All summer long Leigh had devoted herself to her flowers. In the early spring she had had a man come with a Rototiller to plow up and fertilize her backyard until all the rich black soil lay exposed, a patch of farmland in the middle of town. Then, working with great care, she divided the backyard into precise rows, and she planted zinnias, dahlias, begonias, gloriosa daisies, snapdragons, calendula, petunias, and marigolds. She spent most of her summer evenings sitting on her back patio with a drink in her hand, reading a book and looking up from time to time to study the garden in the summer light—listening to the gentle shoose-shoose of the sprinkler, watching the water rain down on the ripening leaves. It was the sweetest summer she could remember, full of dreams of blossomings, and at the end of the summer she had an acre of flowers blooming in every imaginable shade of yellow.

The first Saturday in September, when all the flowers were at their finest, she rose at five-thirty, when the sun was just lighting the sky. She put on her usual gardening outfit—blue jeans, a baggy T-shirt, sneakers—and went out into her backyard. With exquisite patience, she cut down all the yellow flowers. She put them in boxes and baskets. At seven-thirty Patricia Taylor arrived to help her. They loaded their cars with the flowers and drove to the church. Inside the sanctuary, they arranged the flowers in bowls and set them in all the windowsills. They tied the flowers into bouquets and garlands and draped them along the ends of the pews and along the walnut balustrades leading to the chancel. They brought in two long walnut tables and placed them at the front of the church on either side of the main aisle, and arranged the flowers so that they covered the tables completely, rising up in sprays and spires, cascading down in leafy scallops almost to the floor, smothering the tabletops in layers of variegated golden leaves. It was an inordinate display, and the mixture of these common household flowers gave an air of gaiety to the white-and-gold church. The sun streaked through the high windows, lighting on the flowers, causing them to gleam with a buttery luster, and warming the air so that the entire sanctuary was filled with the mingled fragrance of all those flowers. Finally Leigh and Patricia’s work was done.

They stood at the back of the sanctuary, admiring their handiwork. The church was dazzling with yellow flowers. They had done what they could to surround their children with beauty, to festoon the hall of their celebration with fresh living gold, as if with promises, with hope.

The women went home then to array themselves for the wedding; it was to take place at ten-thirty that morning. As Leigh drove to her house she hummed and smiled, feeling grateful that the sky was a flawless brilliant blue. The temperature was climbing into the seventies; it would be a perfect day. And she felt so clever for having planned this garden last spring and for having planted it in the early summer. She had planted all those seeds like a good witch plotting destiny. For after Michael and Mandy had been living together, Leigh had realized that they really were good together, good for each other, and she began to hope that it would last, this lucky love they had found. She and the Taylors had made an agreement with the children in the fall: if you live together and make good grades in school and show us you’re responsible, you can get married next fall. Now “next fall” was here and the children were getting their wish—their wedding—and everyone was happy.

How the world had changed, Leigh thought, that parents—and one of them a minister at that—would join together to postpone a marriage to force their children to do what not so long ago would be considered “living in sin.” But really, Leigh decided, marriage was such a feudal concept, all tied up with keeping control of wealth, power, and the proper bloodlines. It was so outdated. It all came down now to the individual in this singular century, and individuals were choosing to marry or not with one goal in mind: their own happiness. Of course what many were finding out was that over the long term, marriage does not provide happiness, and it certainly doesn’t assure it. After all Leigh had been through and seen, she would not have minded if her daughter had never married. She might even have been relieved, although she would like to have grandchildren. But marriage was no longer a prerequisite even for that. There was something still seductive about the idea of family, complete with mommy, daddy, and children, but the truth was, Leigh thought, that the happy traditional family was as rare as a happy marriage. And if happiness were the measure, what family after all could be considered happier than the one created by herself and Mandy?

The two of them had lived very pleasantly together for eighteen years. She had helped Mandy become a fine woman, and Mandy had enriched her life. Certainly there had been tough times, angry words, but fewer, Leigh was sure, than if Mandy’s father had remained in the household. No, Leigh had not grown all those flowers and decorated the church so gloriously because her daughter was doing the proper deed, or even because she hoped to embellish the marriage with the luck of longevity. It was simply that this was the last occasion Leigh knew she could orchestrate in any way for her daughter. After all the years of helping her dress and do her hair, of painting her room and sewing her curtains, of driving her to stores to help her find the right clothes, of providing the brightest, smoothest, most beneficial life for her one lovely child, Leigh wanted to give this final gift. It was such a milestone for them. Now Mandy was on her own—or, more exactly, on her own with Michael. It was Leigh who now would really be on her own.

She parked the car and went into the house through the kitchen. It was nine-thirty. There were signs that Mandy had risen and eaten breakfast, and Leigh heard her moving upstairs in the bathroom. She poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down at the kitchen table, looking out at the backyard. The yard looked strange now, slightly bare with all the yellow blossoms gone, but Leigh had foreseen this and planted enough other colors—reds, whites, violets—so that she was not faced with a totally stripped landscape. She stretched in the morning sun, luxuriating in the knowledge of a monumental task accomplished and a celebration ahead. She would not have even a moment to feel bereft—not that she should feel that anyway, for Mandy had been living apart from her for over a year now—because tomorrow she had to finish boxing up her valuables and packing up her possessions. Leigh was renting her house to a visiting professor and his family for a year, and she was going to spend the next twelve months of her life in Europe. She would spend the first six months in Paris, and the next six in Florence. She had already made the arrangements, written to friends, made plans to spend Christmas in Geneva with an old lover. It was the life she had longed to lead since she was a child, and at last she was going to lead it. Better late than never, she thought, and in fact, better late than early. Because this trip brought to her middle-aged body and soul the sensation of youthful adventure. She felt she was younger, freer, more fortunate than her own daughter. All summer long she had tended her garden and dreamed of the future, gorging herself on this last great domestic deed as if on homemade bread, knowing she was about to leave it all to taste the exotic.

She rose, stretched again, and went upstairs. Mandy was just coming out of the bathroom, and she looked shining and elaborate, with makeup painstakingly applied and her hair brushed to a sheen. She was wearing only a white slip.

“Flowerface,” Leigh said, and moved to kiss her daughter on the cheek.

Mandy flinched back a bit from her mother’s kiss. “Mom!” she said. “You’ll streak my makeup! And look at you. It’s after nine-thirty and you’re still in jeans.”

“Ah,” Leigh said, “but you should see the church! Don’t worry, baby, I’ll be ready.” She went into the bathroom and shut the door.

Mandy wandered into her bedroom and stood in the center of it, looking around. She was completely ready except for putting on the wedding gown and veil, and she had forty-five minutes to wait before it was time to go to the church. She knew that any moment now her father and his wife would arrive, and so would her two best friends from college and her best friend from high school, who were going to be bridesmaids. They would all go to the church together. In a minute or two, the house would be filled with noise and movement. But for this one moment it was silent, except for the noise of her mother’s shower, and time retreated from her politely, like a docile servant bowing and backing out of the room, leaving her to her privacy.

This was what she had wanted, this vivid honest moment of separation, when she could stand in the middle of her childhood room as if still in the middle of her childhood, and wholeheartedly give it up with open hands. She had been happy here, in this house, in her childhood; but she had been a child; she would always be a child here. She was grateful for the ritual of marriage for providing that necessary sense that something was being officially and irrevocably renounced, and something else taken up. She needed the ritual of marriage.

She sank down on her bed and began drawing her hose up her legs. She moved slowly, smoothing the delicate silken material against her. She had only recently bought a garter belt, since she had grown up in a panty-hose world, and she liked the way she looked in just her bra and panties and garter belt and hose—erotic, exotic, a bit tarty, in fact. She had read enough propaganda in the literature her mother and female teachers foisted off on her to understand that in this particular culture and time women were raised to be self-critical, even self-deprecating, to think of themselves as fat. In one feminist article she had read that in a survey taken of hundreds of women of all ages, weights, and body-types, 98 percent of them thought of their bodies as badly flawed in some way. They all need a lover like Michael, Mandy had thought, for over the past year she had lived with Michael she had developed a new appreciation of her own body, so that when she looked in the mirror she smiled and thought: Well, I’m not half bad.

So much in the world depended on vision. In fact, it seemed to Mandy that one’s whole life depended on three things: luck, courage, and vision. She could still remember how it was when she was a small child, when her ignorance of the simplest things made the world seem blurry at the edges. It was as if she had always moved through a fog. The people she knew well and trusted were seen and felt as people: her mother, father, best friends, her teachers after a few weeks. But all other people appeared to her as objects, startling physical masses, who loomed up suddenly next to her in that fog, exuding their own personalities in the same way chairs exuded wood.

She could remember one boy in the third grade especially. His name was Billy, and he was handsome and smart and sophisticated and popular. Of course he must have worn clothes which had colors, but Mandy could never think of him as, say, a boy in a brown sweater. He was so bright and significant that he frightened Mandy, and when he approached her she saw him as a shiny metallic object, very cold and definite, like a spoon. It seemed to her that when he was near her he curved away from her, like a turned spoon curving naturally away; she could feel glitter, polish, and chill emanate from him.

Much later she met his younger sister, who said, “Oh, you’re Mandy Findly! My brother Bill had a crush on you all through third grade. He used to come home and be sick because you would never speak to him.” Billy and his family moved away shortly after that, so Mandy never got to know him, and while she was pleased to hear from his sister that Billy had liked her, she was also disturbed that her vision of him had been so wrong, that he had liked her, when she had felt he hadn’t. But that was how it was when you were young, people just rose up in front of you, or came at you, like cars or dogs or walls or trees, and there was nothing you could do about it: you were held helpless in your vision, a prisoner of sensation.

She wanted to sculpt this, in fact had begun a piece, her biggest attempt yet, a blunted figure rising up, towering, a faceless apparition in heavy clay, which tilted treacherously forward. How could she shape it so that others seeing it would know that if you tried to touch this figure, if you threatened it, it would vanish? Her mother, and most older people, Mandy thought, led such elaborate and complicated lives, as peopled by their fears of possible problems as her childhood had been peopled by ghosts. They seemed to believe that if a person did the right things—went to high school, college, got the right job, married the right person at the right time—you could escape dark hazards, like a carefully driven car keeping cautiously to a path, not touching the barriers which edged the way. But then, it was true, few people had had the luck she had—and luck was as important, more important, perhaps, than vision. It was sheer, beautiful, generous luck, as bountiful as the sun, which had brought her so early to her choice of work. She had her visions. Her mind was filled with them, a bizarre, demanding muddle of reality and dream, voices and fragrances which transformed themselves into shapes and colors, emotions which metamorphosed into objects. She could re-create her visions with her sculpting. And she could do this because of Michael, because of Michael.

She thought of him as being as necessary as the air she breathed or the ground which held her up, as comforting as a bed of tousled blankets, as refreshing as night rain on bare skin—if she wanted to, she could envision Michael as many things. But she knew that what he really was, was simply Michael: a tall handsome young man who for some mysterious reason needed her as much as she needed him.

They had lived together for almost a year now and she had become familiar with all the intimate details of his living, as he had with hers. He was a kind, gentle creature, who had long ago refused the powers of his intelligence in the way a person might refuse a dubious gift from a wizard. Michael liked the real stuff of every day; it had much more meaning, more reality to him than it did to Mandy. He made the coffee and breakfast in the morning, because it mattered to him that the coffee be brewed just right. For her part, Mandy would have made do with tepid tea or even a Diet Pepsi. He had bought a pickup truck to carry his tools in—he had gotten a job with a painter—and he liked his tools. He liked walking slowly through a hardware store, comparing saws and drills and blades. He washed and waxed his truck often. Sometimes Mandy would come back late at night from working at the college studio to find him sitting in front of the television, drinking beer, eating pretzels. “You’re a stereotype, you know that, don’t you?” she asked, teasing. “You’re really nothing but a beer advertisement!” She only criticized him because she thought she should; she had been raised to think that sitting around watching TV and drinking beer was bad.

“If you’ve got the time, I’ve got the beer,” Michael would say, and pull her down on the couch with him, and she would be engulfed in his slow, aromatic, masculine presence, as in a fragrance. Michael always lived in the present. He was not plagued or blessed by visions or memories which took him away from the here and now, and so when he focused on her, she was overpowered by his intensity, his unhurried concentration.

For his part, he did not seem awed by her art or intelligence, only pleased. He loved her, therefore he believed in her and would do everything in his power to help her, to sustain her while she worked. It didn’t bother him to clean house or do the dishes or the cooking; these were tasks which satisfied him in the same way that mowing a lawn satisfied him. They were deeds that could be completed within a short period of time, so that he could see the results, and he liked the easy movements required of his hands and body. He did not seem interested in analyzing their love for each other or in exploring the cause of their lucky happiness. Their love simply existed for him as steadfastly as a tree or a building; it just was. Mandy knew that if she stopped working at her sculpting, that would be okay with him, and if she worked at it obsessively and became rich and famous, that would be okay, too, and if she dropped out or became a nurse, that would be okay. She supposed she could worry if she wanted to, about the future—was their marriage, their love, based entirely on sex? Would he, in ten or twenty years, grow tired of her? She of him? She did not think so. It seemed to her they had mated for life, in that mute, absolute way of animals; it was not just sex, but it was an even more physical thing that had happened to them. They were two masses fused together and held there by the force of the world, shuddering into each other, irrevocably locked.

That was luck. Mandy saw herself as a woman who had been given unusual vision, unusual luck, and she felt sure that she only needed courage now, to grab hold of all she had, to say: I love him, and I can do these things. She was grateful to her parents and to Michael’s parents for allowing them to make this choice.

She knew this must be hard for them. Her own mother was one of the most intelligent, perceptive women she knew. Yet several days ago, when Mandy had been getting ready for a wedding shower, Leigh had walked into the room while Mandy was fastening her hose onto her new white garter belt.

“Hi, Mom,” Mandy said. “Don’t I look quaint?” For she thought she did, in that lacy old-fashioned contraption.

Leigh had stared at her daughter, who was wearing only a bra, panties, hose, and the garter belt. “I would hardly call your appearance quaint,” she said, and walked out of the room without telling Mandy what she had come in for.

Mandy had crossed her room to look at herself in the mirror, then grinned. No she did not look quaint. She did not look childish. She looked like a woman who had been caressed and loved by a man until her flesh shone. Without meaning to, she had embarrassed her mother with her sensuality. Yet she was glad, after all, for her mother’s having seen her this way; it would make things even more definite between them. Mandy was no longer a child. She was a woman.

She was almost a married woman. Mandy trembled, and forced herself into the present. It was after ten o’clock. People would be gathering at the church. Michael was at his house, putting on his tux. She could hear people coming into the house downstairs, voices, laughter, calls. Suddenly she burst into tears—why was it said that way, that she burst into tears? It was rather that suddenly the tears burst from her, out of her eyes, down her face, streaking her perfect makeup. The morning sun poured through the windows, shaped by her frilly curtains, and made her childhood room seem a vessel of light. She had been happy here. Mandy walked around the room, touching the bed, her stuffed animals, her dresser, her desk, even each one of the walls, weeping and touching. If she could have, she would have taken that entire childhood room into her arms. Marriage was irrevocable, it was different from just living together, it was a shining sword which cut her off from her childhood and her mother, it was an act which rent every bit as much as it joined.

“Oh, Mandy, little honey,” Leigh said. She came into the room and put her arms around her daughter and pulled her to her, not minding that Mandy might get makeup all over her silk dress.

“Mom,” Mandy said, “I really do love you. I really do love this house.”

“I really love you,” Leigh said. “I always will. Come on, let’s put your dress on and go in the bathroom. I’ve brought some flowers up. I’ll weave them into your hair. We’ve got to leave for the church pretty soon.”

Mandy got a handkerchief and blew her nose, then smiled at her mother. But as Leigh helped slide the heavy white lace and satin wedding gown over her, and fussed around fastening and fixing it, Mandy began to cry again, softly. This is the last time, she was thinking, that my mother, who has tended to me all my life, will dress me and take care of me.

Leigh led Mandy into the bathroom and waited while she repaired her makeup. She brushed her daughter’s long hair and carefully wound tiny yellow roses in it. “Hold your head still!” she snapped. But she smiled. She was envisioning the future. Someday, not soon, but someday years away, Mandy and Michael would have children. Then Leigh would come back into her daughter’s life, to help, to plump up the pillows and rub her back and brush her hair so she’d look pretty for Michael, to take the baby from its crib and change its diaper and bring it to Mandy to feed.

The church was beginning to fill with wedding guests. People were, in fact, crammed into the pews. Everyone in Londonton, it seemed, knew Mandy and Leigh or Michael and the Taylors. And everyone was in the mood for a celebration.

The women wore hats adorned with ribbons or flowers and dresses with lace or ruffles or some sort of frill, and the men had gotten out their best suits or blazers. The September sun blazed bright and hot. It was a ripe day, life and time at a glorious peak. As soon as a cluster of people entered the sanctuary, they stopped and looked around, startled, amazed at the abundance of flowers. Their spirits lifted and they laughed, as if they had been somehow pleasantly tricked. When they finally settled into pews, they were too happy to keep still; they turned their heads and waved and nodded at friends and whispered among themselves so that their hushed laughter and conversation drifted through the sanctuary air like streamers, airy banners, spirits in effervescence.

Suzanna Blair sat on the bride’s side near the front of the church. Mandy had babysat for Seth and Priscilla several years ago. In fact, Mandy had been their favorite babysitter for a long while, and so Suzanna had dressed her children up in their Sunday best and brought them to the wedding. Priscilla sat next to her, carefully arranging the pink folds of her frilly skirt so that they covered as much area around her as possible, and Seth sat on the other side of Priscilla, eyeing her operation, trying to decide whether to tease her or not. Obviously he remembered his mother’s warnings about the necessity of good behavior at this occasion, because he finally looked away from Priscilla and occupied himself by attempting to count the people in the church.

Madeline sat on the other side of Suzanna. Just this was their triumph. As Suzanna looked around the sanctuary at the elaborate and ingenuous flower arrangements, the pews packed with happy guests, the sun streaming through the windows, she felt a twinge of envy. She would have liked to have this. She would have liked to marry Madeline, to announce to the community her love and enduring commitment to this woman; to have their union blessed by God and man; to provide her hometown with a cause for celebration, to stand in this holy place and affirm their love through ritual and ceremony. On the other hand, and she smiled to herself, the image of herself and Madeline proceeding in state down the aisle in matching wedding gowns was ludicrous. No, this good old ceremony would not do, and Suzanna wished Mandy and Michael nothing but good. And she was, when all was said and done, content, even amazed, with the way things had worked out for herself.

A year ago, she and Madeline had spent weeks discussing just how it would be if they ever could move in together, and then Suzanna would spend hours in her bedroom, or if the children were around, hiding in the bathroom, crying. For it all seemed so impossible. She and Madeline could compromise like a pair of saints about arrangements of furniture and schedules; those were only superficial issues. But no matter how they might manage to work out their living together, it could never happen, because of Tom. If he suspected Suzanna of being a lesbian, then he could take the children from her, he could cause her no end of publicity and pain. Suzanna had talked with three different lawyers, and they all said the same thing: in this state the judges would rule against a lesbian mother every time, no matter what the sins of the father were.

Suzanna began to dream of Tom’s death, to long for it, because it seemed finally the only solution. But even as she longed for his death, she was ashamed of herself, because he was a good human being, she didn’t really wish him ill … still, if only he would just disappear! For weeks it seemed that her mind chased after itself like a rat caught in some bizarre and cruel maze. She could not stop her thoughts, but she could not find the way out. She was miserable. Christmas came and went, and New Year’s Eve. She and Madeline received separate invitations to parties with the message “Please feel free to bring a friend” handwritten on the invitations. They laughed with each other about what a commotion it would cause if they actually did “bring a friend,” if they did show up together. But in the end, they refused all invitations and stayed at Suzanna’s to see the new year in by themselves.

It was what they would have chosen, actually, those quiet moments by the fire with champagne and music. Neither woman cared much for parties. Still, they were acutely aware of the limitations of their situation that night. And New Year’s Day, when Madeline dressed up to go to a brunch that was being given by the head of her department, a party which she thought she really should attend even if briefly, Suzanna felt everything inside her go wild with despair. She might as well be living in Russia, she thought, or Poland, she might as well be living in some kind of institution! She charged around the house, doing laundry, snapping at the children, feeling all wrought up and crazed, until suddenly she felt something flash within her.

She bundled up the children, threw them into the car with sacks of new Christmas toys and candy to entertain them, and drove three hours to Lowell, where Tom and his new wife, Tracy, lived. She liked pretty, tiny Tracy, who was so young, and who seemed to want to do the right thing even though she was never sure just what that was. When Suzanna arrived unannounced on their doorstep at five o’clock New Year’s Day, Tom and Tracy were still in their robes, and Tom hadn’t shaved. It was clear that he’d spent the day nursing a hangover; he had that grizzled, withered look about him. But he greeted Suzanna and the children quite cheerfully, given the situation.

“What a surprise,” he said. “Come in, come in. Happy New Year, babies.”

“Oh, goodness,” said Tracy, appearing at Tom’s side, looking wide-eyed and nervous. “Did I forget something?” She and Tom had had the children spend weekends there before, and it obviously took a great deal of effort on her part to have them. It was one thing to cater to her husband, another to a pair of energetic children.

“No, no,” Suzanna said. “You didn’t forget anything. I’m sorry to intrude on you this way—I should have called—I apologize—but I really need to talk to Tom about something. You—Tracy—you’re welcome to join the discussion. There’s no need to exclude you.”

Tracy continued to look stunned and nervous, while Tom’s tired face took on a wary, suspicious look, but they welcomed Suzanna and the children in. They settled Priscilla and Seth in front of the TV with sandwiches and milk and they gave Suzanna the tall scotch she asked for, then gathered in the living room, with the door to the den–where the TV and the children were—shut, at Suzanna’s request.

“Well, now,” Tom said when they were seated. “What’s this about?”

For a moment Suzanna was so terrified she couldn’t speak. She was trembling from head to toe, and she was furious at herself for this schoolgirl terror which had overcome her. When she finally managed to speak, she heard her voice come out an octave higher than normal, squeaky and tight. She sounded like a mouse.

“Tom,” she squeaked, “I have to talk to you about something. I have to get something clear with you. I can’t go on with my life until you let me know what you’re going to do about it.”

“About what?” Tom asked, looking puzzled. Behind him, shy Tracy had gone white with apprehension.

“About—Tom—oh, Lord. Tom, Tom, I’m in love with a woman. I want to live with her. All of us, with the children. In a house. And I have to know what you’re going to do about it.” She stopped then, because fear hit her in the stomach as surely as a physical blow, and her breath was knocked out of her.

She had played this scene through in her mind on the long drive over: Tom could react in so many ways, and it was certain that he would act dramatically. Would he be enraged, furious, shocked, disgusted? Would he rush to the rescue of his victimized children and play the heroic, good, normal father? Would he go very still and quiet and say with fierce elegance, “In that case, Suzanna, there’s really very little for us to discuss. My lawyer will be contacting yours. She could envision him ushering her out of his house with a flourish of righteous contempt.

But Tom only sat there in his blue-and-white-striped bathrobe, rubbing his hand over his stubby chin, shaking his head at her in amused wonder. Tracy, who had been just hovering, sat down with a plop on the sofa next to her husband and watched him.

“Well, well, well,” Tom said slowly. “Who would ever have thought it. Little Suzanna. So you like women.”

“Tom, I don’t like women. I love a woman. One woman. A person.”

“Well, well, well,” Tom said again. “I’m sorry if I seem a little slow on the uptake, Suzanna, but you’ve got to admit I deserve a little time to work this one through.” He was quiet for a moment, then said, smiling triumphantly, “So all along you were a lesbian.”

“I don’t think that’s quite fair,” Suzanna said, but didn’t see how she could go further. Did he really want her to review their past love life in front of his new, young, intimidated wife? That would be pointless and cruel. “I don’t think I was a lesbian all along or that I am a lesbian now. I hate labels. I think I am just a woman, who once loved a man and lived with him and who now loves a woman and wants to live with her. But you’ve got some power over me, Tom, because of the children. And I need to know your feelings about it—about the children.”

“I’m not sure what you’re saying,” Tom said.

“What I’m saying,” Suzanna said, and to her fury tears came to her eyes, she did feel so desperate, so caught, “is that you can cause me a lot of trouble if you want to. I suppose you have the power to ruin my life now. Oh, don’t be so dense. Must I spell it out to you? Because of my—situation—you can legally gain custody of Priscilla and Seth. You can force me to give them up, to have them come live full-time with you.”

“Oh, Suzanna, we would never do that!” Tracy said, eyes wide with earnestness.

The girl’s outburst made Suzanna look at her, really look at her, and she saw Tracy sitting there in her slinky red lounging pajamas and realized that here was an ally. Tracy might look like a frail young thing, but she wasn’t stupid, certainly not stupid enough to turn her little love nest into a family bulky with someone else’s children. Thank God for that much, Suzanna thought, and began to relax a little.

“Do the children know about you and this other woman?” Tom asked.

“No,” Suzanna said. “They know we are friends. Close friends. They know Madeline spends the nights with me sometimes. If we move in together—well, we can’t move in together unless it’s okay with you. I can’t risk losing them if you’re going to be terrible about it. I’ll just have to not live with her. If we do move in together, well, I’ll tell them that I love Madeline. That we care for each other. That I like having another adult around. But I don’t think I need to go into any sexual details. They’re still so young.”

“You’ll have to tell them sometime.”

“Of course. I know that. But not quite yet. I don’t think. Well, there’s been no reason to tell them anything, yet. And if you—”

“So what is it you want from me?” Tom asked. “My blessing?” His voice was light, sarcastic, but Suzanna knew well enough what a stinger he could have hiding there. How had it worked out, she wondered, that this vain cynic could sit in judgment on her life, could have her happiness at his mercy? She had to look away. It would not help for him to see the anger in her eyes.

“Your blessing would be nice, actually,” she said softly. “I certainly have given you and Tracy whatever blessing I could. Where the children are concerned, I mean, and this is about the children. Tom, I’m doing everything in my power to be a good mother to Priscilla and Seth. They’re turning into happy, nice, good people. I don’t do anything in front of them, I never would. But it’s so nice to have another adult in the house, to share things. It’s lonely living alone, being responsible at night when the children are sick, or when I’m sick, and I’m happier, I’m a better person, knowing that there’s one person in the world who cares for me, it—”

“Oh, Christ,” Tom said. “Cut it out. There’s no need to get maudlin. What do you think I am, some kind of monster?”

Suzanna began to sob. She covered her face with her hands and leaned forward so that her forehead touched her knees. She was furious at herself for this display of emotion, of weakness, and terrified that it was happening, that this torrent of tears should overtake her now, on enemy territory. But she had been so stiff with fear during the three-hour drive over, so afraid of this moment of confrontation.

“What is the matter with you?” Tom said, annoyed, upstaged, discomfited by her tears.

Suzanna could not lift her face to his. “Don’t you see how it is for me?” She spoke through wet hands, and she wanted to say: Oh, Tom, you loved me enough once to marry me, can’t you love me enough still to wish me happiness? “I could marry any kind of dreadful man this world could produce, and still keep custody of the children. But because I want to live with a woman …”

“My sister’s gay,” Tracy said. “She and her lover spent part of the Christmas holidays with us. We’re not quite as medieval as you think.”

This announcement did make Suzanna lift her head. She stared at Tracy in amazement. Then she smiled. How she had misjudged her ex-husband’s new wife, with that ready bitterness that lay so close at hand, thinking that simply because the girl was young and pretty and went around in clothes that Suzanna could never again dream of wearing, she was also provincial and dense. There is a possibility, Suzanna thought, meeting Tracy’s stare, that as the years go by we could all end up behaving civilly toward each other.

“Look,” Tom said, “it’s fine with me if you want to move in with a woman. I don’t suppose she’s terribly wealthy? It would be awfully nice to have the child-support payments reduced, and if you’re going to have another income …”

Suzanna studied Tom for a moment to see if he were blackmailing her. “Well,” she said at last, “no, she’s not wealthy. But she does work. It wouldn’t be fair to expect her to pay any of the children’s expenses, but, Tom, let me see how it works out. Perhaps if two of us live together, sharing the basic mortgage, utilities, that sort of thing, perhaps I could do with less from you.”

That was the way it had ended, in agreement. Suzanna finished her scotch and they all talked politely about the weather and national news, careful not to mar this tenuous peace. Then Suzanna bundled the children back up and drove them home. Seth and Priscilla were confused by the quick trip to their father’s, by the fact that they didn’t stay long and this time Mommy went and talked, but in the way of all children who move through a world where so much is confusing and unexplained, they accepted it without much of a fuss. Suzanna put down the backseat so they could stretch their legs out in the hatchback, and covered them with a blanket she kept in the car, and the children slept for all three hours back. Suzanna was weak as she drove, and not quite happy, because she was so surprised. She had badly misjudged her ex-husband, it seemed. She had forgotten, or worse, had never realized, what capacities he had for generosity and tolerance. Perhaps he was nicer than she had ever thought, and she had just not allowed those qualities to develop in him. She drove wistfully through the winter’s night, slightly hypnotized by the glare of snow and ice against her headlights, reflecting in a melancholy way on the lost opportunities in her life.

But when she drove into the driveway of her house and saw it lit up by the headlights of her car, and saw the kitchen window shining with light—Madeline had a key to the house, Madeline would be there now, worrying about Suzanna’s disappearance—Suzanna’s heart expanded with joy; she felt as buoyant inside as a helium balloon. She had done it! They could do it! What a way to start the new year!

After the first rush of exhilaration, Madeline and Suzanna had settled down to the serious business of working out a life together, and much of it was not fun. They looked at houses which had the luxury of large adjoining bedrooms, and they looked at houses which had small adjoining bedrooms, but they very quickly realized that even with their two incomes combined, they could not afford a very big house. The interest rates were too high, so high that they would end up paying more for a small house than Suzanna was paying now for the house she and Tom had bought in 1970 when the interest rates were relatively low. This was a pedestrian bit of knowledge, not in keeping with the dreams of love, but one they had to deal with.

They ended up having a small wing built onto Suzanna’s house. This provided a downstairs bedroom and study for Madeline, with a tiny circular wrought-iron staircase leading up into a corner of Suzanna’s bedroom. It was an attractive addition, but an expensive one, costing almost as much as the equity on the main house itself. The builders began in early spring as soon as the weather was good, and Suzanna often came home from school and sat with her children drinking lemonade, watching the walls go up. She wished that Ron Bennett were still alive, because she thought that if he had done the work, this addition would have been much nicer. And she didn’t care for the builder she hired; he was taciturn, abrupt, and condescending, a gruff chauvinist. Still, when the work was done and the builders were gone, Suzanna and Madeline painted and wallpapered the rooms, and made this new addition theirs, part of their life together. Suzanna would tuck the children in bed on the second floor, then go into her bedroom, which with the addition of the spiral staircase was now expansive with happy possibilities: Madeline coming up the stairs, Suzanna going down.

Before the construction of the new addition, Suzanna had sat Priscilla and Seth down in the living room, planning to have a long and serious discussion with them. She was ready for any questions. She explained gently, precisely, that Madeline was going to be living with them permanently, that the new parts of the house would be Madeline’s rooms. Madeline was her best friend, Suzanna told them, and she would help Suzanna do the housework and cooking and even help drive the children here and there or read them books if they wanted. Madeline would help pay the bills, which would be a big help to Mommy. In short, Madeline would make Mommy happier. Suzanna hoped they could all live together happily.

“Okay, Mom,” Priscilla said. “Can we go play now?”

Suzanna smiled. Children, their minds! “Don’t you have any questions?”

The children both looked puzzled and bored. “Nope,” Seth said, and wriggled.

So she let them run off. She stayed on guard, apprehensive, the next few weeks, for any sign from the children that they were disturbed by the new arrangements. She waited for them to come home from school with tears in their eyes and stories of nasty comments made by schoolmates. She prepared herself for a crisis, but none occurred. It seemed very strange.

It was May when the moving van bringing Madeline’s furniture and boxes of books and possessions pulled up in front of Suzanna’s house. The weather was springlike and mild, and neighbors were jogging or strolling around. Suzanna waited until some of the older ones came by, looking with frank curiosity at the van. Then, unable to bear the suspense any longer, she charged out of the house and into the street to confront one of the couples, a pleasant older married man and wife who took their constitutionals every evening when the weather permitted.

“Hello!” Suzanna called.

“Hello, dear,” they said, “are you moving?”

“No, no. I’m having a friend move in. Madeline Meade. She teaches psychology at Southmark College. That’s why I had the addition built on. We’re good friends, and it will be so much easier having another adult in the house.”

“How nice for you, dear,” they said. “We worry about you sometimes, you know, living all alone like that without a husband for protection.”

They all talked a bit more about the weather, the children, the news, and then Madeline came out of the house, wiping her hands on her jeans, and walked out to the road to shake hands with the old couple and say hello. When everyone parted, Suzanna said to Madeline, “Why, it’s amazing. They seem to think this is perfectly fine. They didn’t raise an eyebrow. Do you suppose they wonder about our sex life?”

“I don’t know why they should,” Madeline said. “We don’t wonder about theirs.”

After Madeline moved in, there was a period of about two weeks when both women felt the town buzz slightly, as if a low-voltage electric shock had been passed around. When Suzanna pushed her shopping cart down the aisles of the Price Chopper, acquaintances who had formerly only said hello now stopped her for a long sociable chat, and Suzanna felt that they were looking her over, bright-eyed, searching her out for some sign. Once she had come upon Pam Moyer in the hardware store and Pam had smiled hello, then blushed scarlet. Ursula Aranguren reported that several people at the college who knew Suzanna slightly had bothered to ask if she supposed that Suzanna was a homosexual.

“I just told them that if you were anything, you were bisexual, since you have children,” Ursula said.

This conversation had occurred over drinks at a local restaurant; Ursula, Madeline, and Suzanna were having dinner together.

“But I don’t understand,” Suzanna said. “I thought there would be so much more of a to-do about it all.”

“Your timing’s all off for a to-do,” said Ursula. “Madeline should have moved in in January when we were all so bored we would have chewed any bit of gossip we could find to the rind. Last fall was taken up with Ron’s death and Johnny’s disappearance, and now Johnny’s come home and taken your limelight.”

“Oh, don’t talk that way, Ursula,” Suzanna said. “The last thing we want is limelight. I’ve been sick with worry about what might happen.”

“Well, I think you can stop worrying,” Ursula said, looking around the restaurant. “I can assure you I’m much more interested in finding someone to liven up my sex life than I am in hearing about anyone else’s.”

But Suzanna still worried. When June came and she walked down the hall from her classroom to her daughter’s classroom for the final parent-teacher conference of the year, her stomach cramped so she could hardly stand. She had mentioned her new living arrangements casually over the past few months to the other teachers as they sat sipping their Tabs in the teachers’ lounge, and no one had said, “My God, Suzanna, does this mean you’re a lesbian, unfit to teach children?” She thought that now and then when she entered the lounge, conversation among the other teachers stopped for a moment—but that always happened, because there were factions in the school, some teachers for certain school policies, some against; there was always some small squabble going on. She had not felt personally snubbed by the other teachers. But what if Priscilla’s teacher had been noticing some personality change, or felt that Priscilla was unhappy, becoming maladjusted? But Priscilla’s teacher gave Suzanna a glowing report: she was fine, cheerful, learning easily and well.

“I was afraid that she might be exhibiting some signs of—oh, I’m not sure what—unhappiness, I suppose,” Suzanna said to the teacher. “I mean, since Madeline’s moved in.”

Martha Martin was in her fifties, and today she looked tired. “I don’t see why she should,” she said. “I think the important thing when someone new enters a household—man, woman, or child—is to discuss this change with the child and to be sure to continue to give the child the affection and attention he or she is used to. And clearly you’ve done that.”

“Well, then,” Suzanna said, “thank you.” She rose and went to the door.

“Suzanna,” Martha called, so that Suzanna turned back. “Priscilla is really all right. It’s all all right.” She smiled.

Perhaps it really was all all right, Suzanna thought now, for here she was, in her church, at a wedding, with her children on one side of her and her lover on the other. The summer had been a quiet one. She and Madeline had started a huge vegetable garden. Tom and Tracy had taken the children on a camping trip to Canada for a month. Without the usual contact of fellow teachers at the school or other parents to arrange activities for the children, Suzanna had become slightly lonely, as if a void were expanding around them. And she had thought: Ah, this is what it’s going to be. Not a noisy reaction of angry people, but a simple falling away. We’ll be snubbed. Even Madeline agreed that it did seem the town was drawing back a bit, studying the situation in its conservative way. But at the end of the summer the Vandersons had their annual all-day swimming and barbecue party, and the invitation that arrived in the mailbox was addressed to “Suzanna, Priscilla, and Seth Blair and Madeline Meade.” They had all gone to the party and had a good time, talking easily with everyone.

And now they had received a similar invitation, addressed to them as a pair, from Leigh Findly, for Mandy’s wedding, and here they sat. We’ll never have this, Suzanna thought, this public affirmation of our love, a wedding. But we are living together happily, accepted by the town. We will live out our lives here, the children will grow up, we’ll go to parties, weddings, funerals, concerts, and plays here. We will, we do belong. It seemed to her that people were kinder than she had ever supposed, and now as the sanctuary glowed with flowers and music, Suzanna’s emotions expanded accordingly.

The family provides the world for children, but the town provides the world for grown-ups. We are all living here like a group of relatives, second cousins twice removed, stepsisters, would-be spouses, misplaced aunts and uncles; we’re incestuous, marrying and divorcing one another, meddling in one another’s affairs, counting on one another when our cars or marriages break down, turning to one another for a good game of tennis, bridge, or sex. We pass the gossip around as greedily as children whispering the game at a birthday party, but we mean one another no harm.

Why, consider Johnny Bennett, she thought, for just then he entered the sanctuary, following his mother and sister to a pew on the groom’s side. He ran off last year with Liza Howard, Suzanna thought, and jilted poor Sarah Stafford, and created a big scandal. Perhaps we all did talk about it a lot, for the truth is, it cheered us up considerably: the fact that Liza and Johnny, who live among us, who are part of us, could do such a thing made us feel capable of exciting things, too. Exciting sexual things. Lust and drama. Escape. We thrilled with it for days, imagining how it must have been. Of course we all felt sorry for Sarah, but not too sorry, after all. She just went off to Paris for the year, and the newspapers have been full of little tidbits about her social life, the parties she goes to, the gowns she wears. She’s probably delighted she didn’t marry Johnny, she’ll probably come home married to a count.

Suzanna studied Johnny as he settled his mother into the pew and seated himself next to her. He certainly was handsome. Too handsome for his own good, probably; she was grateful her daughter was too young for his charms. She wondered who he would marry now. He seemed to have given his complete attention over to his mother since he returned home, but surely that couldn’t last.

“You know,” Madeline had said this evening as they lay in each other’s arms, “probably half the people in this town—the female half—are delighted that you and I have each other. That takes two women off the market.”

“What a way to put it!” Suzanna had laughed.

“Well, it’s true, you know,” Madeline had said. “There are more single eligible women in this town than there are men. Especially now that Judy Bennett’s widowed. And I heard that the Moyers are getting divorced.”

“I heard that, too,” Suzanna said. “I wonder why. They always seemed to be the perfect family.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if it had something to do with the Bennetts,” Madeline had said. “The Moyers were their closest friends, and tragedies have a way of reverberating among friends.”

“That was such a sad time,” Suzanna said, thinking of those bleak fall days after the police had found Ron Bennett’s Mercedes in the river.

“I know,” Madeline replied. “That’s probably another reason why no one made a fuss about us. This town was so hard hit by Ron’s death. I think it made us all feel mortal. In the face of that, any kind of love seems a blessing.”

So there they sat, together at a wedding, a couple fairly much like any other. They would never hold hands in public or even kiss a quick good-bye if anyone else was around, but in a way this necessary restraint provided an elegance to their relationship, and an awareness of pleasures they might have otherwise missed. Just now Madeline leaned over to Suzanna and whispered, “Look at that hat.” Suzanna looked at the hat—it was a turquoise affair with a plume, very ostentatious for Londonton—and Suzanna smiled, but she was smiling not so much at the hat as at the rush of pleasure she got when Madeline’s breath and perfume drifted up against her skin.

Gary Moyer was one of the last guests to arrive at the wedding. The usher who greeted him at the door was a seventeen-year-old hulk named Carter Doullet, who was a friend of Michael Taylor’s and a friend of Gary’s own eighteen-year-old son Matthew.

“Hi, Mr. Moyer.” Carter grinned. “Your wife’s already here. I think I can squeeze you in next to her.”

“That won’t be necessary, Carter,” Gary said. “I’ll just sit at the back by myself, thank you.”

Carter looked surprised. Gary realized that meant that Matthew wasn’t telling his friends that his parents had separated. Gary settled himself into his pew, wondering if he should now worry about the implications of his son’s secrecy. Of course the boy did not want his parents to separate, so he probably thought the less he talked about it, the less real it would be.

The church was absolutely packed, each pew stuffed with brightly dressed well-wishers. These people, Gary thought, these people. My friends and acquaintances, my clients and colleagues. He understood now why it was that Johnny Bennett had run away—because after living in a town for a long time, a man feels duty-bound to remain superficially as he always superficially has been. The clothes he wears, the jokes he makes, the restaurants he frequents, the people he sees, all become established to the point of routine. It is this that gives a town a secure and homey atmosphere. People assume they can rely on one another to remain predictable and the world in turn seems a safer place. But if a man wishes to change even the slightest thing—the way he wears his hair, the color of his shirts, his restaurant, his sport—the town is discomfited and must go through a series of minute readjustments. And a major change, a death, a divorce, a serious crime, rocks the town like an earthquake, causing each member of the community to feel the walls of his house shiver with the precariousness of life. It would be easier to move away to a new town, where a lover or a hairstyle is readily accepted as part of you, than to make a major change in your hometown.

Gary had felt in the past few weeks that he owed an explanation for his impending divorce to his barber, his mailman, even the men who collected his trash. Not that these people would ever presume to ask, but the question was in their eyes, in their demeanor. Some of it was idle or even prurient curiosity, but most of it, Gary was sure, was real concern. He had in fact revealed himself to an old man named Jack who was the custodian for the building where Gary had his law offices. Jack came in to clean one night and found Gary sleeping on the sofa. He stayed, perching on the edge of a chair, to discuss his own divorce, his own love life, this old man of sixty-four. When he left, Gary was comforted by Jack’s words: “Ah, it happens to us all sooner or later, age catches up with us and we want something wonderful to happen just one more time before we die.” But Gary felt guilty, for he knew that just as Jack had provided comfort for him, so he had provided discomfort for Jack, a chilly reminder of things going wrong in the world.

As it was, he could explain himself to the custodian whom he scarcely knew with more ease than he could to his friends, than he could to his wife. Where did it begin? He and Pam and the Bennetts had been friends for more than twenty years, so that they felt like family to one another. They shared memories, hopes, old jokes, and the right to criticize one another, to bare their worst faults to one another and still want respect. A sense of competition existed between them, and of course that pleasant sensation of mutual attraction. Like any other quartet of close friends, they admired and complimented one another, they indulged in flirtations that were real even though they were harmless and slight.

It was almost a year ago that Reynolds Houston called Gary with his suspicions about Ron. Gary’s instinctive reaction had been anger at Reynolds: pathetic old dried-up busybody! Then he had seen the figures, and been even angrier: at Reynolds for discovering it all, at Ron for being such a damned fool, at himself for not taking precautions as a lawyer and a friend to safeguard the rec center money and Ron. When they had confronted Ron on that Sunday night last fall, Gary had been nearly dizzy with relief at Ron’s easy explanation.

“Much ado about nothing,” he said to Reynolds as they drove away from Ron’s house that night.

“So it seems,” Reynolds replied. “We’ll see if it’s so in the morning when Ron writes us a check.”

Old maid, Gary had thought, old troublemaker. The men had finished the drive in silence, mutually irritated, Gary by Reynolds’s cynicism, Reynolds by Gary’s naïveté. They had just managed to say a civil good night when Reynolds dropped Gary at his home.

“Just more boring rec center hassles,” Gary had told Pam when he got home. Then he had settled down to watch some Sunday-night TV, and had been self-indulgent enough to feel slighted by the bowl of pretzels his wife set on the table next to him. The image of the raspberry pie that had been sitting on the counter in the Bennetts’ kitchen haunted him. He had always admired Judy’s flair for cooking; Pam did not like baking. She never made pies. Pam doesn’t love me as much as Judy loves Ron, Gary had thought, sulking. Then, quickly ashamed of his thoughts, he had reached out and taken Pam’s hand and stroked it as they sat together watching TV.

What a fool he had been! He had believed Ron completely. He had sat there like an idiot, safe in his own home, coveting a piece of raspberry pie, instead of worrying about his friend. He had gone to bed, he had slept soundly. God, even now the remembrance made him squirm with shame. He had been so dense that he had slept soundly while his best friend committed suicide.

At five-fifteen on Monday morning, the phone rang. It was Mich Michadello, the local sheriff. Gary and Mich had gone to school together from kindergarten through ninth grade, when Gary had gone off to prep school. As children they had played cops and robbers, and now they were both in their late forties, and playing the game for real. They shared the same sense of values; they liked seeing criminals locked up; they enjoyed a sense of mutual admiration and companionship as they each worked at their own place in the system of providing law and order for their town. Several times a month they got together in a coffee shop to discuss current cases and to trade information. When Gary first heard Mich’s voice, he assumed that was what he wanted; then he saw the time on the clock.

“What’s happened?” he asked.

“It’s Ron Bennett,” Mich said. “He’s been in an accident. His car went into Blue River right at the Main Street bridge. Do you think you can get down here right away?”

“Yes. I’ll come right away,” Gary said, and from that moment on he knew his life was changed. Now there was no doubt in his mind. He knew Ron had taken the money, and he knew Ron had committed suicide rather than bear the disgrace. Gary was sick at heart. He thought: If we had not confronted him with this information, he would still be alive.

It was still raining when he got to the bridge. It had been raining all night, and from the looks of the low gray sky it would keep on raining forever. The street and sidewalk were plastered with fallen leaves that glistened slickly in the dim light. The street was shining with water, and rivulets ran down the side of the road to gather in puddles at low spots or to gurgle down the drains. Three police cars were parked by the side of the bridge, their flashers spinning in senseless circles, the vivid streaks of light making the bleak morning sky seem even grayer. Will White’s big black-and-yellow tow truck was parked up on one side of the grassy bank, and policemen in identical rain slickers stood near the truck, yelling at one another over the noise of the rain.

Gary looked down. The river was not blue today, but muddy gray, and turgid. It surged over and around Ron’s yellow Mercedes as relentlessly and effortlessly as if it had always done so. Gary felt nausea rise in his throat. It could not be true; it was true. He swallowed and grabbed on to the bridge railing for support.

The metal was cold and wet. He began to shiver. My friend, he thought, how I have failed you.

“Christ,” Will White said, so loudly that Gary could hear. “You tell me how. I can’t see no way to get a truck down this bank. It’s too damned steep.”

Mich Michadello left the group of policemen and came walking through the muddy grass to join Gary at the bridge. His feet made squashing sounds as he approached; his slicker squeaked.

“You okay?” he asked.

“It’s Ron’s car all right,” Gary said.

“We know,” Mich replied. “He’s already out, Gary. The ambulance left for the hospital about ten minutes ago. But he’d been dead for hours. Looks like the impact of the crash killed him. He didn’t know a thing. At least it was quick.”

“Shit,” Gary said. “Christ.”

“Listen,” Mich said. “I have to talk to you. I’m trying to figure this thing out. We’ve never had an accident like this before, and we’ve got to find out what it is. We don’t want this kind of thing happening again. But it’s a real puzzle. The road is a straight flat stretch for a good three-quarters’ mile on either side. It was probably slick out last night because it was raining, but it wasn’t that slippery. Unless Ron was speeding, he should have been able to stop the car if he went into a skid. There aren’t any tire marks, but there wouldn’t be with all this rain. It looks like he just drove off the road and into the river, like he aimed the car, and pressed on the gas. Otherwise the car should have stopped on that bank.”

“What are you saying, Mich?”

“Well, I think you’re about as close to Ron as anyone. I guess I just need to know if you think there’s any reason why Ron Bennett would have committed suicide.”

“God, Mich, you can answer that question as well as I can. Ron loved his family, he was a happy man, he was building the rec center—do you think he’d commit suicide in the middle of a project like that? Christ.”

“I had to ask,” Mich said. “I thought it’d be better to ask you than to ask his wife.”

Gary looked his old friend straight in the eye. “It’s a terrible, terrible accident, Mich,” he said. “It’s a tragedy that’s going to rock this town. Don’t try to make it into anything else.”

“I’m just doing my job,” Mich said.

The two men stood there for a moment, deadlocked in the rain. Then another policeman came muttering past them. “There’s nothing more we can do in this damn rain,” he said.

Mich sighed. “All right,” he said to Gary. “It was an accident. Do me a favor. Come with me to tell his wife.”

It had been a little after seven when the two men had arrived at Judy’s house. She must have been sleeping soundly, because they had to knock and ring a long time before she appeared at the front door, and when she did, she seemed disoriented and slow. Her face had that blurry, saggy look that Pam’s had after a long sleep. She was wearing plaid slacks and a yellow sweater, but they were creased and wrinkled as if she’d been sleeping in them, and her hair was coming loose from the braid. He had never seen her look quite so disheveled—so vulnerable.

“Gary? Mich?” she said, opening the door. She was quiet as they came into the hall, and then she said, “Johnny. It’s Johnny, isn’t it? Oh, Lord, how could I have slept? I set the alarm clock for nine-thirty, but Ron must have turned it off. Gary, tell me what happened. Is Johnny okay? Where did you find him?”

“Judy, let’s go sit down—” Gary began.

“Tell me now,” Judy said. “Where’s Johnny?”

“It’s not Johnny,” Gary said. “It’s Ron. He’s been in a car accident. Judy, he’s dead.”

Judy’s forehead wrinkled with her attempt to understand. She put one hand to her face and one hand on the wall behind her, for support. “I’m so confused,” she said. “Wait a minute. I don’t understand. Is this Monday? Last night was Sunday? What do you mean, Ron’s dead? How can he be dead? He was just here, in the family room—” She turned and walked down the hall to the family room, then just stood there, looking around. The room was empty, the fireplace grate cold and black, the windows blocks of chilly gray. “Please tell me what’s happened,” Judy said, not turning around.

“His car went off the road at the Main Street bridge,” Mich said. “Sometime last night around midnight, as far as we can tell. It was slick out, and he might have been going unusually fast—”

“He was looking for Johnny,” Judy said. She turned to face them. She had gone very white, but her eyes were dry. “Johnny hasn’t been home since yesterday morning. He went to church with us, then he disappeared with that Howard woman. I wanted to call the police all day, but Ron wouldn’t let me. We had dinner guests. Reynolds Houston was coming over to talk with Ron at eight, and I went upstairs to lie down for a while. I—I had had too much to drink, because I was so upset about Johnny. I don’t drink much, and I guess it just put me to sleep. But I can’t believe Ron would go off looking for Johnny without telling me. And I’ve been asleep all this time—and now you say Ron’s dead? Oh, Gary,” she said, putting both hands up to her mouth, “please help me.”

He had helped her. He had spent the past eleven months of his life trying to help her. It seemed that he owed it to her for Ron’s sake. There was so much that needed doing. He helped put out tracers for Johnny. He got Cynthia home from college. He helped with the funeral arrangements. And that very afternoon after Ron’s death, he sat with Judy in the downstairs study, and they went through Ron’s papers. He explained the financial situation to her, including Ron’s embezzlement.

“We are ruined, then,” Judy said quietly. “Ron has ruined us.”

Gary looked at her, this pretty, slender woman, who had always been so good, and who now sat before him rigid and white with shock at what the world had brought.

“No,” Gary said. “You are not ruined. I won’t let you be ruined. There is no reason why anyone else should know about it. Only Peter, Reynolds, and I know, and I can deal with them. I think the important thing, Judy, is for us to reimburse the rec center from the insurance money. That would satisfy Reynolds.”

“Damn Reynolds,” Judy said.

“Well, it’s not just him,” Gary said. “He’s on the board, but he represents the entire town, you know. Sooner or later it would have had to come out—when the building was not completed but the funds were gone. I think this way we can put the money back and no one will know. And you’ll have plenty of money left. You can pay off the mortgage on this house, you can still send Cynthia to college. You won’t be rich, but you’ll be all right.”

“How could he have been so stupid,” Judy said. “I always thought he was so competent. I always relied on him completely.”

“Everyone makes mistakes,” Gary said. “And, Judy, he did what he could to make it right. He killed himself, I’m sure of it. So that you’d have the insurance money. So that no one would know about his theft. He did it to protect you and the children.”

“I don’t believe that,” Judy said. “I can’t. I can’t believe he took the money, I can’t believe any of this. You’re making him seem like some kind of—crook.”

It took Gary a long time to convince Judy. At last he offered to bring Reynolds in with the figures to prove it to her, but at this, Judy stopped, defeated. She said she believed him. She had heard enough. She agreed to let Gary handle it all for her; he would get the insurance money, reimburse the rec center, discuss the matter with Reynolds, arrange for as much of it to be covered up as possible.

“Gary,” she said one afternoon, “you understand that there is no way I can thank you.”

“You don’t have to thank me,” Gary said. “I’m doing this because I love you, and because I loved Ron. I think this is what he would have wanted me to do.”

“Do you?” she asked. “How lucky you are that you can think of him so clearly. I’m all muddled. He deserted me. He left me stranded. If it weren’t for you …” Her voice dropped. “If it weren’t for you, I’d be lost.”

She turned away then. She had never once cried in front of him, or shown any violent emotion, and her composure tantalized him. He began to fantasize about embracing her as she finally collapsed, weeping in his arms, in much the same way that he fantasized seeing her naked body, which she covered so completely from his sight. He drove over to her house almost every day to be sure she was all right. She was always sitting in a chair, dressed simply, her hair brushed and plaited, her hands folded in her lap. She didn’t watch television or read or listen to the radio; she just sat.

“I can’t seem to go on from here,” she told Gary when at last he presumed to question her. “My husband’s dead, my son has vanished, my daughter is away. I am useless. I have no one to give to.”

“But you’re wrong,” Gary said. “You have so much to give. Any man would love to live in a house kept by you, to eat your wonderful food, to share your life, Judy.”

“Any man?” Judy asked. “Gary, what would I want with any man? And surely Johnny will be home soon …”

Gary tried to talk to Pam about Judy’s plight, but Pam had become curiously cool toward Judy in the past year, unfairly, to Gary’s mind, for now was the time that Judy needed friends the most.

“She’s got money, she’s got her health,” Pam said. “She’s a fortunate woman even though she’s been widowed. I’m sorry, Gary, but I’ve lost patience with her. The world has too many problems that need solving. She should be out trying to help others instead of sitting at home indulging in her loss.”

How harsh she has grown, Gary thought. It was the influence of all those feminist friends she ran with. He studied his wife—looked at her for the first time in years—and saw that she had changed. She was growing plump with middle age, and sloppy with her intellectual concerns. She was always rushing off to some meeting, or delivering dinners to shut-ins, or driving cancer patients to Southmark for their treatment, or canvassing for some election. He couldn’t blame her; he was proud of her; their children were almost grown and didn’t need her attention. She was doing what they talked about for years, helping her community. He admired her. But she seemed as appealing to him these days as one of the mediocre dinners she was always serving, which she pulled from the oven either burnt or half cooked and soggy. He took to driving out to Judy’s house more and more often. They would sit outside in the early evening just quietly watching spring come. Sometimes they didn’t even talk. Sometimes Judy would serve him some dessert: strawberry shortcake or rhubarb pie. “It is so lovely to have someone to cook for,” she said to Gary. “I can’t tell you how much it means to me to have you come out here. It gives me something to live for.”

One night he arrived later than usual. He knocked, then let himself in the front door as he usually did. The scent of perfume wafted down the stairs, and Judy called, “Oh, Gary. I didn’t think you were coming. I’ll be right down. I’ve just gotten out of the bath.”

He went up the stairs without thinking, and found her in her bathroom, tying the sash of her blue bathrobe. Her hair was not in its usual braid, but hung free, thick, glossy, all around her shoulders, down her back. He crossed the room, took her in his arms, and began to kiss her on her neck, her shoulders, down inside the damp V of the robe. He waited for her to pull him to her, to return the embrace, but she only rested her arms lightly on his chest, as if she meant to push him away but didn’t have the energy.

“Are you angry?” he asked, puzzled.

“I’m frightened,” she said.

He made love to her on the bed, untying her bathrobe and spreading it wide beneath her. She was so slim and firm, like a young girl, and so very quiet. She kept her face turned away through it all, so that the very old-fashioned thought—I am taking advantage of her—passed through Gary’s mind. But when it was over, she buried her head in his chest and cried for the first time. “My God,” she said, “I have been so lonely. I have been wanting you for so long.”

This seemed miraculous to him; Pam hadn’t wanted him at all recently. She was always busy, gone, or exhausted. In the course of their marriage they had weathered many times like this, when either he or she had been too wrapped up in a current crisis to give full attention to the other. But their unhappiness with each other recently had an air of finality about it. At last they fought, the night that Gary missed his son’s band concert because he had been visiting Judy.

“His last band concert of high school,” Pam shouted. “He played a solo!” She had been waiting up for him, lying in wait for him. She had sent their son to spend the night at a friend’s house; the other children were at college. The two of them were alone.

“I’m sorry. I’ve told you, I’m sorry,” Gary said. He hated being put in the wrong like this, and worse, he hated Pam when she was righteous.

Now she stalked about the living room, her face grim. She had her period, and they both knew that always made her bitchy, but Gary was losing sympathy with this complaint. He was familiar enough with Judy by now to know that she was never bitchy during her period.

“Are you having an affair with Judy?” Pam asked.

“Of course not!” Gary lied, indignant that she would suspect him.

“Then I do not understand,” Pam said. “Why do you have to go out there so often? Every day.”

“She’s lonely. You never go to see her.”

“I used to go see her all the time last fall. It’s spring now. She’s been widowed for months. I have tried my best to get her involved in outside activities, the church, some charities, anything, but she prefers to sit out there pining, and you are just helping her indulge herself by going out there all the time. She’s got to enter the real world, Gary. Ron kept her so protected, as if she were some fragile, sensitive creature, and now you’re doing it.”

“Maybe some people are more fragile and sensitive than others,” Gary said.

“You are having an affair with her.”

“I am merely trying to point out that not everyone can just buck up like you do, not everyone can be a … a bustler.”

“A bustler,” Pam said, and was silent. She sat down in a chair and was quiet. When she raised her head, her eyes were full of tears. “Gary,” she said, “let’s go away. Let’s go to Jamaica or Nantucket—anywhere. Let’s spend three weeks together and get to know each other again. I’ll stop bustling, and you stop nursing, and we’ll spend some time enjoying each other. Let’s go off together, please.”

Gary looked at this woman, who had borne his children, and shared his life for twenty-four years, and a cold wind passed over him. She sensed this just by the look on his face; they knew each other that well.

“Well,” she said, rising. “I see. No, I don’t suppose you do want to go off with me for a few weeks.” She crossed the room then, and stood behind the chair where Gary sat. She rested her hand gently on his shoulder. “Well,” she said lightly, “do me a favor at least. Don’t go off with anyone else.”

“I won’t.”

“We’ve been through worse than this, I suppose,” she said. “We’ll survive this, too.”

She went to bed then, but Gary did not feel cheered or pleased by her words. She was such a hearty survivor, he thought with distaste. All the qualities he had once loved her for—her optimism, patience, goodwill, courage—now seemed reflected to him in another light, so that she seemed to him pushy, gross, and tough. She would be able to take care of herself, she would pull through anything. But Judy did not have such endurance; she was truly delicate. Ron had known this, and had given up his life for her. She was the sort of woman that men had to protect, even in this liberal and feminist age.

At the beginning of the summer they finally managed to get in contact with Johnny. They had known for months that he was safe, because he had sent postcards. The first one arrived about a month after Johnny’s disappearance. It read: “Dear Mom and Dad, This is just to let you know I’m okay. I’m sorry if I’ve worried you. I just had to get away. I know it’s hard to understand but maybe I can explain it to you someday. I’m with Liza Howard, so I don’t have to worry about money. I’ll be in touch and I’ll let you know my address as soon as we get settled down somewhere. Hope you’re okay. Love, Johnny.” The next few that followed were in the same serious, concerned tone, although no address was given. And then the postcards came less often and in a more flippant tone: “Hi, M&D, Just wanted to let you know I’m still alive, happy as a clam in Margarita Land. Haven’t even had a case of dysentery yet. Hope you’re all okay, Love, Johnny.”

When two postcards arrived within one month, both of them showing pictures of Acapulco and bearing Mexican postmarks, Gary contacted the American embassy. After several queries, he located a hotel manager in Acapulco who told Gary during a long-distance phone call that Johnny and Liza had stayed there for two weeks but were no longer staying there.

“If you see them again,” Gary told the man, “please ask him to call home. It’s an emergency.”

At the end of May, Johnny called. Gary had been sitting on Judy’s bed. They had just finished making love, and Judy had gone downstairs to get the cocktails they had started and abandoned earlier in the evening. Gary was smiling at Judy’s modesty; she pulled on her robe each time she got out of bed, even if it was just to go to the bathroom or down the stairs of her own house to get drinks. She had just entered the bedroom again, drinks in hand, when the phone rang. She handed Gary his drink, sat down on the side of the bed, and answered the phone.

“Johnny,” she said, “oh, thank God you’ve finally called. We’ve been trying and trying to reach you. Johnny, you’ve got to come home. Your father’s dead.”

The next afternoon, the last day in May, Gary drove to Hartford to meet Johnny’s plane. Judy didn’t want to make the hour-long drive; she told Gary that she had to get Johnny’s room ready, but Gary understood that it was herself she had to get ready. Johnny had put her through so much—worry, fear, anger, disappointment—and Gary felt he could make things easier for her by explaining this to Johnny.

Johnny was easy to pick out in the lines of passengers descending from the plane. Everyone else looked mortal; he looked like a tall tanned blond god. Gary couldn’t help thinking: So that’s what eight months with Liza Howard does for a man. In the car on the drive home, Gary tried to get more details from him, but Johnny only talked about places: hotels, beaches, casinos, Mexican resorts.

“Is Liza coming back to Londonton?” Gary asked.

“I don’t know,” Johnny said. “I doubt if she will for a long time, if ever. In fact, she’s written her lawyer to have him put the Howard place up for sale. This is not her favorite spot in the world, you know, and if she did come back, people would only snub her.”

“Well, you two did a pretty terrible thing, you know. To your mother. To Sarah Stafford.”

“I’m sorry about that. I’m sorry about Sarah. But I’m sure she’s okay. We didn’t exactly share a great love.”

“But you were engaged. And your mother—”

“I know. I feel worse about her. But Christ, Mr. Moyer, how was I to know my father would have a car accident that night? Would you tell me about it?” he added in a softer voice.

Gary told him about the accident and the funeral, and the reaction of the town. He did not tell him about the embezzled money, because he and Judy had agreed that neither child needed to know such a terrible secret. When they entered Londonton, Gary drove over to the rec center, which was finished now, and which sprawled like a glass-and-concrete giant along the Blue River.

“Look,” Gary said. “I wanted you to see this first thing.”

Over the wide double doors at the front of the center were large, bright red plastic letters: The Ron Bennett Memorial Recreation Center.

“Already people are calling it the Ben-Cen for short,” Gary said. He was slightly surprised when Johnny began to cry. He was also deeply touched. “A lot of people loved and respected your father,” he said.

“My father was a fool,” Johnny replied. “All he did his whole life was work. He and my poor mother. They lived such boring, trivial lives! They never did anything but work. They never danced all night or gambled or went scuba diving. The best they could do was to take an occasional trip to Bermuda or Nantucket. They never even went to Europe! They never went to Marrakesh.”

Gary stared at the young man, stunned. Finally he said, “I’m not sure I see that the value of a man’s life is gauged by the choice of his vacation spots. I’m afraid your months with Liza Howard have done you a lot of harm, Johnny. You’ve lost the values your parents raised you to have, and taken up ones that are frivolous, wasteful.”

“Yeah, well, at least they are my values,” Johnny said. “For eight months of my life I got to live as I wanted to, by what I thought was right. Now I’m trapped here again. I’m going to have to stick around and take care of Mother.”

Gary had drawn himself up at these words, offended. You little shit, he wanted to say. Instead he said, “If you’re worried about having to stay around to take care of your mother, you can be relieved. I intend to marry your mother as soon as my divorce from Pam comes through. This is private information, however. I don’t want it gossiped about.”

Johnny, blowing his nose in a wheat-colored linen handkerchief, had looked sideways at Gary; he seemed to leer. “Everyone’s been busy while I’ve been gone,” he said.

“Your mother still needs your support,” Gary said. “I hope you won’t take that sarcastic tone with her.” He started up the car and drove away from the rec center.

“Don’t worry,” Johnny said, and sagged against the car door, resting his head on the window frame. “I love my mother. I’ll be as good as I can be. I can see her in a different way than I did before, but I still love her.”

Now they were all together in this church. Johnny sat on one side of his mother, and Cynthia on the other: the perfect children framing the perfect mother. Thank God the kids were almost grown and the insurance money would cover Cynthia’s college tuition for the next two years, Gary thought. Pam was not being nasty about the divorce—and she easily could be, she could sue Judy as a co-respondent and cause a scandal—but the price of her compliance was high. She wanted a lot of alimony, and a lot of child support, and the house as well. It was a good thing Judy owned her house clear and free now. It was a good house. Gary had always liked it. He could foresee how the next six months to a year would be difficult, as the town sorted out its feelings about this new separation and entanglement. He and Judy would have a private wedding; they would live quietly for the first few months. Then, he knew, invitations would begin to come, and before long, he would be sitting at one end of the table in Judy’s elegant dining room, sharing dinner with a dozen good friends, eating Judy’s delicious food, and after a while their marriage would seem as natural and acceptable as the one that was taking place right now.

“The church looks beautiful, doesn’t it, Mom?” Cynthia Bennett asked.

“Actually, darling, I think it looks rather tacky,” Judy replied. “All these homegrown flowers strewn about. It’s overdone. Almost cheap.”

“Oh, Mother,” Cynthia whispered, and with as much petulance as she dared display in such a public place, she drew herself up and looked away from her mother.

Cynthia’s jealous, Judy thought. She could understand that. She could remember a wedding that had taken place during her high school days and which had filled her with envy for that one day. Sonja Wallace had gotten married in the middle of her senior year, and all the girls had admired her so, and envied her wedding showers, lacy trousseau, and early admission into adulthood. But Sonja had gotten married because she was pregnant, and she hadn’t been able to go on to college like everyone else.

In fact, after the wedding no one had seen Sonja or thought very much about her at all. But the wedding: well, it was an event, wasn’t it, and Judy had envied Sonja that one day and could understand Cynthia’s envy now. Cynthia and Mandy were the same age, and here Mandy was, Queen for a Day, marrying a boy who, in his own way, was almost as handsome as Johnny.

But he was so young, Michael Taylor, a year younger than Mandy, just eighteen—oh, they were fools, the parents, letting these children marry at this age. It was all so inappropriate. She didn’t really approve. But when the wedding invitation had arrived, she had known she must go. If she didn’t, people would think it was that she was too embarrassed and resentful because Johnny’s wedding had fallen through. No, she had to make a public showing, after all these months of crisis. She had to go with her head held high, and with her two children at her side, presenting a united front. To do anything else would be to admit failure, and she would not do that, for she could not see how she had failed.

She had not failed, her psychiatrist told her. She had not failed, Gary told her. Yet in these past months the suggestion that she had in some way failed rang through her daily thoughts like the refrain of some catchy tune that her mind wouldn’t stop replaying. How could she not have failed: her husband had embezzled money, then committed suicide, if Gary were to be believed, and her perfect son, her darling, had run off with that woman and left Judy to face the Staffords and the town alone. She must have failed to have the two men in her life treat her in such a way—and yet, what was it she had done? How exactly had she failed? What was it she should have done differently?

Now, for example, she could, with only a slight tilt of her head, study her daughter Cynthia, who sat next to her in the pew, gazing with foolish rapture at all the flowers. Judy had given birth to this girl, and had done everything in her power to help her grow into a lovely woman, yet here she sat, a lump, overweight, with bad skin and an unbecoming hairstyle, if you could call the simple hanging down of hair around one’s face a style. When Judy questioned Cynthia about her appearance, her daughter said that she was too busy with her studies to spend much time on her looks. “Oh, sweetie, even in this liberated age, a woman’s looks are at least as important as her mind,” Judy had said to Cynthia, gently attempting to win her over. But Cynthia had only turned away. She was always turning away. Yet she came home dutifully enough, for Ron’s funeral, for the various vacations, and although she could never be as lovely as Mandy, who had such undeserved beauty, she still was retrievable if she would only try, Judy thought. If she would only lose weight, have her hair fixed in a feather cut, wear contact lenses instead of those dreadful thick glasses which hid her pretty eyes … It made Judy twitch with impatience to see her daughter; she looked like such a grind. It really was not necessary. Was it Judy’s fault?

This was the question foremost in her mind: was her daughter’s almost aggressive unattractiveness somehow a sign of failure on her own part? Judy could not see how it could be. She had devoted her life to making her home and family enviably attractive. She had surely taught her daughter how to face the world. And yet look at her, and at Johnny, who had run away, and at Ron.

Perhaps, Judy had almost concluded, it was simply that the number of people in the world who were willing to put forth the effort to live life decently was exceptionally limited, and perhaps one was just born with this strength of character, like a chromosome, or one was not, and no amount of parental guidance could change things. Oh, she didn’t really know, and the thinking made her tired, and she didn’t want to be sitting here at this wedding now, where people could see her and Cynthia and pass judgment on them. And if anyone dared to express any more pity toward her—well, the thought nearly made her weep.

It had taken her a long time to come to the realization of Ron’s death. So much cruel news had come at once that bitter day last October that for weeks her main sensation had been one of unreality. It really was bizarre that one night she would go to bed the mother of a perfect son, the wife of a perfect man, and wake up the next day deserted by one and widowed and shamed by the other. She had called her psychiatrist in Southmark immediately. When she said, “I do not think I can bear this,” he had prescribed the necessary drugs that kept her from feeling anything much at all for many days.

All the doctors she went to, her internist, her gynecologist, were sympathetic, and now she had a cache of wonder drugs that would see her through the next ten years. Getting through the funeral had been easy, even in its own way pleasurable, for she had an instinct for such occasions. She remembered Jackie Kennedy holding her head high behind her black veil, walking all that way behind a riderless horse, and she held that image of proud widowhood in her mind as a model. At Ron’s funeral she had held her head high and received condolences with dignity and dry eyes. The pills helped her, of course. She probably could not have cried if she had wanted to. She was so anesthetized that at certain points during the day the grief of other people, the rush of tears, the contorted faces, seemed puzzling to her, even rather absurd, and sometimes embarrassing—so much emotion! She found herself smiling in response. That was the effect of the drugs, but still the funeral had been the easiest thing, because it was acceptable and universal. It would happen to everyone in this town at one time or another. That Ron had died in a car accident when he was still so young was tragic, but it was not curious; it did not reflect upon her.

Johnny’s leaving did. This she found harder to bear than Ron’s death. It had been the cruelest thing a person had ever done to her, and she would never forgive him. All that rainy October day while she and the town were absorbing the news of Ron’s death, Gary and others were making calls, trying to trace Johnny. At three o’clock in the afternoon, they had a phone call from a man named Lewis Pinter, who was a professor of English at the college in Londonton. He was not a close friend of the Bennetts, but he had lived in Londonton for years and attended the First Congregational Church of Londonton. That afternoon he had returned from a conference in Baltimore, and while he was at the Hartford airport, he had seen Johnny and Liza at the American Airlines ticket counter. He hadn’t spoken to them—he had been in a hurry to get home, and they had been too occupied with each other to notice him—but he was sure it was they.

Judy had been relieved: Johnny was alive. She had also been sickened, because he had run off with Liza Howard. Gary had driven over to tell her what he had heard, and Judy had just sat in her chair in her kitchen, looking at him. “I can’t think of a thing to say,” she said.

“At least he’s alive,” Gary replied. “He’s a fool, but he’s alive.” Then he had asked Judy if he could have access to Ron’s study; he wanted to check Ron’s private papers.

“Surely we don’t have to go through all these things now,” Judy said.

“I’m afraid we do,” Gary replied. “There’s a reason for it—there’s a problem, Judy. I think I can help you, I think I can figure it out, but I need to see Ron’s private papers. I am his lawyer, you know. Please trust me.”

She had trusted him. She had taken Gary into Ron’s study and sat in a wing chair silently, her hands folded in her lap for—how long?—hours, while Gary went through Ron’s papers. Finally he had turned and explained it all to her, all that had happened last night, all that he had discovered today. Ron had embezzled one hundred thousand dollars from the rec center trust fund. Gary had already gone over the records and accounts in Ron’s office, and there was no money in any of the accounts there. It was as clear as day what had happened: Ron had taken the money, and when found out, he had chosen this way to keep his name from scandal, to pay the committee back, and to still in some way provide for his family.

Finally Judy had risen and turned from her chair slowly, searching. She was so stunned by all the horrors of the day that she was not even certain where the door leading from the study was; she was nearly blinded. She had gone upstairs to her bathroom and taken another pill.

Day after day Gary had been there, spending hours in Ron’s study, sorting through papers, calling Judy in the evening to tell her what queries had been sent around to locate Johnny, and sometimes just coming out to have a drink, to sit with her, to be sure she was all right. How wonderful he had been, and how different from Pam. Judy hated it when Pam came out with Gary, because then the atmosphere changed entirely.

“Look,” Pam would say, walking across the room and gesturing as she spoke so that her coffee sloshed from the cup onto the saucer, “you’ve got to make some plans. It’s been three weeks now and I don’t think you’ve gone out of the house. You can’t just sit here for the rest of your life. The church auxiliary is planning its Christmas bazaar now, and we need committee heads desperately, and the League of Women Voters is—”

“Pam,” Judy said firmly, “I don’t want to help anyone. I don’t want to see anyone in this town. I can’t bear all their drippy, smarmy pity.”

“Oh!” Pam said then, only slightly daunted. “Well, then, why not take a trip? It would do you good to get away from here. There’s certainly no reason for you to stay. Cynthia’s off at college, and who knows when Johnny’s going to show up again. Surely you’ve always wanted to travel somewhere, off to visit old friends or to see Europe …”

“I don’t want to travel. I don’t want to go anywhere. I just want to stay here and have my privacy,” Judy said.

“But can’t you see that’s bad for you?” Pam said. “It’s not healthy to spend all your time grieving.”

But Judy was not spending all her time grieving. She did not mind that others, looking on, thought that was the activity of her life; it was the proper thing for a woman in her position to do. But long ago—long ago, when she was a teenager, losing an entire way of life because of her parents’ foolishness—she had learned absolutely the futility of grief. It was a useless emotion, accomplishing nothing, changing nothing. She knew her life had been changed completely; she did not want it to be so, but there was nothing she could do to make it otherwise. Yet she did not see that she should have to give up everything, her entire style of living, and she refused to be drawn into the peppy circle of valiant widowed and divorced women who began to cluster around her in the weeks that followed Ron’s death. How she despised those women with their mawkish cheer, inviting her to movies, bridge parties, dinner parties, tea parties; how she hated them for their attempts to include her in their pathetic little group. She would not join them, she would not take up macramé or aerobic dancing or charity or table tennis. She would not join this disenfranchised, second-class, manless world. She would not wear her inferiority like some bright badge. She would rather die. She would rather sit in her house, where she remained inviolate and superior. She would rather wait.

It was not that she had actively planned to seduce Gary Moyer away from Pam; never that. It was simply that she had waited. The day that Gary told her about Ron’s death, and later about Ron’s difficulties with the rec center money, he had told her that he would take care of her, and she had taken him at his word. She had spent her entire adult life constructing her world so that she would receive envy from the people she lived among, not pity. When she left her house to go to the grocery store or the lawyer’s or the post office, people could not seem to pass her on the street without expressing their pity. Even if they did not speak, it was in their eyes. She hated all that pity, it fell on her like a blow. She was all right on the inside, she was a fine quiet void on the inside, blank and still, smoothed out by pills. But all that pity coming toward her hit her, shocked her, ate into her. She hated it. She preferred to stay at home. She preferred to wait.

Each morning after life was back to normal—after the funeral, and Cynthia’s return to college, when the phone calls and drop-ins from well-meaning acquaintances had died down—Judy would rise, shower, and dress in something nice, something expensive, a cashmere sweater or a suede skirt. She would fix herself a proper breakfast, complete with cloth napkins and a tea cozy over the teapot, and she’d clean up the dishes. Then she’d just sit in her living room, admiring her furniture. Sometimes she would clean house; sometimes she dozed sitting up. Her waiting had a secretive and industrious function. She was like a woman growing a baby inside her, who appears to be doing nothing on the surface, or like a spider silently creating the chemicals that will become the filaments of a web.

And in time Gary had become her lover, and now he was filing for divorce from Pam so that he could marry her. It would not be too much longer before her life would reach some kind of attractive normality again. She had always liked Gary, and she was pleased that he was a lawyer. That was definitely a step up from a contractor. She liked his suits. He went all the way to Boston to buy them. They would have a good life together, an elegant life. She would always be grateful to him, because he had saved her—saved her in so many ways—from disaster. And he would always be grateful to her because he liked being a hero. That was why he had chosen the law, to enforce the execution of justice in the world, and now he could do it personally, which was more satisfying because it was so clear-cut. He was saving her life.

They had discussed Pam, of course, and agreed that although their divorce might cause her some temporary anger and discomfort, ultimately it would make her happy, too. Now that her children were growing up, Pam seemed to find the outside world more interesting than her home, and with Gary out of the way, she would be free to do whatever she wanted. She was that kind of woman. Now Judy looked across the aisle and up a few rows at Pam, who sat chatting to her children as they waited for the wedding to begin. It seemed to Judy that a shade of unhappiness lay beneath Pam’s eyes, like a pale bruise. Of course this would be a difficult morning for her. She would be forced to remember her wedding to Gary as she sat here anticipating Mandy’s wedding to Michael. She did not have another wedding of her own to dream toward, but then, Judy thought, Pam was not the sort who needed weddings or even dreams. She would be all right.

It was Johnny who worried Judy the most now. She would never understand why he had run off with Liza Howard, and she knew in her heart she would never forgive him. But that did not mean that she wanted him to be unhappy for the rest of his life. He was still her son. She had devoted her life to the raising of her children; she had done everything in her power to help them grow into well-adjusted, successful people. If he failed to become what she hoped, then all those years—all her life!—would have been a waste. And that would be intolerable.

No one ever told the truth about motherhood, Judy thought. The first year of Johnny’s life had been difficult and demanding. She had been exhausted with the tending and washing and feeding and carrying, but in spite of the hard work it had seemed a reasonable task. But when Johnny began to walk, and at eighteen months was reeling through the house, creating chaos with his every step, drinking Ivory soap from under the sink, pulling dishes off the table, plugging the toilet with tissue, climbing up in the cupboard to find and eat aspirin, Judy realized that she, like all new mothers, had underestimated her job. What she had to do with one individual in the space of a few short years was nothing short of what the force of evolution did with a species over billions of years: she had to transform this wild, uncivilized animal into a functioning human being.

It had puzzled Judy that no one had ever told her about this side of motherhood, for the violence, the vigilance, the forceful channeling away from beasthood was certainly as much a part of her daily life as was the cuddling and rocking and stroking. Johnny was not even hyperactive. He was simply a healthy, strong, curious child. He would have happily broken every dish and glass in the house for the sheer joy of throwing, hearing china crash, watching things spatter. He did not know the value of things. When placed in a room with another child his age, it seemed to him a perfectly natural act to hit that child over the head with a plastic hammer. Children were brutes by nature, and the job of the mother was to transform them into human beings.

When Johnny was three, Judy had taken him to the public library for an afternoon’s Children’s Hour. All the children were asked to sit on little swatches of rug in a cluster in front of a smiling librarian. The mothers were given small wooden chairs to sit on at the back of the room, where they could observe their children but not interact. Judy watched, holding her breath, while Johnny sat through an entire story; at home she read to him often, but he tended to become restless quickly, and would slide off her lap and start tossing his toys about. Then the librarian played a singing game with them called “Where Is Thumbkin?” The children put their hands behind their backs, and following the librarian’s lead, brought out their fists with the appropriate finger sticking up at the right spot in the song. It was at the fourth finger—“Where is Ring Man?”—that Johnny brought out his hands with his ring fingers sticking crookedly up. Judy watched, and as she did she felt tears streak her face. She was so relieved, so grateful. Her child was beginning to play the games of others. He was entering into the civilized world rather than disrupting it. He was going to be okay.

That was the turning point. She had told herself she would remember this moment always, and she was right. As the years passed and new challenges arose, she knew she could meet them because of that first small success. She did not demand unusual accomplishments from her children. She gave them piano lessons and skating lessons, but she did not wish they would excel, win medals, take part in competitions, that sort of thing. In fact, she shied away from children and parents who were competitive in sports or academics; they seemed so intense, almost vulgar, so blatantly attempting things, going about their learning so earnestly. No, she wished overall, unobtrusive, serene success for her children. And they had been good children, they had made her so very proud of them—until Liza Howard came along.

“I don’t think I’ll ever be able to understand why you ran off like that,” she had said to Johnny the day he came back. They were sitting formally in the living room; Judy was wearing a blue-checked shirtwaist. Gary had discreetly dropped Johnny at the door and left the two of them alone. Johnny was so handsome, tanned, filled-out, manly-looking, that Judy wanted to embrace him with joy: my handsome son. But she was so furious at him for what he had done that she also wanted to slap him, to rail and curse at him. These two violent emotions seemed to cancel each other out, and of course she had taken some Valium so as not to make too much of a scene, so that she sat in a blue velvet chair, cool and quiet, staring at her son as if he were some sort of specimen, a human curiosity, which actually he was to her.

“I don’t think I’ll ever be able to explain it to you,” Johnny replied.

“Don’t you feel obligated even to try?” Judy asked. How could you have done this to me? she wanted to shriek.

“Oh, Mom,” Johnny said impatiently. “I’m twenty-four years old. I’m a grownup.”

“I know,” Judy said. “I’m well aware of your age. I’m also well aware that you were engaged to Sarah Stafford. You had commitments here. And you just walked out, without a word.”

“I’m sorry, Mom, I really am,” Johnny said, but as he spoke, Judy could see that he was not sorry. He was glad. He was strong and proud from his rebellion; he was like some fancy stud horse who had jumped the fences and galloped away. Now, captured and brought back home, he could not help tossing his head in admiration of himself. And of course it was sex at the source; after all her devoted work, bestiality had triumphed again.

“You could have called,” Judy said. “You could have done that much.”

“If I had called, you would have convinced me to come home,” Johnny said. “You would have been angry. I was too happy. Mom, I’ve always been so good all my life …”

“You make ‘good’ sound distasteful,” Judy said.

“Well, I suppose it is distasteful to me,” Johnny said. “Being good the way I was, well, it was almost the same thing as being dead.”

“I don’t think your father would think so,” Judy snapped; there, she had him. It only remained for her to remind him at a later point in their discussion that Ron had gone out looking for Johnny the night he died. If he had not had to go out in his car on that rainy night …

So her son was hers again. He behaved civilly. He took a job at a local men’s clothing shop, an exclusive shop that catered to wealthy clientele, and he spent the summer selling cotton slacks with whales or ducks on them to potbellied men from Connecticut. He gave his mother half his salary for rent and food, and put the other half in the bank. Or so he said. It seemed to Judy recently that he was spending a good bit of his money on alcohol. He always smelled like gin these days, or like the mints he sucked to hide the gin. He did not go out to drink. He did not go out at all. He stayed home watching television with his mother, or playing card games with her, or simply sitting outside on a summer night, staring. She knew he was not happy, and she was afraid that he was becoming an alcoholic, and she was not sure, after all, just what kind of victory she had won.

Carlos was a phony, Judy thought now, seeing him enter the church with Ursula. He could no more read palms than fly to the moon. He had promised her that nothing bad would happen to her again, and instead her entire life had been ruined. She had lost her husband, she had lost her son, and if her daughter was going to turn out like this, so unappealing and obsessed with books, then she might as well lose her daughter, too.

It made her feel very cold inside to know this. She thought if she did not have her Valium and her alcohol to act as buffers, the coldness of all this knowledge would sear through her body like dry ice.

But she did have her drugs, and she did have Gary. Because of his efforts, the rec center had been named after Ron, and, in a way, that honor publicly canceled out the dishonor of Johnny’s sordid episode. Because of Gary, she would soon have a center to her life again. She thought it was stupid of Johnny to scorn Gary, to hold the man in contempt because he was divorcing his wife to marry her. Couldn’t the boy see that Gary was giving him his freedom? Gary was handling the dissolution of Ron’s contracting firm; Johnny would never have the interest to carry on his father’s business. When Gary and Judy married, she would no longer need Johnny for an escort, for company, or for financial reasons, and perhaps then she could let him go off again to be whatever it was he wanted, even if that thing was a bum, a playboy, a man who lived off a woman.

One day late in May she had casually looked out her bedroom window, and there Johnny had been, below, in the garden. Thinking he was completely unobserved, he had stood near a grouping of bearded iris. Tall-stemmed, elegant, delicately petaled, with a strip of fur at their mouths, the flowers stood, dazzling in their full bloom. As Judy watched, Johnny knelt down so that both knees were pressed firmly into the dirt, and he leaned forward and gently took a ruffled, flaring, peach-colored iris in both his hands, as a man might cradle a lover’s face. He bent down and kissed the long fragile petals; he slowly licked his tongue down into the flower’s core. Judy had shivered, watching him. She had never seen such reverence expressed before. Then her son let go of the flower and bent even further forward, so that his head was pushed onto his knees. He wrapped his arms around his head and his back shook. He was crying.

Judy turned away, unable to see any more. Could he love that terrible woman so much? In this case, love must surely mean only lust. She had spent her life protecting him from tempting dangers, from touching fire, from walking off high places into air; it is a mother’s job to say no. When he was a little boy, he had sobbed because she would not let him play with a strange and to her mind dangerous-looking dog. Surely this fierce sorrow of his was no deeper or more serious than that childish grief. He had never liked to be deprived.

And she had never meant to cause him such pain. He was her son.

But what would it look like to the town if she let him go off again? Good Lord, what if they came back together, the two of them, and lived in the Howard house? Surely they would not disgrace her so. She felt very strongly the need for Johnny to remain in her house, at her side, as if his presence were proof that he had not meant to run away, to disgrace her, that he really did love his mother and meant to live by the values she had worked to instill in him. And if this were all only superficially true, perhaps with time it would become wholly so; these things did happen. Surely with time this bizarre passion of Johnny’s would fade, and she would be proven right.

Now Leigh Findly came down the aisle on the arm of an usher and was seated in the front row with people whom Judy assumed were Leigh’s parents and relatives. Judy wondered if Leigh had any idea how she did not deserve her good fortune. She had not even tried to keep her marriage together. She had not tried to please her husband, and she had not tried to live a moral, normal life. Everyone in Londonton knew that Leigh had had many lovers; over the past ten years at least six different men had lived with Leigh for several months. What an environment for a girl to grow up in! And yet here they all were, and Mandy was getting married to a minister’s son, and Leigh sat in the front pew, an object of admiration. You do not deserve this! Judy wanted to yell. She wanted to stand up, to explode upward into a giant fiery message: You do not deserve this, and I do!

But she would not explode, she never had before, and she would not now. She would sit here, in this church, with her unsatisfactory children at her side, and she would look serene. Perhaps people admired Leigh, but surely they must also admire Judy, for carrying on so well in the face of adversity. Judy admired herself. She had spent more time in introspection this past year than ever, and she still liked herself. She was tired of self-analysis, though. She wanted just to get on with life. She wished she could thin her daughter down and dress her up and plan a wedding for her. She wished Johnny would settle down and find a decent girl and marry her and have children. But at the very least she had Gary, who would soon be her husband, and who would soon give her a normal life again. She thought she had weathered circumstances very well, and so she held her head high, and looked around her. The wedding was about to begin. From where she sat, she could see Patricia Taylor, dressed in flowered silk, a rich peach color. Such a frilly dress makes Patricia look her age, Judy thought.

Johnny Bennett had a letter in the breast pocket of his suit. He brought his hand up to his breast now and then to touch the letter, because it comforted him. But he could not touch it too often, for he might arouse his mother’s suspicions; she was sitting next to him, and he felt her vigilance.

He had received the letter only yesterday, but he had read it over so many times that he had the words committed to heart. Still, he could not be parted from the letter, because it was from Liza, and carried with it her fragrance, her touch … and because he was not sure what this letter meant. People gathered in the church around him, but he was unaware of them. He was as inwardly focused on the letter as a man straining to hear a sweet and perplexing sound. The letter said:

Darling Johnny,

I just returned today from a marvelous long cruise around the Caribbean islands with the Martins and the LaVeques and some other people, and I found your pile of letters waiting for me at the hotel. I’m sorry to have made you so angry by not answering all your letters—but you see, I wasn’t receiving them, because I was out at sea. We had such a beautiful cruise. The nights were warm and gentle, you remember how they can be, so soft, moist, aromatic … It seemed the moon was always full, and it shone down on the water in such a long enchanting stripe that I yearned to dive overboard into the water so that I could come up with my skin dripping with phosphorescence. But I was always too lazy and dazed to try. I spent most of the time just lying in the sun. We were all wicked and casual and went around naked, so I have the loveliest tan; I’m golden brown all over, every inch of me. The crew spoiled us. We didn’t have to lift a finger, we were kept in constant supply of those exotic rum and fruit drinks you love so much. I think I was slightly drunk the entire time—so it’s a good thing I didn’t dive overboard at night.

We found ourselves “discovering” tiny unspoiled islands as we sailed. I think that from the sky this part of the world must resemble a case in Tiffany’s, for the islands are so green and lush, bordered by smooth golden beaches, they must look like rough-cut emeralds set in 14-carat gold, nestled in a glittering display on rippling blue waves of silk. Every time we found one of these islands, we had to dock and explore. We were like children on a fantasy treasure hunt. At night we built huge bonfires on the beach and ate fresh lobster or casseroles of red snapper cooked in tomatoes, peppers, onions, and wine—the chef on the yacht was an artist. Now and then we would stop at a large island—Montserrat, Antigua—where the Martins or the LaVeques had friends with large houses, and we would stay ashore for a while, playing tennis all day and dancing all night.

So you see, my love, I have been too busy to miss you. Johnny, I would be a fool to waste a moment in missing you. I’m a fool to waste the time it’s taking me to write you this letter. But for the sake of whatever we had together, whatever in the world it was (and it was sweet, I admit), I will take the time to answer all your letters. And with this, darling, our correspondence must stop. You made a choice when you boarded that plane to go home to Mother, and no, I’m not angry with you for it, though I don’t admire you, either, but I have a right to my choices, too. Still, I will answer your questions.

No, I am not “being faithful” to you. Why do you even bother to ask? I never promised you that I would be and I can’t imagine why I should be—Johnny, honey, you are gone. Yes, I do think we “had something special”: we had eight months together of luxury and ease and splendid sex and pleasure. We had eight months together of happiness, and that is rare. But I’d rather spend the night with a live man than with the warmest of memories, and no matter what we had, all we have now is memories. And oh, no, Johnny, I won’t come back to Londonton, and I won’t marry you. My God, you can be silly sometimes. Oh, Johnny, you don’t understand a thing. You assume that because Londonton welcomed you back with open arms they’ll do the same for me. You don’t understand the nature of that place. You were accepted back in the fold because you belong. You were born and raised in Londonton, your mother still lives there, your father built houses there, they know you. No matter what you do, no matter how far you stray, you will always remain one of them. But no matter what I do, darling—if I were anointed a saint—I couldn’t become one of them, thank God. I will never be accepted there. Probably you’ll never understand this, because you are an insider, and I am an outsider, and insiders rarely have the ability to see the whole picture clearly. And part of the power of the prejudice you are immersed in is its subtlety. And no, Johnny, it has nothing to do with time, or even birth. If I had been born and raised in Londonton, I would still be an outsider. I do not fit there, and I do not want to. I have fought all my life and will continue to fight against living a life in such busy, blind complacency.

It touched me that you said in your last letter that you’d leave Londonton if I wished, that we would marry and live anywhere I chose. But that wouldn’t work, either, would it? For your mother would always be able to lure you home—no, really, think seriously about this a moment. What would you do, for example, if your sister had some sort of crisis? Or if your mother had another one? You are the man in the family now. You’d have to go home, you know you would. No place we could move to would be far enough away from Londonton, no place in the world.

You wrote so many sweet, sad, romantic letters—my wastebasket here in the hotel is full of them. And you should throw this letter away when you’ve finished it, and go on to other things, for it is over between us, my love. Oh, Johnny, all the things you said were so foolish: of course you’ll fall in love again. Open your eyes, look around you. Londonton is full of pretty women and girls, and they’d all get in bed with you in an instant. You will forget me sooner than you can imagine.

One last question I should answer before I close. You ask me repeatedly in your letters if I love you, if I ever loved you. Why, Johnny, how can you ask? Of course I loved you. I loved your body, your laugh, your skin, your tongue—but oh, I remember that in one of your letters you asked if I loved you instead of just your body. I thought only silly women asked questions like that. I would never have noticed you if it were not for your body, your gorgeous smile, your long slim legs. Let’s not get into a discussion of whether or not I’d love you if you were crippled, deformed, ill, and maimed, that’s for kids in high school. I cannot separate who you are from how you look and you can decide for yourself if the fault lies in my imagination or your personality. I do think you are generous, kind, gentle, sometimes clever and witty. You have a marvelous tantalizing charm, oh, sweetie, sweetie, of course I loved you. You are a truly beautiful boy.

But you aren’t very interesting, you know. You haven’t really gone anywhere or done anything. You don’t have any power or competence, that is, without your beauty. You are generous only to those from whom you want something, and oblivious to everyone else in the world. Your vision is limited—a Londonton inheritance, I assume. You are spoiled. When the shell of your body which has protected you so completely begins to wither, I cannot imagine how you will weather the world—but then you don’t have to worry about that for years. You have the kind of looks that will keep you appearing twenty until you’re almost fifty.

Have I said enough? Have I made myself clear? Would you like it summarized? Yes, I did love you, but no, I don’t now. No, I won’t marry you, or ever return to Londonton. No, I am not being faithful. When I finish this letter, I’ll shower, put on my white silk dress, and meet a new lover in the hotel bar. You and I are finished, Johnny, just like in the song. It was great fun, but it was just one of those things.

Am I being cruel? Perhaps—so here’s a weapon for you. Remember that I am eleven years older than you are, and that women age faster than men. When you are thirty-five, I’ll be forty-six. Johnny, when you say you love me, you mean you love my body. We can never pretend that our relationship was built on intellectual compatibility, or “mutual interests.” Let’s not kid ourselves. Let’s say good-bye for good while it’s still all so fresh and sweet. I swear I’ll never write another letter to you in Londonton, and I’ll never read another that you send me here. It’s really over for us, darling.

On the other hand, if you were to walk into the hotel someday soon, I’m not sure what I might do.…

Love, Liza

Johnny kept feeling in the breast pocket of his suit to be sure the letter was still there. The organ music had begun, but he didn’t hear it, he was so involved with his own thoughts. Was she insulting him, trying to get rid of him, teasing him with this letter? Or was she luring him? After all those months of living with her, he still found her mysterious, he still could not figure her out. And never mind what she intended; what did he want? He could hardly leave his mother and this town again. He had had his fling, and now it was time to settle down, wasn’t it? He loved this town and the people in it, and he had a duty to his mother.… Still, he sat mesmerized by Liza’s final words. She had conjured up for him a vision: he would walk into the hotel unannounced, unexpected. Liza would be standing there with her back to him, her arms lifted as she slid a hibiscus into her hair, and she would slowly turn, arms still upraised, and see him. They would both smile. This illusion was so enchanting that as Johnny sat in the church next to his mother, surrounded by his community, he was really a million miles away.

Reynolds had spent the past eight months in Seattle. He had returned home only three days ago, and found the invitation to Michael and Mandy’s wedding in his mail. So he had put on a good suit and silk tie and come. Now he sat in the sanctuary, looking around him with admiration. He had missed this building, and he was glad to be back, and glad for the wedding which caused him to return to the church when it was in a state of such adornment. The very air seemed opulent with promise.

In Seattle, Reynolds had become acquainted with a couple whom Peter Taylor had suggested he look up if he wanted company. Mark Frazier was a history professor at Seattle University. He was a handsome young man with an impeccable memory and a love for debate, and he and Reynolds enjoyed each other immensely. They spent hours in sportive argument. Mark’s wife, Lilia, was just as attractive. She taught physics at the same university and was obviously an intelligent woman. And she was beautiful, in a lithe and clever way. She was sixteen years older than her husband, however, and this was obvious: she looked sixteen years older than Mark. But Mark seemed absolutely entranced by his wife, and as much as Reynolds enjoyed his intellectual discussions with Mark, he also enjoyed just watching the Fraziers, observing them, trying to see just how she worked her spell, for it seemed to him an unusual thing that a man should love a woman so much older than himself.

One evening when he arrived at the Fraziers’, he noticed a tension in the air. Not wishing to be intrusive, he said nothing, though the atmosphere grew blacker as the evening progressed.

Suddenly Lilia said, “Mark. We’re being awfully inhospitable to Reynolds. If you won’t tell him why you’re such a grouch tonight, I will.”

It turned out that Mark was in a snit because a mutual friend had asked Lilia how she liked a new and expensive restaurant. Lilia had not told Mark that she had been to that restaurant, and she still refused to tell him whom she dined with, even whether she had been with a man or a woman. As Reynolds sat sipping his martini, the Fraziers argued. Mark thought Lilia should tell him whom she had been with, and why; Lilia refused. Mark accused Lilia of being unfaithful; Lilia said that was ridiculous, she had only had dinner with someone. Then why wouldn’t she tell him about it? Mark asked. Because she didn’t want to, she replied.

“Oh, this is intolerable!” Mark yelled at last, and left the room.

Reynolds leaned toward Lilia. “He’s very upset, you know,” he said.

“He’ll recover,” she replied.

“Who in the world were you dining with?” Reynolds asked.

“Can you keep a secret?” Lilia said, smiling her beautiful smile.

“Of course,” Reynolds said, indignant and eager.

“Good,” Lilia said. “So can I.” She rose then, to refresh her drink.

Reynolds was piqued and intrigued by her answer, and he finally left without eating dinner, for he could tell the Fraziers wanted their privacy. So that is how she keeps him interested, Reynolds thought, and later that night as he sat on the balcony of his rented apartment, looking out at the clear summer sky, he experienced a minor revelation about the importance of mystery. God remains mysterious in the first place because He/She/It is too complicated to be easily understood, and secondly because God likes to be pursued. In the pursuit comes not only the answer but the pleasure. Reynolds did not feel ashamed to interpret truths about God from the lives of ordinary people; he was beginning to see that the lives of ordinary people were full of all sorts of extraordinary matters.

When he learned about Ron Bennett’s death that Monday morning last October, he had been plunged swiftly and terribly into self-hatred and remorse. If it had not been for Peter Taylor, he might never have emerged. It was all so much and so sudden. The Monday evening after Ron’s death, Gary had asked him to come to his house, and Peter was there, too. Gary had explained what he thought had happened—Ron had had a car accident. There was no money in any of his accounts to reimburse the rec center fund, but the money would be reimbursed when the insurance came through. He asked the two men if they would agree to keep Ron’s embezzlement secret, in order to spare Ron’s family any more grief. Of course Peter and Reynolds had agreed to this strange little pact; they would keep Ron’s secret. It seemed the least they could do. Gary and Reynolds never did discuss with each other that they held themselves responsible for Ron’s death. It seemed too delicate and terrible to discuss. Reynolds simply went home, intending to continue as he was. But he was plunged into a bleakness that went past the intellectual despair he had been living with. He felt guilty and disturbed. His spirit was twisted in upon itself; he was sick with confusion.

He thought he had been doing the right thing—he had tried to stop a man from stealing money from a community. But somehow he had done the wrong thing. He had caused a man to take his own life. He had not meant to do this, but it had happened. Of course Gary and Peter had been there, too, but it had been Reynolds who had discovered the situation and who had pushed to have it stopped. Should he therefore shoulder a certain percentage of the blame? Did that mean he had to feel only partially bad? He felt totally wretched, as if he were diseased inside.

He really was ill, and he took a leave of absence from the college in Londonton and went to Seattle as he had planned. But the physical distance did not provide relief. He continued to feel sick, cramped, and battered with guilt and anger. At last, in desperation, he wrote Peter Taylor one of the most intimate letters of his life, explaining his misery, asking for help. Probably he could not have said any of these things in person, but over the months he and Peter established a lengthy correspondence, in which Reynolds played the Devil’s advocate and Peter played God’s.

“I do not hate you for what you did, and God does not hate you for it,” Peter wrote. “Nor, do I believe, does God hate Ron.”

“But I hate God,” Reynolds replied. “And I hate myself.”

“Yes, I understand that,” Peter wrote back. “But I believe that what you call hate is really an energy within you that is equal to the energy of the earth that crushes coal into diamonds. If you do not give up, that energy will condense the blackness in your heart into a nugget of great light and illumination, which is love.”

“But a man has died because of my pride and righteousness,” Reynolds wrote.

“Do you really think it is so simple?” Peter replied. “Can you really believe that Ron was so simple?”

“I never should have brought the matter of his embezzlement to light,” Reynolds wrote. “It was unchristian of me. Uncharitable. Arrogant.”

In reply, Peter sent Reynolds a passage quoted from St. Matthew:

“Moreover if thee brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thous has gained thy brother.

“But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.

“And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church; but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican.

“Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven.

“For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”

“But the four of us—Gary, Ron, you, and I—were not gathered together in God’s name,” Reynolds wrote.

“Perhaps we are now,” Peter replied. “This event has changed us all.”

“But it did not happen to change us all,” Reynolds wrote.

“How can you know?” Peter asked. “It is arrogant to think we know the one clear cause of anything. The result in this case is that one of us has died, and the rest of us are suffering. I believe we will all be redeemed.”

Certainly Reynolds felt bound now to Londonton, and in a strange way to Peter Taylor, and the Bennetts and Moyers, and the rest of the congregation of the church. He could not see what he could do directly that would make a difference, and he thought perhaps that was the point, or was at least acceptable. He would return, pay taxes, teach students, lead committees, greet his neighbors on the street when he passed them.

He called Peter his first evening home, to tell him that he had returned and would take up his regular teaching duties. “I’m grateful to you for your help. For your letters,” Reynolds said. “I can never express my gratitude sufficiently.”

“And I’m grateful to you,” Peter said. “You provoked my thoughts. You should have been here—I gave the most wonderful sermons! I am grateful to you.” When Reynolds was silent, Peter said, “Reynolds, I mean that.”

Now Reynolds thought that he would live out his life happily enough, doing what he enjoyed. He would teach; he would take part in community activities. He would read, search, and pray; he did not think now that he would find all the answers to his questions or even to be a perfect man, but he believed that in the quest he would find redemption. In any case, at the very least, it would provide him with intellectual pleasure, and he need never worry that this puzzle would disappoint him by proving too easily solved. He felt that he had entered a black night of the soul, and with the grace of God and the help of Peter Taylor, he had emerged from it. He did not feel that he had escaped it forever; rather it seemed he would all his life hover just above it, aware of its closeness, and staying safe from its grim grasp only by constant exertion and vigilance. There were times when the knowledge of this black nihilistic presence filled him with terror; he would roam his apartment, unable to sleep. But there were also times when that knowledge filled him with the exhilarating boldness and zeal of a warrior or explorer venturing forth on dangerous waters, searching for new land.

Now he sat in church smiling a small smile. If there were times when a man stood burning in terror and loneliness, fearing the black void, there were also times when a man could sit in comfort and warmth, surrounded by light. If he had a home, it was this church; if he had a family, it was this congregation. They would go about their complicated lives, providing him with the most amazing metaphors and messages; he appreciated their human beauty, but even more he was grateful for the ambiguity of their living. Oh, he knew he was a cold man, seeing human beings as metaphors, but then he knew that there are as many ways to see people as there are people to see. Perhaps these people really were metaphors; who knew God’s design? And in whose intelligence does the ultimate sight reside?

Wilbur thought about salt a lot. Sometimes he’d catch himself running his tongue over the roof of his mouth, imagining the gritty white crystals there, and his mouth would fill with saliva. Pretzels, nuts, bacon, pizza. Before his heart attack, he used to sprinkle his popcorn with so much salt that after eating his lips would be tender, slightly blistered from the tasty abrasion. But now he was on a low-salt diet, and he often thought that if he were given the choice between knowing the answers to the nature of the universe and being free to eat corn on the cob slathered in butter and salt, he’d choose the corn without hesitation.

He was tired all the time. He had recovered from his heart attack, and his life was fairly normal once again, but he was tired all the time. His doctor told him that was to be expected because he had had a heart attack, but Wilbur’s theory was that his body was weak because it was deprived of salt. How could something so basic be bad? At last he understood the serious nature of Norma’s complaints all those years when she had been dieting. Life was just not as enjoyable when eating was limited.

He’d gotten so cranky when he first went on the low-salt diet that Norma, in sympathy, threw out all the salt in the house and vowed she wouldn’t use it either. She fixed him fresh vegetables and fruits, vanilla puddings. She made her own salt-free bread and served it to him with honey for a treat. They kept no salt shaker on the table, and when they sat down to a meal, Norma ate exactly what Wilbur ate, with the same seasonings. It helped him stay on his diet, and he appreciated this. But last week he had discovered that she had little caches of goodies hidden all over the house: he’d found a package of pretzels among the guest towels and a jar of salted cashews among the vacuum cleaner bags. He’d nearly burst into tears at the sight. “It’s so unfair!” he said aloud, and sat down on the bed, trembling with anger.

He had thought that over the months his craving for salt would diminish, that his body would get used to the blandness of his diet. Instead, the craving grew, so that it went everywhere with him and shadowed his every thought. When he read a newspaper account of a criminal who had been sent to prison for life, Wilbur thought: Well, that man doesn’t know how lucky he is; he’ll be locked up, but they won’t deprive him of salt. A television commercial for pizza or hot dogs could drive him into a daylong depression, but in spite of that, he had taken up a perverse new practice: he sat around for hours at a time looking at Norma’s women’s magazines. He didn’t read the articles or stories; he read the recipes. He looked at the ads showing smiling women holding out sandwiches made of corned beef and cheese with pickles on the side or canapé crackers with anchovies curled in the middle, and he’d run his tongue around his mouth and fantasize the taste of all those salty pungent foods. Afterward he’d be filled with melancholy. In his better moments, he reminded himself of Norma long ago when Queen Elizabeth was crowned. Norma would sit and study the glossy pictures of the coronation in magazines, and sigh and sigh, completely entranced, but afterward, when cooking dinner for her husband and little sons, she’d be in a bitter mood; she’d grumble around the kitchen muttering, “I’ll bet Queen Elizabeth doesn’t have to force her children to eat their vegetables.” Wilbur guessed it was just part of human nature to long for what you knew you could never have.

His doctor had told him that he had to cut out smoking, drinking, and eating salt.

“I haven’t smoked for years, and I seldom drink; couldn’t I have a little salt?” Wilbur asked.

“You can have all the salt you want,” the doctor replied, “but it will kill you.”

“I shouldn’t have heart trouble,” Wilbur complained. “I’m not overweight, I don’t smoke, and I’ve been walking regularly ever since my bladder operation.”

“Yes, and I have patients who are dying of emphysema who have never smoked a cigarette in their lives,” the doctor answered. “You don’t always get the disease you deserve.”

Wilbur had spent a month in the hospital, and two months in bed at home. During that period, he had been too weak to miss salt, too weak and too grateful each day to wake up alive. As the months passed and his life got back to a semblance of normality, however, he found himself much more depressed by his new situation than he thought he should be. Sometimes he cried for no reason at all. Then he’d think, well, he had plenty of reason, he was old and his health was fragile, and he couldn’t have salt, and he couldn’t have sex.

The doctor had told him after his six-month checkup that he could resume sexual activities as long as he was sensible about it. That night he and Norma had lain naked together—oh, how sweet it was to press his naked body against hers, to run his hands over her warm skin. The fatness of her hips and stomach and breasts was so sexy: so much healthy flesh! They caressed each other tenderly, old lovers that they were, caught up in the moment, glad for each other’s life. Wilbur’s penis, which for six months had been humbled and ignored, rose up like a phoenix reborn, and he and Norma had smiled at each other triumphantly, delighted at the virile return of this old friend’s powers. But when he was inside Norma, clenching her against him, gratefully lost in the physical delirium of sexual pleasure, something happened. His body betrayed him. He was distracted from the joy in his loins by a sensation of pain in his chest. For one brief moment, he thought that Norma was squeezing his chest too hard with her arms, but he quickly realized this was not the case. She did not have the strength to lock him in such a crushing grip.

He collapsed against her, crying out, and quickly rolled off of her and lay whimpering against the pillow, his hands at his throat, for he felt he was being strangled. The pain passed fairly quickly as he lay quietly on the bed, and the terrifying pressure in his chest was soon replaced by a bleak misery. Angina. He had been warned about this; the doctor said it would happen if he overexerted himself. He was supposed to exercise moderately each day: moderately was the key word. Apparently sex, even easy tender sex between two people who were more like friends than lovers, was not a moderate activity. He would have to cut it out, at least for a while, or risk the chance of another heart attack.

No salt, no sex. It really did not seem fair that the joys of both the top and bottom of his body should be lost. His mouth, his penis, organs of tangy, greedy gladness, were now relegated to functions of bland maintenance. It made him mad and sorry for himself.

He was ashamed of himself for this petulance. At least he was alive. Ron Bennett was dead. When Norma told him about Ron’s death, three weeks after it had happened, when Wilbur had been pronounced in good shape and she thought he could take the news without too much stress on his heart, Wilbur had been stunned. Blown away, as the young kids said, by the news. Blown away into other spaces of the mind, vast gray areas where he roamed in confusion, searching through the fog of wonder for one solid grit of truth. It seemed to him that a mistake of enormous proportion had been made in his favor: the Angel of Death had been hovering over Londonton, and had accidentally swept up into her arms the wrong man. He should have died, not Ron Bennett.

Wilbur did not believe for a minute that Ron’s death had been accidental. Ron was an excellent driver, and the strip of road he’d been traveling on was so flat that a rolling ball couldn’t gain the momentum to cross that stretch of pavement and drop down that embankment, let alone a heavy car with brakes. He felt certain that Ron had committed suicide, but he could not figure out just why. Norma, who sat by his bed each day, giving him each ounce of Londonton gossip she could think of as if she thought it were some kind of medicine, the more for him the better, reported that the majority of Londonton assumed that Ron had been on his way to a clandestine liaison that night; what else would he be doing driving around by himself that time on a Sunday night? There were no meetings going on then, he hadn’t been to the movies, he had finished a routine conference about the rec center with Gary Moyer and Reynolds Houston at his own house earlier that evening—this bit of factual information they had gotten from Gary, who reported that they had gotten together at eight that evening to go over some rec center details. So he hadn’t been out because of his work, and Judy hadn’t been with him, so it couldn’t have been a social engagement. Gary Moyer had advanced the theory that Ron had been out looking for Johnny, who hadn’t come home all day, but the townspeople didn’t believe that. Johnny was not an adolescent just learning to drive; he was a grown man, entitled to stay out late. The people of Londonton surreptitiously concluded that Ron must have been having an affair with someone, and that he had been in such a state, such a hurry to get to her, that in his blind passion he had driven off the road.

Wilbur tended to agree with part of this. He didn’t tell Norma, but he knew better than anyone else that it probably was true that Ron had been having an affair. Still he knew from all the conversations he’d had with Ron that Ron’s affairs were of the body, not of the heart. He could not imagine Ron so overcome with desire that he would drive off the road.

As he lay in his hospital bed, Wilbur had plenty of time to think about Ron, and he finally concluded that Ron must have been having an affair and his lover had threatened to tell Judy, or had pressured Ron to divorce Judy and marry her, and Ron, whose obsession in life was the happiness and respectability of his wife and family, had driven off the bridge in desperation, trusting that his mistress would not be cruel enough to cause trouble when he was dead. It was not a totally satisfactory conclusion, but it was finally the one he settled on. Everyone in Londonton waited in their various social clusters for this mistress of Ron’s to announce herself in some way; to be overcome with grief at the funeral, or not to appear at all. People longed to know who she was: A married woman perhaps? Or a divorced woman like Leigh Findly? Of course not Leigh Findly, she was too flaky; Ron was too conservative. On the other hand, they say opposites attract, and Leigh was a pretty woman. The town buzzed and watched. The fact that Judy Bennett hid herself away in her house for the first few months after Ron’s death strengthened their belief that Ron had had a mistress. Many people called to invite Judy over for dinner, but she refused every time. Poor woman, she was undoubtedly so embarrassed.

Wilbur didn’t worry much about Judy Bennett, for he didn’t know her very well, but he did miss Ron. He mourned him. He realized that he had come to think of Ron as almost another son; he certainly had gotten on better with Ron than with his own sons. Both sons had flown in from their various homes off in other places of the United States in order to be at Wilbur’s side for a few days after the heart attack, and Wilbur had been glad to see them, but he wished he could have seen Ron, too.

The knowledge came to him as he lay in his hospital bed waiting for his body to recover that he would have liked to give his poems to Ron when he died. Ron wasn’t particularly the sort to like poetry, but they had spent so much time talking together, more time than Wilbur ever spent with his sons, that he thought Ron might see the poems as just another way of continuing that conversation. Now Ron was dead, and Wilbur didn’t know what to do about his poems. Phrases and images occurred to him from time to time as he lay there staring at the ceiling, and when he could sit up in bed, he attempted to write these things down, but it was too exhausting. Humph, Wilbur had thought, it’s a fine state a man’s in when just thinking up a line of poetry is too exhausting!

He had told Norma about the poems the first day after his heart attack; it had seemed an urgent matter then. “They’re up in the attic in my old fishing-tackle box,” he told her. “If I die, I want you to read them, then you can do whatever you like with them. They’re probably no good. I don’t know why I wrote them.”

“So that’s what you were doing up there,” Norma said. “I was beginning to wonder. Poems, huh? My, my. Wilbur, you’d better get well and live a long life. I think there’s no end to the things you want to do.”

There was no end to the things he wanted to do, but Wilbur was afraid that in spite of his desires, his energy was failing him. He tried walking short distances every day during the summer, tried to build up his energy level, but it didn’t seem to work. He was always so tired. It was as if his body had always operated off of two powerful motors and now one of them had shut down. He didn’t have the endurance or stamina. And his mind was playing tricks on him, though he’d never tell Norma; he didn’t want to worry her. One moment he’d be sitting on the back porch with her, drinking lemonade and watching her weed her flower garden, and suddenly he’d be back in his dry-cleaning shop when he had just opened the business. He could see skinny, lank-haired Gretchen Hardt in her blue flowered shirt pressing the cleaned clothes with a flatiron. He’d blink his eyes, and Gretchen would disappear; he’d find himself in the shop as it was when he sold it a few years ago. He’d be standing by a big drum of DuPont Val-Clean, the fluorocarbon chemicals they used to clean the clothes now, and Amy Vaden would be laying the clothes out on the hydraulically operated press and pushing two buttons to get the work done. “It’s amazing how technology has changed things,” Wilbur would say.

“What?” Norma would ask, and he would find himself staring at his wife, back on his porch on a summer day.

These flashes of vivid memory were not unpleasant. Still he hoped he’d die before he somehow got lost in them and ended up scaring Norma by mentally living in the vast reaches of his mind. She’d think he’d gone mad.

No, it was necessary to hang on to his sanity, his sense of reality, for all it was worth. It was necessary not to eat salt, not to have sex, to drink only one cup of coffee a day, and to get moderate exercise. Living could be an effort and a bore, he was discovering, and he knew he was losing his sense of humor, or at least it seemed now that when he made a joke it always had a sardonic cast to it, and this shamed him. He was alive. He still had Norma and two sons living and five grandchildren. He still had friends and a whole world to watch.

Days like today, of course, made it all seem worthwhile. If death was the price of life, he’d gladly pay it, to earn such a day. The sunlight flashed and glittered through the windows with such brightness that it seemed it must be made of angels’ wings, and the opulent beauty of all the flowers made his soul expand. The matter of the earth was miraculous. He and Norma had arrived early, so that he could take his time getting settled in the pew. They sat toward the back so that Norma could get a good long look at everyone as they entered and went down the aisle. Wilbur enjoyed looking at the people, too: how wonderful they all looked, dressed up in their fancy best, smug as flowers, pleased as youngsters on a holiday. Wilbur forgot to think of salt. He stopped turning inward and was satisfied to sit and gaze and reflect on this portion of mankind with whom he had spent his life. It surprised and strangely depressed him that after all they had been through, the Bennett family looked exactly as they had a year ago. Judy had not gained or lost weight or gotten one gray hair. She seemed untouched by the tragedy of her life, and Wilbur wondered if what was superficial was also real, or whether she was just very crafty at deception. He was glad to see that Reynolds Houston was back; he’d missed his presence. He didn’t know Reynolds well, and seldom talked with him, except briefly at coffee hour, and yet he felt the town needed Reynolds, who seemed to move through their lives like a headmaster passing quietly through a schoolroom, causing everyone automatically to correct his posture or his thoughts. They might not like him, but they were better people because of him.

“Look,” Norma whispered to Wilbur now, “Pam and Gary Moyer aren’t sitting together. Do you suppose they’re having trouble? Actually, I’ve heard rumors that they’re getting separated.”

“Well,” Wilbur said, “they’re certainly separated here and now.”

“Oh, dear,” Norma said. “I wonder what’s happened. Poor people.”

Poor people? Wilbur thought, looking at Pam and Gary. No, not really, he replied to himself: they are only in their forties, they are young, and they can eat salt and have sex. Their lives are full.

“Hats are coming back,” Norma whispered.

“Who?” Wilbur asked.

“Hats,” Norma said. “Women are starting to wear hats again. I’m so glad I’ve saved mine, up in the attic. I think I’ll go dig them out this afternoon. I hope I saved the one with pheasant feathers.”

Wilbur smiled and patted his wife’s hand. Hats, he thought, and he was pleased at the thought of Norma’s pleasure.

The organ music swelled. Peter Taylor walked in, regal in his black robes and white stole, followed by Michael and his best man, his brother Will. The congregation whispered in anticipation, then were still, as they turned to watch Mandy Findly walk down the aisle. Wilbur felt lifted up on a wave of music. He was overcome with joy; he wanted to laugh out loud; for one moment he seemed to rise above the congregation, to hover there looking down; and he was exhilarated by this illusion. He grabbed up a program that had been left in the pew rack from last Sunday, and took a pen from his pocket, and quickly wrote a poem. He wrote:

Mirrors reflect the sun’s light so that the warming glow
Is magnified, expanded. Prisms refract that light
Into a dazzle past our one sun’s art. This is right.
Even God needs humans if He wants a brilliant show.

Just so, yellow roses shimmer in a crystal bowl.
My friends glitter in this church, a varied, lovely crowd
That gladdens me. If I were brave, I would shout out loud
To all who gather here: I love you, body and soul.

Then he folded the program, put it in his pocket, and turned his attention to the wedding. He hardly knew where to look, everyone was so beautiful.

I’ve got the best seat in the house, Peter Taylor thought, though he wasn’t sitting down. He had just entered the sanctuary and from where he stood he could see everyone clearly: the jubilant congregation, his wife, Patricia, in the first row in a beautiful dress that made her look too young to be the mother of a groom, and, coming up to stand in front of him, his sons.

Will was fourteen now, and in the past year he had suddenly, thank God, started growing, so fast that they hadn’t been able to keep him in clothes or shoes that fit. He was wearing a rented black tux and he looked handsome and almost manly, as long as he kept his mouth closed over his braces. Also his crutches kept him from moving toward the center of the church with the appropriate grace and solemnity. He’d practiced furiously, but he just hadn’t had enough time to get used to them. A month ago he had gone to the new skating rink for a roller disco party, and in a fit of abandon while showing off for his new girlfriend, Will had leaped, twirled, and crashed to the floor, breaking his right leg. Peter wasn’t there to see it happen; he had been called to the hospital during the evening. When he arrived to find his son in the emergency room, the ambulance attendants and the cluster of friends who had followed Will to the hospital had informed Peter that Will’s major worry was that now he wouldn’t get to be best man for his brother’s wedding. “I’ll kill myself if I can’t be his best man, I’ll really kill myself!” Will had sobbed, crying like a child. After his leg was set and he was settled in his hospital bed, they had called Michael in Northampton. Peter had listened casually as Will, trying to seem cool, told Michael what had happened.

“But listen, Michael,” Will said, “I still want to be your best man. They said I’ll be on crutches by then—would you still let me be best man if I’m on crutches?”

Peter couldn’t hear what Michael answered, but he saw the look of relief and joy pass over his younger son’s face. When he hung up the phone, Will told him that Michael had promised he could still be best man, and that furthermore, if Will wasn’t able to walk by September 4, they’d just put off the wedding until he was able to walk. Will had been delighted, but Peter had been stunned. Since when had his sons developed such devotion to each other? All this intense love his children were involved in amazed him.

Look what love had done for Michael. In the past year he had moved to Northampton with Mandy, gotten straight A’s in all his high school courses, graduated from high school, and at the same time made a good living. He had worked after school from three till eight at night five days a week and all day Saturday for a man names Lars Larsen, who ran his own wallpapering and painting business. Lars liked Michael’s work so much that he gave him three raises in the space of eleven months, and Michael learned a lot of useful information as well. This morning, when Michael came down for breakfast after spending the night in his own bedroom, he suggested that he come up some Sunday and redo the bedroom for them.

“I could turn it into a beautiful guest room for you,” he had said. “You pick out the paper, Mom, and I’ll paint the ceiling and woodwork and paper the walls. Of course, I’ll have to do some sanding and wallboard compounding on the wall where I nailed so many posters and models and junk. I was checking it this morning, there are some bad holes in the plaster that could become a problem if they aren’t taken care of.”

“Why, that would be lovely, Michael,” Patricia had said. “How nice of you.” But her eyes met Peter’s across the table and she telegraphed him a silent message: guest room. Our son wants to turn his bedroom into a guest room.

As if sensing this, Michael had said, “Well, then Mandy and I could come up and stay with you a lot. ’Course, you’d have to get another bed. You could buy a bed with the money you’d be saving on having me do the work. I wouldn’t want you to pay me.”

All these calculations, Peter thought. All this energy, all these plans. Short-range plans; Michael still did not intend to go to college, and he had even refused Lars’s offer to become a junior partner in the business, because he wanted to try his hand at other things. He still thought he might like to be a landscape contractor. He was not doing any of the things Peter had hoped his first son might do, yet Peter had to admit he was growing proud of the boy. Michael had become competent, and certainly more sensitive—a year ago he never would have noticed that his mother was hiding a sadness behind her smile. Much of this was probably Mandy’s doing, or at least the consequence of living with Mandy for a year. Peter liked Mandy; in fact, he thought Michael was a lucky man.

Now Michael stood before him, his thick black hair brushed till it shone, his powerful body nearly bursting from the seams of his rented tux. The processional had started, the ushers were bringing the bridesmaids down the aisle, and the young people all looked lovely, but Peter could not keep his eyes off his first son, who seemed to be the handsomest person he’d ever seen. The church was packed with people, for not only did most of the Londonton friends come for the wedding, but so did an entire contingent of Northampton friends—men and women who called Michael “Mike.”

Peter’s daughter Lucy came down the aisle now, scattering yellow rose petals for the bride to walk on. Small breasts budded under the yellow lace of her dress. Even his little girl was growing up. Lucy was smiling, embarrassed and pleased to have so many people watching her, and then she looked right at Peter and flashed a grin. My children, Peter thought, and a knowledge clenched inside him, taking his breath away. Patricia and I gave these children life, Peter thought, we did our best to keep them safe, to encourage them in their growing, and we have loved them. In turn, they survived this love and the knowledge of our fierce expectations. He did not suppose that this relationship was very much different from the one between God and man.

Mandy came down the aisle now on her father’s arm; yellow roses were twined in her hair. She looked beautiful. As she passed each pew, little joyous exclamations rose into the air like bright balloons: “Ah!” people said, seeing her pass. Then she stood before Peter, and smiled up into Michael’s eyes. For one brief moment, Peter felt bouyant with optimism, drunk with sunshine, Mendelssohn, and hope. Then the organ music stopped and the church was quiet. Mandy and Michael looked at him, trusting him to know, for these few moments at least, just what to do. He smiled back at them, as a father, as a minister, as a fellow human being who loved them in their young beauty. He said:

“Dearly Beloved, We are gathered here today in the sight of God and man.”