The days Ada didn't have to make the long drive to campus she studied on the third floor. There were three windows set into the west side, jutting out of the roof. The middle one was wide enough for a small desk, where she worked on her dissertation. She rose before the sun, and changed in her dressing room from her pajamas into a tee shirt and jeans - quietly, so as not to wake her husband - and went up the narrow uncarpeted stairs. She liked the cold wood under her bare feet, the dozen steps up, then the short walk down the hall and through the door and across the room to her desk; her morning ritual.

They had been in the house two years, since Owen had made what he called his first "serious money" and decided he wanted something more impressive than the Brookside bungalow they had been living in. Ada had thought the house ostentatious and beyond their means, but she had agreed, on condition that the third floor would be hers. There was a hall, with two small rooms and a half bath on one side, and the big room that ran the length of the house on the other. She'd fallen in love with that room the first time she'd seen it. In it were the three dormer windows along the outside, and another window on each end. The walls angled in at shoulder height. She loved the angles and windows, and the shape of the space. It would be the retreat she had yearned for since leaving Monteverde and her tree house. Because she disliked paying people to do things for her she had fixed up the room herself, sanding and sealing the floor, and painting the walls white, a place of few and simple colors. With five uncurtained windows the room was saturated with light on all but the grayest days. It looked almost empty; it held only her desk and chair and a bookshelf, an armchair and reading lamp, a phone on the wall and a small, threadbare Turkish rug under the desk, to cushion her feet.

On a morning when she'd risen late and tired from a sleep full of dreams about the past she sat in the chair, at the desk in the window, her books and papers and typewriter in front of her, and looked at the back yard. Usually she had no trouble getting started. Usually, she simply sat down and plunged in. Sometimes she worked well into the afternoon, until hunger pangs woke her from her trance. Occasionally she didn't notice the passage of time and when Owen came home in the evening he would find her, never having moved from the chair except to go to the bathroom or to get a drink of water, not even noticing those things as she did them. Then he would deliver the Lecture. She knew it by heart, she knew that every word was true, but still she forgot sometimes that she should eat, or bring in the mail, or at least stretch her legs occasionally.

Today she couldn't pay attention. She was looking at the red honeysuckle draped over the backyard wall, thinking that it was getting out of hand and needed to be cut back. She hadn't weeded her flowers and vegetables in over a week, either, and she should have been spending more time at Human Rescue and the City Union Mission. She'd been letting her responsibilities slide.

On the desk, at the back, was her old and tattered teddy bear, the same one she'd had in her dorm room. Except photographs and letters, it was her only memento of home. She hugged it. Home. She missed home now, though she'd been eager to leave, and to begin a different life, and forget the old place. The last time she'd seen her father and brother had been the wedding, almost six years ago. Owen had paid to fly them up. When he discovered that they hadn't brought suits (they didn't have any), he had tried to rent formal wear for them; they had refused the offer, and Owen hadn't understood that it was not from rudeness, but because they could not dress that way. He had been embarrassed by that plainness, and their awkwardness - their strangeness - but he had tried to conceal it, had almost managed to hide it from Ada, though not quite. Nina had seen the intense discomfort of these men. She had understood that everything was different, that they never saw people in formal clothing, that they never attended weddings in rose gardens with fountains, that they came from a little village of little houses where people always wore work boots and jeans, only varying their garb for changes in the weather. She had kept Thomas and Henry with her and guided them. They had never seen a limousine before, much less ridden in one. Their customs and habits, both in their daily life and in their religious practice, were plain in the extreme. When her father gave Ada away, his relief was palpable.

Now Ada longed to see him, and home, and Henry. Owen would give her the money, but she didn't want to ask. He never grudged her anything, but she didn't like to depend on him. To her, the money was his because he brought it in. She'd assumed that they would share everything, in a sort of primitive communal arrangement: throw what you could into the pot, and take out what you needed, and no one would be bothered by any inequality. If anyone had grounds to be bothered it was Owen, but for him the money wasn't an issue, probably because he was the source. He insisted that she could have whatever she liked. He was forever encouraging her to buy things she admired, and to do things she wanted to do, but she was resentful, the way she would have been if he'd saved her from danger. To be rescued was necessarily to be made the junior one, to be put in debt. She'd hated it when he'd paid off her student loans, small though the sum had been. The times she'd tried to tell him, he hadn't understood: her presence was worth everything, and she was free to spend what she wanted. Money was little enough, in return for the joy she brought him. She knew he meant it, she knew she should stop worrying, but she couldn't let go. At home she had always contributed to her family, and taken care of herself and the people she loved, and if she wasn't earning, then she shouldn't be consuming. Maybe she should quit school and go back to work so she could have some money of her own; though the jobs she'd worked at after leaving Lawrence had all been unpleasant, surely something better than those was hiding somewhere, waiting to be discovered if she only looked hard enough. It was time to grow up and stop being a student. Only an obsessive would get a second Ph.D. when she could be doing something useful, or at least earning a little money. She felt like a parasite. A lot of people didn't like what they did for a living, but they still got out of bed every day and put in their eight hours. They didn't sponge off an indulgent husband.

How had she ended up in this large house married to this man she didn't understand? Every time he spoke to her, it was as if he were being translated. He was that way with everyone except his mother. Ada wondered whether he hadn't pursued her partly because Nina approved of her. Next time she saw Nina she would ask her, straight out. The woman would tell her the truth, as she always did. But she rarely volunteered anything. You had to know how to ask, to get the answers, and there might be a little held back.

Nina was so much more patient and perceptive than her son that they hardly seemed kin. Ada was grateful for her, she had more in common with her mother-in-law than with her husband. Why was Owen always trying to improve her? He'd married her for who she was, and immediately set about trying to improve her. She liked jeans and sneakers, and he was always after her to get better clothes and shoes. When he insisted, she would go, and buy some, relying on her mother-in-law for advice. What would she do without Nina? She would be constantly in error. When she thanked her, the woman invariably cut her off and claimed that it was her pleasure, that she had no one left to care for but Owen and Ada. Then she would say, "What am I supposed to do, spend all my time on my rose garden?" She wants grandchildren, Ada thought. That's it. She wants them here, where she can see them and hold them and play with them. Here, not in Chicago and Denver. It was time to talk to Owen again about adopting, more forcefully this time. She would demand it, if necessary. What was she supposed to do, spend her life earning one doctorate after another? Two Ph.D.s would be enough. Too much, in fact. It was time for children. Past time.

She turned to balancing the checkbook, since she lacked the focus for real work. What was this one made out to Sarah? And the register entry in Owen's handwriting? Startling. She should call Sarah. They hadn't got together in weeks.

She used the phone in the living room. Sarah's answering machine was still taking the calls, and Ada left a message. After she hung up, she heard noises from the kitchen. Owen hadn't gone.

She stepped in and kissed her husband on the cheek. He was eating his invariable breakfast: an English muffin, bacon and scrambled eggs. He wiped his lips. She kissed him again, on the mouth.

"Not studying?" he asked.

"I came down to call Sarah."

"That's why I had that phone installed up there. So you could call, or get calls."

"I forgot. It's still new to me." She crossed the room to what she thought of as the first refrigerator. "I haven't talked to her in a couple of weeks. I thought maybe we could go to lunch."

"Why did you make friends with that dyke?"

"She's not a dyke. She's very feminine." But he knew that. Why did he attack Sarah at every opportunity? "She's bisexual. She has a boyfriend." Who was bisexual, too, but there wasn't any need to mention that. Ada could imagine the jokes. There would be no end to them.

"I never would have guessed."

She opened the refrigerator door and looked inside. "Why don't we have any orange juice?" she asked. "I made a pitcher yesterday."

"It's in the other refrigerator. I put it in the wrong one."

"Why do we need two refrigerators?" she asked, and crossed to the other end of the room. "It's so wasteful."

"Then get rid of one. Listen, I have to go to Topeka tomorrow. You could drop me off and go on to Manhattan and pick me up on the way back."

She brought the pitcher to the table. He had set a plate and utensils and glass for her, as he always did, though she never used them. She filled her glass. "Lemieux wants some changes, and I have to do some research in the library. I'll be all day."

"Why do you put yourself through this? It never ends."

She shrugged. "It was your idea. You said I should go back to school, that it's the only thing I enjoy."

"Yeah, but sometimes I wonder why..."

There was the translator again, or the dissembler. He had pushed hard for her to go back to school. Why was he pretending now that it didn't matter to him?

She watched him take a bite of the muffin. He always ate his food the same way: a bite of egg, a bite of bacon, a bite of muffin. Any remainder he was as likely as not to leave untouched, but that rarely happened, he'd learned to estimate accurately enough to finish them all together. Why didn't he put the egg and the bacon between the muffin halves and make a sandwich? That would be simple. That would work perfectly. "Why do you always eat the same thing?" she asked.

"Because it's so good." He smacked his lips. "Have you seen the morning paper yet?"

"No. Why?"

"There's an interview with your friend Wyatt in the back pages. He's living in Lawrence." He was watching her.

She knew her surprise showed, and hoped her pleasure didn't. Change the subject and talk about what she'd wanted to talk about in the first place. "Owen. The doctors haven't helped us. Whatever it is, they can't find it. I want to adopt. There are plenty of children who need homes - "

He interrupted, "We already talked about this. We were going to wait two more years."

"I'm not going to get pregnant. I know that. The problem is me, not you."

"That's ridiculous."

"No it's not. I know about Amy."

"Amy was just a friend."

"I know you got her pregnant."

"What? Who told you that?"

"I knew some of it. I remember when we were walking across campus we bumped into her, and the way she acted, I could see that you were lovers."

"Bullshit."

"No," she insisted. "I could see it. She was mad for you, and it was obvious you'd slept together. But yes someone told me about the baby" she did, sobbing so hard she could barely speak, all about how you loved me instead of her "and I won't tell you who. It doesn't matter and I don't care and you shouldn't, either. I know she had an abortion."

"I had nothing to do with that. I mean, I didn't ask her to."

"Maybe. Maybe you pressured her a little. Or maybe you waited and heaved a sigh of relief when she said she was going to have one. Did you pay for it?"

"Why? Does it matter?"

"I'm only talking about this because I know - " she took a breath - "I know you don't have a fertility problem. The problem has to be me."

"I'm not even sure I was the father. It could have been someone else."

"Who?" She shook her head. "She was mad for you. Why deny it?"

"Well, it could have been someone else."

"Then why did you pay for the abortion? You did, didn't you?" She waited, but he didn't reply. She lifted a hand for a moment, in a waving-goodbye gesture, and dropped it back to the table. "This is off the subject. That was before I got serious with you. It doesn't matter, it was between you and her. I want to talk about us. I want to talk about now. I told you before we married that I wanted a family, and you agreed, and you've been putting it off ever since. I can't conceive and I want children, and I'm going to have them. Adoption is the solution. We can't do it right away. The home studies take time but we can get started. I'm going to call someone. Promise you won't drag your feet in the interviews."

He pushed his plate toward the center of the table, and his chair away. "All right," he said. "I know when I'm beaten." At her look he said, "Just kidding. Go ahead. Really." He looked at the clock on the wall behind her. "I'd better go. I'm supposed to meet someone in fifteen minutes." He stood, then bent down and kissed her on the forehead. "I love you," he said. "What did I do to deserve you?"

"What do you mean?"

"You're so fine." He turned away, saying, "I really have to go."

Fine? What did he mean by that? It was such a vague word. It could mean anything. But that didn't matter. It only meant that he loved her. She stood to follow him, affectionate warmth flooding her, but as she passed the phone it rang, and his car had already started. The way he drove, he'd be gone in a moment, so she picked up the phone.

"It's me," Sarah said. "I was planning to call, but you beat me to it. I have some new clothes in. Can you come for a shoot at four?"

"Yes. Sarah, I've always wondered, are you thinking about making a pass at me someday?"

Wild laughter. "No. No no no no no. You're my friend, and you're straight, and you'd turn me down, and if you said yes and we had sex... Well, that wouldn't work for you, and I'd lose you. You're my friend. That's all. I don't have any designs on you."

"Good. I'm glad that's settled. See you at four."

The studio was in an old red brick building in Westport a couple of blocks off the Trafficway. It was above a restaurant, and sometimes, especially during lunch or in the evening, the kitchen noise was audible in the back, so she used that part for her darkroom and office and living quarters, and the front for the waiting room and her photography. She made a living from commercial photography and family and individual portraits and wedding pictures; she had been the photographer at Ada's wedding, had thought her striking, and had asked Ada to model for her. The modelling still went on, but they'd become friends, and most often they simply talked.

The business kept her fed and clothed, but Sarah's personal work was her obsession. She was interested in people: their faces and bodies, their clothing and the rooms they lived in, who they knew and what they did and where they did it, and most of all how these could be made to look. She had given up asking Ada to let her tag along to the City Union Mission and the other odd places Ada went, because Ada's attraction for the dispossessed, the marginal, the odd and eccentric, was compassionate, not aesthetic, and Ada thought that privacy should be respected. The notion of privacy was alien to Sarah.

She always left the door open for Ada, the always-punctual girl, but today for the first time Ada was late. More surprising, she seemed unaware of her tardiness. Sarah welcomed her with a cup of coffee on the table next to the large comfortable chair. It would be a good session - Ada had her preoccupied look on. But the clothes weren't going to work; they were too bright for her mood. Sarah rummaged through the racks. There wasn't anything.

"I've changed my mind," she said. "Let's go with the way you're dressed."

She used a neutral gray background and a wooden chair.

"Take off your sandals," she said. "Bare feet." Ada complied. She hadn't said two words since she'd arrived.

Sarah began to talk at random about the weather, friends, a party, her boyfriend, with the trigger in her hand, shooting at the rare moments she got a reaction to anything she said. She switched to the big camera, something she rarely did because the plates were costly, but today was right for it, the shots she was getting were few, but good.

"How's your thesis coming?"

Ada finally smiled. "Dissertation. Even more slowly than the other one. I wouldn't have done it if I'd known."

"What's wrong?"

"In botany, it was simpler, all I had to do was prove my hypothesis. I didn't have to try to satisfy everyone's agendas..." She trailed off.

"How's your garden?"

"Overgrown."

"Need help?"

"Yes. Why don't you come over on Saturday? We can weed it. That's the best time in the world to talk, when you're weeding." Look of eagerness.

Click. "That would be fun. We've never done that." Change plates. "Saturday's a good day. I was planning on taking it off. I need a change of pace."

Pause. "Come to the back. I'll be there." Vague pause. "I'll buy you breakfast at the Corner." Absent look.

Missed that, it would have been fantastic. There was something mercurial about her today.

"Raise your hand over your head, palm down, like this." Sarah gestured.

"Here?"

"Flatten your hand. There. Hold it." She waited until Ada looked annoyed. Click.

"You sneak!" Ada laughed.

Change plates. Great laugh, with the hand still above the head. Another shot missed.

It was a long session, and not altogether satisfactory. Ada began to tire, her face looked drawn, but that was interesting, it was something Sarah hadn't often seen. She hated to prolong the shoot, but she was hoping for something extreme. She didn't get it. Instead, Ada grew increasingly listless and withdrawn, waiting for it to be over. Sarah finally declared it finished, as much from compassion as from thinking she had enough pictures.

"I meant to ask Owen this morning, but I didn't get the chance. Why did he write you a check?"

"He said he wanted a portrait of the two of you, but he really wanted a look at your pictures."

"Oh no." The air seemed to go out of her. "You sold him some."

"Well, yes. I did. At his office. Don't tell me I wasn't supposed to. He's your husband, for God's sake." She had put the cameras away; now she was folding the tripod.

"I don't care if you show them to strangers - well, yes I do - but it bothers me more if you show them to someone, to my husband - it's embarrassing. Some of those pictures are silly. I don't want him to see them."

Sarah stopped. "Which ones?"

"The anachronistic ones. The ones that make me look like a Rossetti painting."

"But that's how you do look. Check any mirror. You're the twin sister of Elizabeth Siddal. Not the way Rossetti painted her. Millais. 'Ophelia'? Except that your face is thinner... Don't look so angry. You're scaring me."

"What's next?" she snapped. "Are you going to dress me up in a medieval gown and make me wear a peaked hat with gauze on the top? Stare off into the distance, looking forlorn? I hate that! I'm not like that at all!"

Where was the camera when you needed it? "I know you aren't," she said. "But you look that way. There's nothing wrong with it. You look like - yourself. It makes great photographs."

"I'm tired of it." She pressed a palm to her cheek. "I only want to be like everyone else. Is that too much? I never wanted to be different. I want to be like everyone else. I want to be ordinary."

"Honey, that's the one thing you can never be."

"Oh, Sarah. Even you? I give up."

"If I had my way, more people would be like you, not the other way around. I don't want you to change."

"Never mind. You don't understand."

"Do you want anything? More coffee, maybe?"

"No, thank you," she said. "Yes, there is. Do you have the newspaper?"

"Over there, on the couch."

Ada rummaged through the sections. "Owen took the paper with him this morning. There's an article about an old - an old friend of mine. He probably didn't want me to read it. He told me about it, though. It's just like him. He throws away the Sunday job listings, too, because he doesn't want me working... Here it is." She read silently for several minutes. "May I keep this?"

"Sure. What is it?" She sat next to Ada. "Wyatt Packard! Dougal loves his music. I'll have to tell him you know - what? He's living in Lawrence? Can you introduce them?"

"I don't think he'll want to. He's choosy. He likes his privacy."

"Have you seen him since he moved here?" She was reading the article.

"No. I only found out this morning. He - he didn't call me." And why not? That was why she was feeling so blue. She had to get over it, acting this way after all that time had gone by. A woman married six years, mooning over an old boyfriend like a lovesick teenager. But why hadn't he called?

"This is fantastic! That's one of Dougal's favorite albums. He's played it so many times it's half worn out. Are you going to see him?"

"I doubt it."

"Why not? Call him. Dougal's a musician, too. They'll probably hit it off. At least you can get the album autographed."

"I suppose I could take the album and ask Wyatt to sign it. It may not be any time soon."

"Dougal won't care. He'll be thrilled."

Then they talked of other things, and both forgot the album, and Ada left without it.

Saturday morning it rained, but Sarah came anyway. She rarely visited Ada's house because of Owen, and because she usually met Ada at the studio or a restaurant or a gallery.

They spent the morning talking in the kitchen, with long pauses while they watched the drizzle. "It reminds me of home," Ada remarked.

"Home?"

"Costa Rica. Monteverde. Although it didn't rain this way. But there was always a lot of moisture. I think that's why I like the sun. The rain and mist was depressing. I'd probably be happy in Arizona," she said. "Did you bring Dougal's album?"

There was a long silence after Sarah returned with the album; they watched the rain. "Why do you and Owen not like each other?" Ada asked.

"It goes back a long way. I'd rather not say. Have you asked him?"

"Yes, but he won't talk about it."

"Better you don't know. If you did, you'd wish you didn't."

"But I don't understand, why did he hire you to take the pictures at our wedding?"

"No idea. It surprised me."

Ada smiled. "Maybe because you're the best. He always wants the best of everything."

"Oh, yes, of course. That would be it." Sarah laughed.

"I've never told you how I envy you. You're so good at what you do. You have your independence, and you love your work."

"Come on, what's all this?" Sarah waved her hand, indicating the room, the big house, the back yard. "Like your degrees don't count? Trust me, you wouldn't want to trade places. You have a husband, and you don't have to worry about money, and you're in school."

"I don't want those things. No, I mean, I didn't want to go back to school. I do want to be married, but I only went back to school because all the jobs I had were so meaningless." She rose and walked to the window and looked out at the rain. "I want to find something, something worthwhile. That's what's missing. When I was working, it was missing, and now I'm back in school, and it's still missing, and it was missing when I lived in Monteverde. I had those rotten jobs and those horrible bosses after I finished my botany, and I loathed them, I simply loathed them. When am I going to find it? When am I going to find the thing I love? Owen loves building his business, you love your photography, Wyatt loves his music. I know it's not your burden. I'm sorry. But I'm almost thirty, and I still don't know what I want to do. Why isn't there anything for me?"

"Ada - "

"And it's not just that. There's the other thing. I've never been able to explain to anyone, on one's ever understood, except Wyatt. No, not even him. I always feel like a spectator, like I'm the only one who doesn't know what's going on, like everything has a different meaning for me than it does for everyone else. But it's the same thing," she said, "It's the same thing as not having something I love to do. I'm always outside. I'm always looking in. I thought it would change when I married, but Owen doesn't understand. He'll never understand. He doesn't want to understand, because it threatens him. When he starts to see that I feel that way, he thinks that he's not a man, not a good husband because he can't give me the feeling that I belong, and he - he ignores it because he doesn't want to feel like he's failed me. He resents it that I feel this way."