Asking for Love

“Goodnight, Melissa,” I called up. I waited, but heard nothing back from my daughter. I tried again: “Melissa, I’m leaving now.” I was standing in the front hall of my parents’ summer house in Maine. I was at the bottom of the wide staircase, listening, and Melissa was up on the second floor and did not answer.

Melissa had arrived that morning from a friend’s in Boston. I had come up ten days earlier from Philadelphia, where we live. We were alone in the big shingle house that week, since my parents had gone cruising in their sailboat. Melissa’s room is at the back of the house, over the kitchen, in what was once the servants’ wing. I knew she had the door shut and her Walkman earphones on: she was sealed off from the outside world, and in one of her own. Tacked up on the old soft pinewood walls were her posters of rock groups: images of chaos, explosive, acid-colored. Melissa would be in her faded jeans, torn at both knees, and sitting cross-legged on the sagging iron bed. I could see her, face curtained by the long fall of her soft hair, her eyes rapt and unfocused as she nodded to herself, marking time. She was deep inside a web of syncopated rhythms, staccato sentences, and mocking phrases.

Last year I could have gone upstairs, opened her door, and walked right in. I could have stood beside her and smoothed her hair, and she would have raised her calm blue-eyed gaze to me and smiled. But now things are different, and when I heard no answer, I turned away from the silent stairwell.

John was standing behind me in the hall. Behind him hung an old gilt-framed mirror, its silvery surface flecked with dark spots. With the mirror I could see both his front and his back, both his long, earnest face and the place at the back of his head where his scalp is meekly becoming evident. He is forty-eight years old, tall and slightly stoop-shouldered. He is what he will be, and I like knowing this.

John was wearing a dark green sweater, tweed jacket, khaki pants, and blue boat sneakers. These are clothes worn by all the men I know, including my father, and though I haven’t known John my whole life, he looks as though I have. I know things about him just from the way he looks: I know who he is, and I know I can trust him. This is a comfort, and right now I am eager for comfort. I have just become single, after twenty years of being married. This was my doing, and it was necessary, but it has been terrible in ways I never imagined, and much larger, as though I’d stamped my foot and started an avalanche. So I am grateful for John’s calm presence.

John was listening too for Melissa’s response. He raised his eyebrows politely. “Well?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “Let’s just go.”

“Are you sure?” John asked. “You don’t want to just run up and tell her we’re leaving? We’re in no hurry.”

John was thinking of his own daughter, Julia, who is nine, and lives with him. There is a live-in baby-sitter, Hannah, but even so, John would never leave for the evening without saying good night. John compares my behavior with his own, and he believes that I am irresponsible, a lax and heedless mother. I can’t tell him I am not; you can’t tell someone who you are. John will discover for himself what sort of mother I am.

“Melissa’s all the way up in her room,” I said, “with the door shut and the music on. She’s seventeen years old, and she knows we’re going out. Let’s go.”

Still John didn’t move. “But then when will I meet her?” he asked plaintively. “I’ve primped.”

“Primped?” I said, smiling. Only John would use this word.

John nodded solemnly. He smoothed a lock of hair back severely, in a parody of fussiness. At once it fell back over his forehead.

“You primped for Melissa? I thought that was for me. Thanks a lot.” I pushed open the screen door. “Come on, we’re out of here.”

John and I have been seeing each other for eight months, which is long enough for him to have met my daughter. Melissa’s been away at boarding school, but there were times they could have met. At first I put it off because I wasn’t sure John and I would go on seeing each other; later I put it off because I was sure we would. I pictured it going badly: Melissa sullen, John stiff, the air dense with hostility. Later, I was afraid, alone with me, each of them would be self-righteous and critical, each claiming my alliance against the other.

I think John thinks adolescents are like wild animals, leopards or water buffaloes, unpredictable, vividly dangerous. And Melissa doesn’t want to see her mother with anyone except her father. She doesn’t want to see me perfumed and earringed, ready to go out. She doesn’t want a strange man in her living room, smiling at her winningly. She doesn’t want to hear his footsteps, later, on the stairs. She doesn’t want me to be single; she wants me to be a mother.

But now Melissa is here for the summer, and John is here for July. He has rented a house for himself, Julia, and Hannah. He and Melissa will have to meet soon now, but I was relieved to put it off, even for one more day.

Leaving the heavy silence of the house, John and I went down the long staircase that slants across the stone foundation. The house is on a hill, and on the downhill side the rusticated masonry rises as high as a whole story. The rough stone wall is entirely different from the wood-shingled house above it, as though the big, airy, summery rooms were supported by a dungeon.

As we descended, the darkening house loomed over us—the deep porches, the gabled windows, the broad, shingled roofs. Below us was the pallid circle of the driveway, and beyond it the pine-crowded bluffs that dropped steeply to the shore. Chill air rose up off the channel in tingling, invisible clouds. It was nearly eight o’clock, and the evening was deepening rapidly around us like a dark snowfall, the darkness settling in corners like drifts.

John’s car was a shadow, its silhouette revealed only by reflections, faint gleams along its rounded edges. As we opened the doors, the car filled with light, and we climbed into a radiant private space. Closing the doors with solid thumps we shut out the night, its chill, its dark, its distances. John and I were now shoulder to shoulder, thigh to thigh within a glowing cave. Outside sounds were gone, and inside ones—breathing, the rustle of clothes—were suddenly loud. I heard the gentle rasp of tweed as John stretched out his arm to the key. The glow fell over us like a tent, like a blessing. I put my hand on his shoulder.

“Hello, John,” I said. I was nearly whispering, but my voice sounded huge.

John turned at my touch and I heard him draw in his breath. He is always surprised by affection, and humbly grateful for it. This saddens me: I think humility should play no part in love. I think love should be inexhaustible, like air, that we should give and take it freely, without thought, without having to ask. I think John deserves love in vast quantities, but he has spent his life among cold and parsimonious women. He doesn’t know what he deserves, and he doesn’t believe me when I tell him.

As he turned to me now, his face lit up.

“Hello, Sarah,” he said. My name in his voice sounded wonderful, those ordinary syllables honored.

“It’s nice to see you,” I said, and I stroked his rough brown shoulder.

“It’s always nice to see you, Sarah,” John said.

John can’t use the word “love.” He is like someone standing on the edge of a high diving board and looking down. He is wavering, riven, churning with terror and longing, unable to risk that vertiginous step into the singing air. He’ll do it, I know, he’ll choose passion and jump. He’ll give himself up to that swift, ecstatic freefall, to the wild explosion of foam, the jubilant embrace of deep water. I know this, so I don’t care how long he takes. He’ll find the moment, and he’ll take the leap.

John’s long face looked fervent and noble, and his eyes shone behind his polished glasses. John actually is noble, honorable. It is one of the things about John that I love; another is the way he kisses.

I closed my eyes, breathing in his cool, dark, salty smell as he put his mouth on mine, and it happened again. This is something that never fails to surprise me—this sudden melting, turning-to-gold sensation. Before I married Michael I thought all sex was good sex, I thought good sex was a given. Now I’ve learned that it’s not a given but a gift. Now I know that a man you believe you love can turn your body to lead. He can slow your blood and chill your flesh and make you ache for solitude. So when John kisses me, I let everything go, and give myself up to this remarkable thing. I close my eyes, and sometimes there are tears in them, I am so grateful. Now I know that what I feel is rare, rare, and I am so glad that John and I have found each other.

The overhead light went suddenly off. John and I were left again in the larger darkness of the night, and we pulled decorously apart: we were saving the rest for later. We smiled at each other, and John smoothed the hair off my face. He reached out again to the ignition, and this time we set off.

The driveway hugs the side of the house, and we drove along the kitchen wing, where Melissa’s room was, through a grove of vast old pines. Here it was suddenly pitch-dark, as though we had passed into another time zone: among those shadows it was deepest night. The artificial glare of the headlights caught the undersides of everything, and the grove looked suddenly unkempt, threatening: the rough bark, the trashy litter of dead boughs and pine cones lying on the rust-brown floor of needles. It looked like a grim Germanic forest, the lair of some malevolent operatic creature. I was glad of John’s comforting profile, the gleam of his glasses in the dashboard’s dim glow.

The one street in the village was empty, except for a few cars in front of the new restaurant. There are now boutiques in this lobstermen’s village, and the old apothecary shop sells cashmere sweaters and tortoise-shell picture frames. But nothing has been built here in seventy years. The street is still lined with two-story houses, clapboard and shingle, and its silhouette is still a low, nineteenth-century stitchwork of gables, pitched roofs, and brick chimneys.

Inside, the new restaurant was fresh and cheerful, with red-and-white-checked tablecloths, cream-colored walls, and cream-colored wooden chairs. Local views by local artists hung on the walls: sunset on Great Cranberry Island, fog in the pines on Cadillac Mountain. Everything seemed innocent and unpretentious, and in that sturdy comfortable chair, surrounded by images of places I had known all my life, I felt happy and safe. I was proud that I could offer all this to John, and glad that he was here. He had chosen to enter my world, in a serious and public way. We speak through signs as much as words, and though John can not use the word “love,” I knew that by coming here for the summer he had stepped openly to my side.

Our waitress turned out to be an old summer friend of Melissa’s. This year Lainie was suddenly tall, her features subtly altered. She was now a young woman, and beautiful, with a long, fragile face and starry dark eyes.

“Lainie!” I said. “How nice to see you.”

“Hello, Mrs. Talbot,” Lainie said, smiling back. She filled our water glasses from the heavy pitcher, and I watched her narrow tanned wrists flex, the tendons suddenly visible, then vanishing. I felt touched: they are so innocently strong, these young women. They are so benign that we forget their strength.

“How’s Melissa?” Lainie asked.

“Great. She just got here. She’d love to see you,” I said, then wondered if she would: I’m no longer sure of what Melissa wants. To make up for my own uncertainty I added, “You look wonderful, Lainie,” which was true.

“Thank you,” Lainie said. Her smile was diffident but unsurprised, and I was glad that she’d heard this from others.

This transformation from girl into young woman is a miracle, like a flower revealing itself. I was glad it had happened to Lainie, glad it was being celebrated. I thought of Melissa, who was still struggling to free herself from the finespun cocoon of childhood.

When Lainie left, John asked, “Is she the same age as Melissa?” I nodded, and John looked down at his menu.

“Why do you ask?” I said, wary. “What are you thinking?”

John only shook his head, without looking up.

“They aren’t so different, Lainie and Melissa,” I said, defensive. “I don’t know how you imagine Melissa.”

“I only know what you tell me about her,” John said.

“And?” I said.

“You don’t tell me the wonderful things about her,” said John. “You tell me about the things that make you unhappy. That she came home for Thanksgiving and didn’t speak to you for four days.”

I was unprepared for this. Hearing John say it easily, out loud, was like a blow: the memory was terrible.

When Melissa arrived home, I had been waiting all day for her. That autumn was my first alone, and it had been hard. The air around me had been infected by misery, and I was looking forward to Melissa’s warmth, her affection, to dispel it.

The hall in our townhouse goes straight through from the front door to the kitchen, where I was waiting. I heard Melissa’s key in the lock, and I was at the door when it swung open. The late-afternoon chill swept in, and noises from the street. Melissa staggered in, dragging her blue-and-green duffel bag, her knapsack over her shoulder. My arms were open: I couldn’t wait to hold her, my warm, sweet daughter.

“You’re here!” I said joyfully.

Melissa was hunched over, sliding the duffel bag in through the door. She didn’t answer. Her head was down, and there was no place for me to put my arms around her.

“Here,” I said, reaching for the duffel, “let me help.”

“No,” Melissa said, her head still down. “I’m okay.”

She slid the bag past me with her foot. She didn’t look up or touch me. When I closed the door behind her she kept right on going, her head turned away, as though I weren’t there. She slid the duffel along the floor to the bottom of the stairs. There she hefted it and started up, without a word.

“Hey, Liss!” I said. My voice was loud and cheerful, as though she had just forgotten, as though this was an oversight. “Hello!”

Melissa answered with her back to me. “Hello,” she said, her voice without tone. She was at the landing and didn’t turn.

I could see she needed time to herself, so I didn’t answer, or follow her up. That evening I made her favorite dinner, homemade pasta and sausages. When Melissa came downstairs I was in the kitchen. The table was set for two, and at her place I’d put her mail and some packages—little things, funny striped tights, paperbacks, a pretty barrette.

Melissa appeared in the doorway, and I smiled at her.

“Hi, sweetie,” I said. “Bangers and pasta, you’re just in time.”

But Melissa’s coat was buttoned up to her chin, and her face was cold stone. “I’m having dinner with Dad,” she said. She didn’t come in. She didn’t look at the table, at the packages by her plate. “I’m leaving now,” she said. When she opened the door, she let in a great blast of cold air, and after she had gone I felt it in the kitchen, chilling my legs, my hands, my face.

Melissa blames me for the divorce. She believes that I have voluntarily destroyed her world. It’s true that the divorce was my idea, but it didn’t feel to me as though I had much choice about it, really, or any choice at all. Michael, of course, encourages Melissa to blame me. I know what he tells her.

Michael and I disagree: I think that only he and I should be witness to our failure. I think that only we should occupy the smooth and ghastly chamber we’ve created, the doorless cell that still rings with rage, disappointments, accusations. Michael feels that “in a spirit of fairness” he should tell Melissa his side of things. I don’t call this fairness: his side of things is accusatory, informed by rage and hatred. I can’t prevent this, but I won’t contribute to it. I won’t tell Melissa my side of it, I won’t criticize her father to her, I won’t ask her to hate him. I’m waiting for her to realize for herself that there might be another version of this story, that the person Michael describes is not the person Melissa knows. When this happens, Melissa and I will be friends again, and I hope it will happen soon.

That night when Melissa came home from seeing her father she walked loudly past my door. I called good night, but she didn’t answer. I heard her door shut hard, like a blow.

The next day my parents, my sister, Gail, and her husband, Ted, and their twins were coming for Thanksgiving dinner. I let Melissa sleep late, and when I finally knocked on her door, there was just time for her to get up and set the table. I’d done everything else. When I called her name, she answered “Yes?” on a rising, formal note, as though she were in a hotel and I were the maid. I stood in the hall outside her closed door, my head bent. I didn’t dare go in. I called out the plans to her. I knew she was there, alive, awake, listening to her mother’s voice, but she didn’t answer.

She came downstairs dressed for dinner, in a white high-necked blouse and a long skirt. Her hair was polished and shining, hanging down her back like a length of satin. She looked the way she used to: warm and sweet, radiant and responsive. She went straight in to the dining room and began setting the table, spreading out the big white linen cloth with my grandmother’s initials on it, laying the places with my grandmother’s heavy old-fashioned silver. She put out the crystal water goblets that she’d once been too small to hold upright; she folded the linen napkins in neat long triangles. At my mother’s place she stood the little Chinese porcelain figure that we always put before the most honored guest. I felt calmed: no matter how she felt toward me, Melissa was taking her place in our family. She was performing our ritual with our familiar things—old silver, worn linen, and faded china. She was setting forth our symbols in a calligraphy that she knew well, a pattern that stood in our household for festivity and love, and she was honoring this.

“The table looks beautiful,” I said, coming in to admire. But as I spoke, Melissa slipped past me, back into the kitchen. I followed her. “Thanks, Liss,” I said, but she was standing at the open refrigerator, looking for something to eat for breakfast. Her back was to me, and she did not answer.

I could have said something sharp. I could have said Now-see-here, and You-listen-to-me-young-lady. There have been times when I’ve said those things, and maybe I should have then. But I didn’t have the heart. All I could demand from Melissa was the form of love, only courtesy, its husk, and I didn’t care about that. If Melissa hates me, I don’t care if she’s polite. Love is what I want from Melissa, and I won’t ask for it. Asking for love is the saddest question in the world, and if you have to ask, the answer is too painful to hear. So I said nothing. It took the heart from me to see her so cold and distant, filled with animosity.

I just hoped that when the others came, Melissa would be nicer, and she was. She kissed my white-haired, straight-backed parents, and my gabby sister, Gail, and her family. She asked my father about his stargazing and my mother about her garden club. She sat on the rug with Gail’s twins and played a clapping game that made them weak and floppy with laughter. I talked a lot, as though everything were fine, and I hoped that everything actually was. I hoped Melissa was beginning to relax, expand, like one of those folded-paper flowers you set into a glass of water—that she would feel herself cherished in this warm bath of family affection, and would gracefully unfurl, revealing her deep and vivid colors and the form of her lovely spirit. I hoped that she would remember who she was and who I was, why she was here.

At dinner Melissa was ebullient. She teased my father and asked the twins riddles. The sound of Melissa’s laughter was wonderful to me, and the sight of her open smile. When I asked the girls to clear, after the turkey, Melissa stood up and looked sternly at the twins.

“Okay, you two,” she said. “No giggling.” Thrilled, they started giggling at once. I went out into the kitchen to scrape the plates, and Melissa followed me. As she came through the swinging door, I saw her face in the small glass window. She was laughing at something my father had said, and as she pushed the door with her shoulder, she called back to him.

“I’ll bet you did,” Melissa said loudly, grinning.

Her face, in the tiny window, was lit up with light from the kitchen. It was radiant, the face I loved, and I was so thankful. Here was Melissa, back at last, beautiful and candid, with her smooth pale cheeks, her wide cheerful mouth, her shining eyes. Seeing her own exuberant smile, I smiled myself.

The door swung through, and Melissa found herself in a different room, face to face—and alone—with her mother. At the sight of me her face was transformed, vividly, instantly, like a sheet of paper blackened by flame. Her laughter stopped and her mouth cramped and tightened. Her eyes went cold and angry. It was like a cruel magic trick, a bright vision of the past Melissa brutally erased by the way she was now. I stood in front of her, still smiling, as her face blackened with rage and contempt. As I watched, my own face stiffened, foolishly, painfully. It was like a splash of acid in my eyes. I turned back to the sink to hide my foolish face.

All winter Melissa made long-distance calls to Michael, from boarding school, and charged them to me. She wants me to pay, literally, for what I’ve done. But in the spring, things had improved, and I had hopes for the summer. After two months of being together, things will be better still.

“She was upset,” I said now to John. “You can hardly blame her. That was our first Thanksgiving after Michael left.”

“I know that,” John said. “I just mean that’s the kind of thing you tell me about her.”

It hurt for John to mention this, so casually. And it also seemed that John was reminding me of my glaring flaws as a mother, and of Melissa’s glaring flaws as a daughter. I felt that I was meant to compare Melissa with the docile and decorous Julia, properly raised by a Good Mother, and that I was meant to feel chastened.

“Well,” I said firmly, “Melissa is wonderful. You’ll see.”

John smiled, raising his eyebrows. “I’m sure she is,” he said gallantly. “She’s your daughter.”

I smiled back. We picked up our menus and John frowned as he scanned. “What are you going to have?” he asked.

“The duck,” I said, “only is this the kind I like?” I can never remember if it’s magret or confit.

“I don’t know,” John said affably. “Is it?”

I looked up, and from his expression I realized that John had no idea which kind of duck I like. It’s Michael, my husband of twenty years, who knows this. I felt shocked and guilty, to have so easily confused my lover with my husband. It seemed both cavalier and chilling, a fatally telling slip that must show the superficiality of my feelings. And it grieved me: you know so much about your husband, you have such a vast collection of random and important facts about him—that he loves Melville and kidneys, that he hates sweetbreads and the ballet—and he knows these things about you. Jointly you own this secret, intimate, trivial knowledge. It’s comforting, this charting of the particularities of your own existence on someone else’s map.

But the shared knowledge between Michael and myself is now useless, poisoned. I relinquished my claim to it, as I gave up my claim to Michael’s affection. Michael now detests his knowledge of me, and the knowledge John and I share is meager. We are still hardly visible to each other’s eyes, we are still only silhouettes, barely defined by gleams on our rounded edges.

But forward is how you go, and John and I are learning each other. Each time we’re together we chart unknown territory, exploring newfound lands through loving invasion. And as for the duck, it was time I remembered what I liked myself.

“Magret,” I said, at random. “That’s the one I like.”

“Good,” said John peacefully. “Have it.”

After we ordered, I asked, “Now tell me, how does Julia like it here?”

“I think she likes it all right,” John said cautiously.

Julia is a frail, timid creature, with wispy hair and narrow shoulders. She seems disheartened by the world, as though she has tried it and found it too much for her.

“Is she in sailing class?” I asked. This is the core of childhood in this coastal community. It starts with rowing, for six-year-olds, and goes up to racing and overnight cruises for teenagers.

“She is. I think she likes it,” said John.

“I hope so. Melissa loved it. I loved it,” I said, and then wondered if I had. I think now that I loved it, but maybe this is nostalgia. Maybe at the time I hated it. Melissa tells me now that her childhood was miserable. Memory is kaleidoscopic: the slightest shift creates another picture, detailed, complete, convincing. Who can say what childhood was really like? We cling to the view we’ve chosen. But I think that I really did love sailing class: the cold, taut line against my strong hand, and the damp, fresh wind in my face. Hunkering down in the well of the little boat with my best friend, setting out across the choppy water toward Sutton Island as though it were the Peloponnese. There must have been cold weather and high winds, fights and feuds, but I don’t remember them. Now those days seem full of exultation. I wondered what Melissa would say now, about sailing class. I wondered what she would say, years later, about her parents’ divorce.

John looked judicious. “Well, Agnes isn’t crazy about sailing. She may want Julia to do tennis instead.”

“She can do both,” I said officiously. “We all did. But why doesn’t Agnes like sailing?”

“It’s pretty strenuous. Four hours, out in the cold wind, three days a week. And what if she fell in?”

“But did Agnes just find out now that it was four hours, three days a week? Didn’t you register Julia months ago?”

John took a drink of water. “I think Agnes just focused on it. She called this morning, and she was concerned. And I must say I think she has a point.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Well, children have managed it somehow, for generations. With very few fatalities.”

John sighed. “Sarah, Agnes is Julia’s mother. I think she knows what’s best for Julia. She is a very responsible mother, you know. She sees things differently from you.”

It’s true that Agnes sees things differently from the way I do. To start with, I would not call abandoning your child in favor of graduate school a demonstration of maternal responsibility. John, however, defends everything Agnes does. “She was unhappy,” he explains, about her abandoning him and Julia. John defends Agnes because, though she has left him, she won’t leave him alone. She won’t let him be angry: she calls him her best friend. They talk every day, and she comes over to his house all the time. John calls this mature. I call it dishonest.

“Agnes and I see most things differently,” I said. “Not only how to treat your daughter but also your ex-husband.”

“First of all, Sarah, I am not Agnes’s ex-husband. Agnes and I are not divorced,” John said, precise. “And second of all, I must tell you that you sound just the faintest bit jealous. Agnes and I have been very fortunate, and we have worked very hard. We have managed to maintain our friendship despite our separation, which few people seem able to do. This makes things much easier on Julia, to say nothing of being easier on us. And I’ll tell you that I’m very grateful to Agnes for making this possible.” He sounded incredibly smug.

“I’m not jealous,” I said, irritated. “What Agnes has made possible is the end of your marriage. Why are you grateful to her?”

John took a swallow of his drink. “I see this as a little more complex than that,” he said primly.

“Agnes wants it both ways,” I said. “She wants to leave her husband without accepting the consequences.”

“I didn’t realize you were an expert on what my wife wants,” John said, cool. “And what are the consequences?”

“The consequences of divorce? How can you ask? Her guilt. Your anger.”

“Well, but we aren’t divorced. And I’m not angry at Agnes,” John said, pleased.

“But why aren’t you?” I asked.

John shook his head. “I understand her,” he said, and smiled loftily, as though he were a philosopher and I were a hysterical shrew.

“She is selfish and cruel,” I said. “What is there to understand?”

There was an angry silence. I was furious: Why did he keep calling Agnes his wife? Why did he defend her? But I said nothing more: For one thing, I know I shouldn’t criticize Agnes to John, it’s low-grade behavior. I have to trust John to make his own way through this, and I know he will. Besides, maybe I am jealous. And I also kept quiet because I particularly didn’t want to quarrel that night. So I waited until I could smile at him.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “That wasn’t very nice.”

John looked at me gravely and patted my hand. “Thank you.”

In Philadelphia, at night, John and I always went to my house. We were alone there, with Melissa away. The first time he came was difficult for me: I felt invaded, John’s footsteps in Michael’s house, his strange new body in my marriage bed. I had to close my eyes to shut out the thoughts of invasion, to shut out those sickening thoughts of guilt and regret and nostalgia. But I had to, I had to let my house and marriage be invaded: my marriage was over, and both my house and I must receive my guests. I closed my eyes and hurled myself into the moment, into John, like a moth into a flame, hoping he was hot enough.

Afterward we lay peacefully tangled up in each other. I was proud of us both, for pushing past that anxiety, for insisting on happiness. I ran my hand up and down along John’s shoulder. When I felt him sit up, I opened my eyes. His back was to me, and he was picking up his clothes.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

He didn’t turn around. “Getting dressed.”

“Are you leaving?”

“I’m afraid I have to,” said John. I waited, and finally he said, “Julia wakes up in the night a lot. I don’t want her to find me gone if she does.”

I thought of Julia’s frightened call in the empty hallway, the light shining on the polished floor, the silence of the late-night house. I thought of John’s big, calming presence. I couldn’t argue. Who would let a child cry alone?

Still. “What about Hannah?” I asked.

John’s voice was now distant. “I don’t want Julia to wake in the night and find me gone,” he repeated, testy.

I said nothing: one more question and we would be fighting. I lay there, watching him dress and feeling abandoned. I pulled the sheet up over my nakedness so that if he turned, he would not find me unprotected.

Each time we made love I hoped that this time he would stay. I hoped he would feel so blissfully depleted, so cherished, so safe, that his reasons for leaving would dissolve. I hoped this time he would fall trustingly asleep in my arms, next to my beating heart, and I would have him with me all through the dark hours of the night.

Tonight, here, this would finally happen, and it was John himself who had planned it. Julia was staying with a friend, and John had boldly told the baby-sitter that he’d be back in the morning. My parents were gone, and Melissa doesn’t appear before noon. I felt John was drawing himself up for that step into the spinning air, and I was proud.

That afternoon I had opened one of the guest rooms. It was a big square room, musty and silent, with slanting eaves and faded flower-sprigged wallpaper. I turned down the bedspread and plumped up the heavy pillows, which, in that house at the edge of the water, were always cool, always faintly damp. I pushed open the small diamond-paned windows and stood in the silent room while the soft air flowed in past me, lifting the white curtains and letting them drop. I thought of how it would be, later on, the two of us sinking into the softness of that strange bed. I closed my eyes: the faded Victorian room in the dim light, John looming over me, putting his hands where he pleased, the two of us skin to skin among those soft ancient sheets. I thought of seeing him in the early morning, in that muted light still empty of color. I thought of waking to find the warmth of his body, the rich smell of him, of us, all around me. That was what lay ahead of us, and I wouldn’t let anything threaten it. I wouldn’t argue now with anything John said.

When we left the restaurant I paused, balancing on the edge of the sidewalk, and took a deep, peaceful breath of the night air. The village was silent, and the great black sky went straight up forever. The world spread out around us, dark and rich, and the night that waited was sweet. We didn’t talk on the way home; we didn’t need to.

Melissa’s window was dark as we drove past. John parked the car and turned off the engine but didn’t move. I turned to him, but he was staring straight ahead. I knew what he was thinking about. “Did you leave this number with the babysitter, in case Julia calls?” I asked.

“Actually …” John said. He still was not looking at me, he was looking into the black thicket of pine trees. When I heard the tone of his voice, I closed my eyes: I didn’t want to hear what he was going to say.

We sat in silence. The space in the car had turned cold and claustrophobic; there was no longer quite enough air for us both.

Finally I said, “Actually?”

“Actually,” John repeated, “I meant to tell you before.”

“About what?” I asked.

John turned to look at me. “Now, don’t fly into a rage,” he said, smiling. His voice was affectionate, paternal. He made rage sound absurd and childish, something I should be ashamed of flying into.

I said nothing.

John reached out and took my boneless hand. He patted it. “I’m sorry to let you down.”

“What happened?” I kept my voice neutral and wondered why I was the only one to be let down.

John frowned and looked ahead again. “I just don’t feel right about leaving for the night.”

“But Julia’s not even at home,” I protested. “She’s staying with a friend.”

“Still,” John said. “She may wake up and call home. I don’t want her to feel she can’t reach me.”

“But you could give her this number.”

John sighed again. “This is a small community,” he said. “Everyone knows this number. I don’t want to make a public announcement about where I’m spending the night. And I don’t want Julia to have to call me at a stranger’s.”

“I’m not a stranger,” I said, hurt. “Julia knows me. But okay, if you don’t want to give her the number, give it to Hannah. If Julia calls home, Hannah can tell her to call here.”

“Sarah, look,” John said, his voice authoritative. He was getting down to it. “Julia is my daughter. I feel responsible for her. I know you feel differently about your daughter, but this is the way I feel. We do things differently: that’s how it is.”

John’s tone was lofty. He was withdrawing to a higher elevation where the Good Parents were. I could see he thought that only he and Agnes belonged there, that I should be kept in the outer darkness with the rest of the Bad Parents. This enraged me, and I said something that surprised me.

“Is it really Julia you’re expecting a call from in the middle of the night?” I asked.

John turned away at once, and his lips drew together dismissively. He pushed his tortoise-shell glasses farther up on his nose with a long finger.

“Sarah,” he said, “my feelings for Agnes have nothing to do with my feelings for you.”

“Oh, good,” I said heatedly. “And what are your feelings for me?” I asked without thinking.

John paused, and cleared his throat. “Well,” he said uneasily, “you know it’s hard for me to say these things.”

“Yes,” I said. At first I had thought—I had hoped—that he would answer the way I had spoken, at once, and with feeling. But John said nothing, and the pause lengthened. Then dread began to rise up in me, and regret: I should never have asked.

John frowned, and then swallowed. I could see he was working. Finally he looked at me. “I feel, well, I feel very warm toward you.” He paused. “At least, I feel very warm, myself, when I’m with you.” He looked proud.

“Very warm,” I repeated. I felt sick, shamed, and I turned my face away from him. John put his hand on my shoulder.

“Really, very warm,” he said, earnestly.

I looked at him, speechless and despairing. I could see that we had not been exploring each other at all. We had been in different countries all along, speaking to each other in different languages. I could see that John was nowhere near the leap, and I was no longer sure he wanted to make it.

“Do you still want me to come up?” John asked. “I’d like to.” He stroked my shoulder in a tentative way.

I stared at him. I waited for a moment before I spoke, choosing my words.

“Sarah?” he said, stroking my shoulder gently, tenderly.

His hand on me felt exquisite, and it distracted me from my pain. I sat still, and his hand moved from my shoulder to my neck. I felt so miserable that I closed my eyes. For a moment I let myself pretend that things were all right, that nothing had happened, and that we would go on and do what we both wanted. Feeling his hand on my bare skin, slow and possessive, knowing, gentle, I didn’t want it to stop.

Maybe I was looking at this wrong. Maybe I was mistaken about John. Maybe this was the only way that he could move away from Agnes, obliquely, undeclared. Maybe he needed to make a safe place with me before he could break away from Agnes. Maybe this was the only way he could approach the leap. John’s hand, moving so gently along my collar bone, with other parts of me longing for its arrival, made these thoughts seem sensible.

I thought of the room I’d gotten ready for us, the smooth worn sheets on the bed, the white curtains lifting in the breeze off the water. I had left a light on, its glow invisible in the afternoon sun but deepening and growing with the twilight, so that when we opened the door, our world would already be golden. I remembered the light left on. I thought of walking down that hall alone, entering the room alone, to turn off the light.

“Yes,” I said, “come up.”

The house above us was dark, and we climbed the steps quietly. Reaching the top, I pulled open the screen door and turned the handle of the glass-topped inner door. It resisted, and I peered into the dim living room, full of mysterious shadows. It was silent, and I tried again: the door had been locked. Of course I didn’t have a key—no one here locks the door during the summer. There is only one key to our house, and it lives on a shelf in the pantry. Of course Melissa knows that. I thought of her face as she turned the key in the lock.

“Well,” I said, making my voice cheerful, “this is a nuisance. Melissa must have watched a scary movie and she’s locked the door. Let’s try the kitchen.”

But Melissa had thought of the kitchen, and she had thought of the side door. The last possibility was the door onto the front porch, which she might not have bothered with: the porch is self-contained, and no steps lead off it. To reach it I’d have to climb the stone foundation at its highest point, but with John’s help I could do that.

We clambered down the steep, needle-covered slope in the dark, and the house rose high above us against the sky. John braced himself, bending his knees. He laced his fingers together, making me a stirrup. Gingerly I set my foot in it: feeling the small cradle of muscle and bone beneath me I felt suddenly heavy, excessive. This would never work, I thought. I could feel that I was too much for him, and I hopped apologetically on one foot.

“Go on,” John urged, “go on.”

I lunged up. I could feel John taking my weight, I felt his shoulders settle against the strain. I teetered in his hands, groping for a purchase against the cold rusticated stone. He didn’t flinch, and I felt him solid and comforting beneath me. Perhaps it would work after all, I thought, and I pushed myself slowly erect against his cupped palms. I stood shakily upright and reached over the parapet. I felt the rough bark of the log railing above it as I searched for a grip. The railing itself was too high, but I set my hands around it and pulled, and I felt John pushing from below. My progress was uneven and wobbly, and I couldn’t tell whether this was because of me or him. As I scrabbled, raising one knee against the rough surface, a light went on in the living room.

Melissa’s silhouette appeared on the other side of the glass door. I tried frantically to drag my knee all the way up on the wall. Please, I thought, oh, please.

The door opened and Melissa stepped partway out onto the porch, holding the doorknob protectively so she could close herself in again.

“What are you doing out there, Mother,” she said, and the word in her mouth was a curse.

I pushed desperately against John’s hands, trying to rise, but I felt his hands shaking. Now I could tell that the unevenness came from him. I could feel that this was too much for him, and he was giving way, giving up. As he wavered, I took a great breath, trying to fill myself with air, to make myself weightless. I tried to gather myself together and hurl myself up the wall. I tried for a wild, miraculous skyward leap.

But to leap, you need open air before you, and to spring, you need a solid place beneath your feet to start from, something stable, absolute. Before me was hard stone, and beneath me were John’s trembling hands. I could feel his whole body trembling, wavering. I tried to pull myself up by my arms, but I found that I was starting to cry. The strength in my arms and hands was leaving me, and I was no longer sure of what I was able to do.

“What are you doing out there, Mother?” Melissa said again. Her voice was terrible, an accusation, a hiss. She asked the question as though she had no connection with what I was doing, with my struggle against that brutal stone.

Below me I felt John’s shaking hands finally part. He stepped away, letting go of me entirely. My foot plunged down and I felt the chill air and the emptiness beneath me. I was only halfway up, and my arms weren’t strong enough to pull me any farther. The heart seemed to have gone out of me. I had no answer for my daughter; there was no question I dared ask anyone.