday that day. He’d said “Happy birthday” when they woke up in the morning and kissed her, “but I’m afraid I don’t have a present for you,” and she said “There’s no room in our bags to cram anything more in them anyway.” He ordered a bottle of champagne at dinner on the ship and she said “I don’t want any, and I’m in no mood to celebrate.” “The champagne will go to waste, then, because I’m not going to drink the whole bottle and you know it doesn’t keep. Here,” and he held the bottle over her glass and she said “Okay, a little, but no toast,” and he poured and wanted to pour her another, but she said “It’s good, but no more. The baby.” He drank the rest of the bottle with dinner and got high and said what he thought were funny things and she laughed at some of them and said “If only you were always this way; not giddy from drink, but sweet and nice.” “Well, you can’t expect everything, and she said “I found that out.” They walked around the ship and sat down on one of the decks and looked at the water and she pointed out some constellations to Rosalind and said “The amazing thing is, we’ll see the same ones in Maine. Am I right, Martin?” and he said “Beats me. You know that subject much better than I.” After they got back to the cabin and washed up for bed — they had individual bunks across from each other and Rosalind was in a large crib between them — he said “Are you feeling a teensy bit better toward me?” and she said “I’m all right. What’s the sense of carrying a grudge? We’re stuck with one another for five nights in this pint-sized room.” “You think I can climb into your bunk when we turn off the lights?”—Rosalind was already asleep — and she said “There isn’t room enough for two,” and he said “Sure there is, if that’s all that’s stopping you. We’ve cuddled in narrower spaces. And I won’t stay there all night. Just for a little while, to hug you from behind and whisper loving things to your neck.” “Don’t tell me; I know what you want. You have a hard-on and you want relief.” “No, no, it’s not that. And I don’t, or didn’t, till you brought it up. It’s that I feel so horrible how I acted to you today, and on your birthday, no less, which makes it even worse. We’re on this great ship together with our sleeping cutie. We should be having a great time. And I promise never to be such a bastard to you again,” and she said “I’ve heard that before. Okay, I guess you can try.” “My getting in your bunk with you?” and she said “Yes, but let’s get it over with now. It’s been a long strenuous day for me and I feel emotionally and physically drained.”

The third time he doesn’t remember at all. He was driving Maureen to her first day at college. Gwen had a lot of school work to do and asked Maureen if it’d be all right if she stayed home. She could use the time. Maureen said “Daddy’s just going to leave me there anyway, once we get my things into the dorm, since I don’t want anyone hanging around.” “And you?” and he said “It’d be nice having Maureen all to my own for a few hours. And much as I love your company, I don’t mind driving back alone. Plenty of classical music stations between Connecticut and here.” “Dear God,” she said, starting to cry just before they left, “this’ll be the first time since they went off sailing in Maine for a week, when they were what? — nine and twelve — when one of our daughters wouldn’t be home.” “It’ll be sad,” he said, “but we’ll survive,” and he thought what he’s going to tell her when he gets back is now they can run around the house naked again as much as they like and make love with their bedroom door unlatched and open. During the drive, Maureen said “Something just came to me which we never talked about. But it was the most frightening experience in my life. Maybe you don’t want to hear it,” and he said “No, tell me,” and she said “It was when Mom said she was going to leave you.” “Do you mean permanently?” and she said “Yes.” “When she say that? She might have said once or twice that we need a break from each other for a day or two — every couple, married as long as we’ve been, goes through that — but she never wanted to leave me permanently.” “That’s what she said. You had a big fight that not even my being there could stop. And one as bad the previous day too. I was nine, same age I was for that sailboat trip Rosalind and I took, which is maybe why it came to me now, but about a half year earlier. Rosalind wasn’t in the house. I heard yelling and cursing from both of you and ran into the kitchen just when you called her a bitch.” “I never called her a bitch even once,” and she said “You did that night. ‘A rotten bitch.’” “No, I’ve never used that expression for anyone,” and she said “Believe me, you did. That’s when Mom said that was the last time she was going to take that kind of crap from you. That’s the word she used, or ‘shit.’ She said she wanted to move back to our apartment in New York and that she wanted to take us kids with her if we didn’t feel it’d be too much a disruption in our lives.” “But I would have remembered something like that if she’d said it,” he said. “It’s not something you forget.” “I remember it distinctly,” she said. “In the kitchen. It was dark out, around six. I think you were both cooking dinner, or Mom was — fish and a polenta dish, which went to waste that night — nobody wanted to eat — and you were making salad. At least that’s what you had on the counter in front of you, lettuce and things. Mom said she wouldn’t care giving up her teaching job, since it was a skimpy-paying adjunct position your school had only given her because they wanted to keep you. This was before she got a more regular position there. Worse comes to worst, she said, if the kids wanted to stay in their schools till the end of the school year and live with you, she’d go alone to New York with the cat, and Rosalind and I could move in with her sometime before the new school year began. Of course, she said, we could do what we want: stay with you permanently or live with her.” “No, it couldn’t have happened. You have to be imagining it,” and she said “It happened, Daddy. You just don’t want to admit it to yourself or it was such a bad experience for you that you pushed it out of your head. Mom even called Nona that night and told her of her plans to leave you. Later, Rosalind and I asked her what Nona had said, and Mom said she fully supported her and if it was a question of money, she’ll back Mom till she was able to look after herself, though you’d be contributing to her living expenses too.” “Did you ever speak about this with Mommy? Particularly about how it frightened you so much?” “Once, a few years later, and she said the same thing as you. That things like that can happen in even the best of marriages and that they’re usually worked out, with or without professional help, or blown over. With you two, I guess you eventually came to some kind of understanding.” “I don’t remember that either,” and she said “I’m sure if you think some more about it, it’ll come back. Mom also asked me if I ever spoke about it with you, and I told her no. Then she advised me not to bring it up with you. That you’d feel very hurt about it. That some things between two people, after they’re worked out, are better left alone. And Rosalind was so upset when I told her what I witnessed, she never wanted to talk about it.” “So maybe it did happen,” he said, “but I’ve still no recollection of any of it. Let me ask your mother,” and she said “I’d say don’t. From what I could make out, I don’t think she wants to go over the experience again, and I doubt she’d appreciate that you completely forgot about it.” “Then let me ask you, and this is going to sound awfully silly to you, but did Mommy leave me and go live in New York, even for a few days? If it was more I’m sure I would have remembered it,” and she said “No.” “How’d it get resolved, then?” and she said “First you took a long walk around the neighborhood that night — anyway, you were away from the house for hours, and you didn’t take the car.” “Where could I have gone? No bars or anything like that around there, and all the stores would be closed. Was it cold out?” and she said “It was winter, a little before or after Christmas,” and he said “Then I couldn’t have stayed out too long or gone very far unless it was an unusually mild night. I don’t know.” “When you came home, Mom had already gone to bed in your room. You went up to her closed door — I think I even remember hearing her bolt it when you were out — and asked if she ate and she said no. She wasn’t hungry. Then you said ‘You want me to prepare something for you, because you’ve got to eat?’ and she said she didn’t want anything. ‘Make something for the kids, not me,’ she said. ‘Because you upset them so much, they didn’t eat either.’” “This isn’t coming back,” he said. “I don’t see how it couldn’t, but it isn’t. What happened next?” and she said “You said you’d sleep on the couch that night, and she said ‘The girls can sleep together and you can have one of their rooms,’ and you said you didn’t want to make it worse for them than you have. You asked her if she was still planning to go to New York, and she said ‘No more questions; no more talk.’ For you to leave her alone. ‘If you’re going to do anything,’ she said, ‘fix things up with the kids,’ but you didn’t. You seemed to want to stay away from us, so we also kept our distance from you. I remember you had a drink or two. We didn’t see it, and Rosalind was afraid you’d get drunk that night, but we heard the ice clink when you took it from the freezer and dropped it into a glass. You made the couch up for sleeping or maybe you just slept with a blanket over you and a couch pillow. Then you sat in your Morris chair and read and drank and had a CD on to some choral music—” “Hildegard von Bingen, probably. She was my favorite for when I wanted quiet spiritual music and was feeling low,” and she said “I think I remember you playing her other times and wanting us to listen to her with you. Anyway, it was late by then and Rosalind and I were hungry — we really hadn’t had dinner. We cooked up a box of Annie’s or Whole Foods shells and cheese, which we’d been making for ourselves for years, and still do when we want something filling and quick, and then went to bed. Next day, while we were in school — and you had to have driven Rosalind to hers. I always took the school bus. Or it could have been the weekend by now or the first day of our Christmas vacation and we went to be with our friends — anyplace, to be out of the house. What I’m getting at is Mommy and you must have worked it out while we were gone, or started to, because the previous night was the last time I heard her say she was leaving you or wanted to leave you or you should leave her.” “Where’d I sleep the second night?” and she said “I’m not sure. I think on the couch again. Or Rosalind and I may have had a sleepover that night — I’m sure we would have tried to — and you slept in one of our beds. I don’t think things were good enough between you and Mom yet for you to sleep in your bedroom.” “Oh, by the way,” he said, “since you remember so much, do you remember what the argument was about?” and she said “That I don’t know. Not because I can’t remember, but because I didn’t hear what started it; just the yelling and cursing.” “I still can’t believe it,” he said. “I mean, I believe you, but I just can’t understand how I could have forgotten such a singular and disturbing event,” and she said “I’m surprised too. Well, now that we’ve finally talked it over, I won’t bring it up again. I think I even feel I shouldn’t have brought it up now.” “I’m still going to speak to your mother to find out what she knows about it,” and she said “I wouldn’t, but that’s up to you.” But when he got back home he forgot to talk about it with her, or something kept him from talking about it, and this is the first time he’s thought of it since.

That bolt on their bedroom door. Doesn’t know what its original purpose could have been. The elderly couple they bought the house from and whom they’d never met were the only previous owners, so they had to have put it on. Maybe they feared burglars — they might even have been burglarized before they got the bolt — and used it when they went to bed. They had no children, the real-estate agent said. The kids’ bedrooms had been this couple’s studies and Gwen’s study had been their TV room. Gwen and he only used the bolt when they were about to make love, or knew sometime beforehand they were going to make love, and the kids were home. Didn’t want one of them suddenly opening the door on them in bed, which Maureen did once and saw Gwen on top of him. She was seven or eight, and she said “Oh,” and ran out. “What was that?” Gwen said, still on top of him but no longer moving, and he said “Maureen; she’s gone.” “Good God,” she said, getting off, “what she must have thought,” and he said “That’s what I was thinking. We can tell her you were massaging me for something that aches…a sore muscle,” and she said “Massaging the front?” “The shoulders, or you’d fallen asleep reading on my side of the bed and were climbing over me to get to yours. That’s why the light was on,” and she said “But why would I have no clothes on? Do you think she was sick? That’s why she came in? One of us should check. And no, we’ll say nothing about what happened, unless she asks. If she does, we’ll say…we’ll come up with something by morning. If she saw your erection, then I don’t know what, but it makes it even worse. I don’t want her not only confused but frightened.” “She didn’t. I was inside you the two seconds she was in the room,” and she said “Not all the time. All the way in, half out; that’s how it works,” and he said “I think this time I was all the way in when I saw her. And your hair was spread out and covering a lot of me, so she might not have seen anything.” “From now on,” she said, “we should use the door bolt every time we go to bed, or when we know there’s a good chance we’re going to make love. And if we don’t know, but start to make love, one of us will get up and very quietly slide the bolt in.” He was going to say, but didn’t. Too stupid a joke. “Should I bolt it now?” and she said “Her seeing us has taken whatever there was out of me.” “I’ll be extremely quiet and go on top; make it as easy for you as can be,” and she said “Tomorrow. Will you see if she’s all right?” and he put on his bathrobe and went into Maureen’s room and she was sleeping or pretending to.

They were in bed, watching Key Largo on Maryland Public Television for the second time that year. She was laughing and said “The dialog really kills me. ‘All right, you guys, I’m Johnny Rocco, see? See?’” and he said “I think the ‘see’ part of your impersonation is from another Edward G. Robinson movie. And the ‘All right, you guys,’ is James Cagney, if he ever said it in a movie. But let me watch it, will ya? It’s a good picture, good acting, and some of the lines are classic.” She sat up against the headboard and made as if she were chomping on a big cigar and then holding it and flicking its ashes to the floor and said “Listen, wise guy, nobody tells Johnny Rocco what to do, see? You think you’re a big war hero, but you’re nobody compared to me. I’m Johnny Rocco, king of the rackets, once. That’s who I am. And after my deal goes through I’m gonna be on top again, you wait and see.” “Okay, Johnny, but the movie—” and she said “Okay, nothing, wise guy. Mess with Johnny Rocco and his boys and you’ll get what’s coming to you, or what’s coming out of you, your last breath, see? See?” when the phone rang. “Late,” he said, and got out of bed, lowered the television sound and picked up the receiver. “I’m sorry for calling at this hour,” their real-estate agent said, “but I have good news. The Hendricksons have taken your offer”—he raised his fist above his head and said to Gwen “They’ve taken our offer” and she yelled “Hurray”—“and if there are no unexpected setbacks,” the agent said, “—mortgage, financing, deed; you know — the house is yours.” “Oh, that’s wonderful,” he said. “Call anytime you want with such great news. My wife and I are very happy,” and she said “Have a good weekend.” He hung up and said “That was Mrs. Blinkova, of course. They actually took our low offer. We’re in,” and she pretended to puff on a cigar and blow smoke out of her mouth and said “Know how we got the house, wise guy? Hey? Because Johnny Rocco told them to. Nobody says no to Johnny Rocco and lives to tell it. Nobody, you hear? or they’re dead meat.” “Okay,” he said, “we can see the movie anytime,” and turned it off. He sat on the bed and put his arms out and they hugged. “You can be very funny sometimes,” he said, “did you know that?” “Well, as my mother likes to remind me—” and he said “You’ve told me, you’ve told me, but it just ain’t true. You were always clever and had a great sense of humor and flair for mimicry. I had nothing to do with it. It’s just, once you got rid of your suspicions about me—” and she said “And what were they?” “That I was a bit of an oddball or strange. Just the way I approached you the first night we met. ‘You probably won’t want to speak to me—’” and she said “You keep saying you said that. I forgot what you did say when you first spoke to me, but it wasn’t that. I admit I was a little leery of you. First of all, the shirt you wore to the party,” and he said “I’ve told you. I didn’t know it was going to be a party. I thought—” and she said “I know, but it was such an ugly shirt. And the way you stared at me every chance you could, without coming over and introducing yourself. Or just coming over and standing there and saying nothing would have been better. And that you waited to speak to me till I was at the elevator. Strange, really; as you said, odd behavior. I’m surprised I didn’t think you were a little creepy.” “Then I’m lucky you even consented to meet me the first time,” and she said “Oh, you were nice looking, and when you finally did speak, you spoke well. Those were pluses, and you seemed smart. Besides, it was only an hour out of my time — on my way home from my therapist — and if it didn’t work out, no great loss for either of us. But after our first date — or after the second. No, the first, for coffee, the Ansonia, I was no longer leery of you and thought you were just fine.” “That’s what I meant. You relaxed. And you were funny, showed a terrific sense of humor, or one I certainly appreciated, from the second or third date on. But what are we talking about this for? The new house, Gwen. Baltimore County. More land and trees around us and the nearest neighbor a few hundred feet away. A carport. A garden shed. Cheaper real-estate taxes and auto insurance than in the city, I hear, and better schools for the kids. A screen painting on the front door. And a complete house, not semidetached, so windows on all sides and everything on one floor and no more going up and down stairs.” “A ranch house,” she said. “An unfinished basement we’ll have to pour several thousand dollars into it to make it habitable.” “As my father would probably have said: ‘You own a ranch house, you could buy a horse.’ But this is great. We got what we wanted, and at a steal. Let’s open a good bottle of wine to celebrate. I’d say champagne, but we haven’t got one that’s cold.” “No wine for me — too late for it — but you have,” and he said “I don’t mind if I do,” kissed her and went downstairs and got an expensive bottle of wine from the wine rack in the dining room, opened it and poured himself a glass. He should bring up a glass for her too, he thought. He drank his glass, poured himself another and one for her, sipped at his because he’d filled it to the brim and he didn’t want to spill any carrying it, and brought the glasses upstairs. “Do you want to go back to the movie?” she said. “It still has a long ways to go. The hurricane; the two dead Indians; Bogart knocking off the whole gang in the boat,” and he said “I’ve had enough. How about you?” and held out a glass for her and she said in her Johnny Rocco voice “Johnny Rocco told you he didn’t want a drink, din’t he? Din’t he? Why you always got to do what Johnny Rocco says he don’t want you to? But okay, he don’t want to ruin your fun, so he’ll let you get away with it today,” and she took the glass.

This was at the cottage in Maine they rented together for two to three months every summer for seven years. Nothing much; the last summer they were there before Maureen was born. It was on what they called “A Maine day”: mild, sunny, low humidity, little puffs of white clouds, blue skies, temperature around 72. If they were lucky: a light breeze coming up from the water. They loved the cottage — she started renting it three summers before she met him — and would have bought it if they had the money when it was being sold. He was in the kitchen, taking the forty or so diapers out of the washing machine and dropping them into the laundry basket on the floor. They bought this huge used washing machine the summer after Rosalind was born. They had no dryer. At the time, they couldn’t find a cheap used one and didn’t think it worth buying a new dryer for just a few months every summer, especially when the cottage could be sold out from under them, and eventually decided they could do without one. They’d hang their wash out in the sun, and if there were repeated days of rain or cloudiness, they’d drive to Blue Hill about twenty miles away and make a day out of it by shopping for groceries and having lunch in one of a number of good simple places while the diapers and other wash were being dried in the coin laundry there. He brought the basket of diapers to the porch. They had a couple of clotheslines strung out on poles he’d cemented into the ground in an open space near the cottage. But he needed clothespins for that, which took lots of time to use for so many diapers, and after a few minutes of hanging them up, his arms hurt. Instead, he now hung them and things like socks and shorts and, when the sun was very strong, towels and jeans over the porch railings. “Need any help?” Gwen said. She was lying on a chaise longue, reading; wide-brimmed straw gardener’s hat shading her face. There were a few moth holes in the brim and he could see a spot of light from one of them on her cheek. He said “No, no, you rest; I don’t want you to get up. Besides, you want to deprive me of my next to most favorite domestic chore?” “And what’s your most favorite? I remember what your favorite day of the year always is, but this one I forget,” and he said “Stacking them after they’ve dried.” “You’ll get no fight from me on that score. It’s so tedious, hanging an endless number of diapers out to dry. And maybe equally as tedious to stack them, so the job’s all yours,” and she went back to her reading. She was in a bikini top and Bermuda shorts. Prescription sunglasses; sandals off. Probably they were special shorts with an elasticized waistband, she was so pregnant. Half-filled glass of something in arm’s reach of her on the floor. By the color of it, iced coffee, with milk in it, and where the ice had melted. The four Siamese cats sleeping or resting under the chaise longue, their eyes closed. “You’re not going to burn?” and she said “Sun block. I’ve slathered myself silly with it.” “Still, you’re so fair; but it’s your body.” He started draping the diapers over the railings. The last few, when he ran out of room on the railings, he hung over the rim of the laundry basket and spread one out inside it. He used to also hang them over the porch’s staircase railings, but when they were done they often slid off. In an hour, if the sun didn’t disappear, they’d be dry. Then, on a small metal table out there, he’d very neatly stack them one on top of the other in two to three piles and bring them inside and take one pile to their bedroom upstairs where Rosalind’s crib was. At times, when he stacked them, he’d press a diaper to his cheek to feel its softness and warmth. He could see why she might not like hanging the diapers out to dry, but how could she not like stacking them? Not that she needed one with him, but it was probably just an excuse to get out of doing both because, unlike him, she liked reading more.

His favorite day of the year. Didn’t he go over that? Even if he did, maybe something will come out of it that he hadn’t thought of before. He’d begin talking about it with her and the kids days before they left New York for Kennebunkport. “Guess what? We’re getting close to my favorite day of the year. I can hardly wait.” Or “Two days till my favorite day of the year. Everybody thinking about what they want to pack? I know, it’s crazy, but I so much look forward to it.” Gwen and he would share the driving, even the times she was pregnant—“No; my stomach doesn’t get in the way”—so that part of it wasn’t difficult. Six, seven hours. If they left on a Friday, which he liked to avoid, maybe eight. He’d sleep for about an hour in the front passenger seat. “Where are we?” he’d say when he woke up. “God, we’ve made great time.” Lunch at a family restaurant they always stopped at in Connecticut right off the highway—81? 94?—about ten miles from the Mass Pike. The kids loved its homemade pies with two scoops of ice cream on top. “Can we get two flavors?” He’d start singing moment after they crossed the Pisca-something bridge into Maine and the kids would join in — Gwen never did: “It’s too silly a ditty”: “We’re here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here-e-e-e,” their voices rising on the last “here,” and then a repeat of the line without a rise at the end. It was something — not a song, really — his busload of summer campers when he was a kid used to sing when the bus pulled into camp, also for two months. Bringing into the motel room their briefcases of manuscripts and one of his two typewriters — hers and then her computer and printer were too heavy for someone to steal, though he covered them and his other typewriter with blankets — and a suitcase for them and knapsacks for the kids and stuff for the cats. And a shopping bag of cotton sheets and pillowcases for them to replace the linen already on their bed. The kids didn’t mind the hotel linen and didn’t understand why they did. “They all feel the same.” “That’s because your body isn’t supersensitive yet,” he said, and when she started crying — he forgets which one — he said “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it that way. You’re sensitive; I know. Please, darling, don’t spoil a great day.” Running around the beach with the kids — being chased and then chasing them — three of them jumping into the water together at least once. “Br-r-r-r, it’s cold, our annual membership renewal in the Polar Bear Club.” The kids able to tolerate the cold water much better than he — even swimming in it a few minutes — all while Gwen read or napped or both in the room. “If you can swing it, I’d love to have two hours alone. Even to see what’s on cable,” since they didn’t have it at home. Showering. “You too, kids. If you want to sleep without scratching your feet all night, you have to wash the sand out of your toes.” He’d get cheese from the little cooler they brought from New York and put it on crackers and pass the plate around and then just leave it on the night table. Vodka over rocks but probably two before heading off for dinner. He always offered her a beer or glass of wine in the motel, but she’d hold off drinking till he ordered a bottle of wine at the restaurant. “A half bottle or wine by the glass won’t do? After all, it’s just the two of us drinking.” “What we don’t drink, I’ll cork and bring back to the room and we’ll finish it tomorrow night. But you know me. It’s the one evening I don’t mind getting a bit lightheaded, and we’re not driving.” Delicious food. He thinks he ordered the summer’s first New England clam chowder as a starter every year and then scallops as an entrée. Sunset from the glass-enclosed porch they always tried to sit in. He’d call the restaurant before, sometimes from New York a week ahead, but if he didn’t he’d stop by the reservation desk on his way to or back from the beach with the kids to see if he could reserve a table by the porch window around seven. Because they always ate at the Breakwater Inn: just a short walk from their motel. After dinner, the kids usually ran ahead. “Give us the key.” “It’s dark, and there are no streetlights, so watch out for cars when you cross the road.” Gwen and he either held hands when they walked back or he put his arm around her waist or shoulders. Because of the wine and food and that they were feeling so good with each other and everything had gone smoothly that day and this was the first day of their long stay in Maine, with no classes to prepare till the end of summer, and maybe something to do with the sea smells and air, he could almost say they always made love that night, but only when they were sure the kids were asleep in the next bed. When Rosalind got older — fourteen? fifteen? — which would make Maureen eleven to twelve — the girls got their own room in the motel. “Come on, kids; it’s getting late. Time to turn off the TV.” “Ten minutes?” “Okay. Sounds fair.”

He was in his study in their Baltimore apartment. They also used it as a storage room. It had no door, just a door-sized space to walk through. He’s not being clear because it’s not easy to picture. To get in and out of this small room, which once could have been the maid’s room in this big apartment — three bedrooms, separate living and dining rooms, large kitchen leading to his study — you walked through an opening the size and shape of a door. There was probably once a real door there — in fact, he knows it, since the marks where its hinges and screws had been were still on the jamb — but there wasn’t one now to open and close; just an open space. Oh, he gives up. Why can’t he come even close to describing it? Maybe not enough sleep. Gwen knocked on the wall outside his room, or maybe the jamb. He was typing, his back to her, and was startled by the noise. “I’m sorry,” she said; “didn’t mean to scare you. I have some good news that I don’t think you’ll entirely like. I just got a call—” “The phone rang?” he said. “I was so absorbed in my work I didn’t even hear it.” “Am I disturbing you then? I can tell you later,” and he said “No, go on. You got a call from whom?” “Someone at the NEA. She said I got a fellowship in translation.” “Oh, my goodness,” he said, “that’s great,” and stood up, almost knocking over his chair as he did, and went over to her and hugged her. “Jesus, you really did it. I’m so happy for you. But why would you think—” “Because you didn’t get the one you applied for.” “How do you know?” and she said “I asked the person who called me — an official there — if my husband, who also applied for one this year, got it in fiction. She checked the list of this year’s winners in everything, said she didn’t think she was supposed to be doing this — revealing other names — and your name wasn’t on it.” “So what?” he said. “I love it that you got one. You deserve it.” “You deserve one to. And you’ve applied five years straight, or something, while I only applied this once and mostly because you urged me to. I’m sure I got it because so few translators apply. And it could be they don’t give it the same year to husband and wife applicants, even if they’re in different fields, and if I hadn’t got mine, you would have got one,” and he said “Nonsense. How would they even know we’re married? We’ve different surnames.” “But the same address and apartment number.” “I’m sure they don’t look at the addresses very carefully,” and she said “They do. What state the applicant’s from and what city. I heard they try to spread the fellowships around the country so no state or city seems favored.” “Please,” he said, “you got it because you earned it, and the panel of judges for translations was probably the most selective one, since they really had to know what they were doing.” “I wanted you to get it more than I,” and he said “Same for me with you. But I get lots of things. Nothing as big as an NEA yet, but I’m in a field where more things are given for it than for translation. I’ll just apply again, that’s all. My sweetheart, I’m so proud of you, and it’s so much money. Baby asleep?” and she said “Yes.” “Let’s get her up and tell her.” “No, let her sleep.” “You’re so modest.” “And you can be so silly sometimes.” “Should we celebrate with a glass of wine?” and she said “Too early. I’m still working.” “The news of the fellowship doesn’t stop you for even a few hours?” and she said “This is for school.” “Then dinner tonight at a good restaurant and with good wine.” “No, I’ve already prepared dinner. You’re being very nice about it, Martin.” “You still don’t know how happy I am for you?” “You’re not even a little bit jealous or bitter?” and he said “What a thing to say.”