She picked up her shoes where she always got them repaired, in the little shop in the basement, in the Village. She left them in the car, intending to walk around the corner to the bookstore. Several shops had changed in the year since she'd been there; the travel agency had gone, and a jewelry store had taken its place. The displays in the window were spare, the merchandise elegant, the interior brand-new, with tapestries on the walls. They were probably trying to attract the Mission Hills crowd. Ada wished them luck. Those people preferred to shop on the Plaza.

The salesgirl in the shop had heavy, dark hair, olive skin, and soft round limbs. She would run to fat if she weren't careful. The sight of the girl prompted a memory that wouldn't come at first; Ada had forgotten it.

She had been paying bills, and had run out of checks. Maybe her husband had some. She looked in his den. None on the surface of the desk, or in the center drawer. No checks in the drawers on the left side, either. But in the upper right one she found them, labelled "Country Club Bank", and took them out. She opened the box and removed the top set of checks, and was putting the box back when she noticed the pile of photographs. The box had concealed them.

She didn't understand what she was seeing. She set the stack of photographs on the desk and looked at the top one, a close-up of a black object with two holes and a horizontal zipper. She picked up the photograph. Underneath, the next picture was of a young woman, entirely naked, with her hands bound at full stretch above her head. Her face -- her entire head -- was invisible inside a black leather mask with two holes for her nostrils, and a zipper, closed, where her mouth would be. From the back of the mask cascaded long dark hair.

Ada couldn't look away, as if she were watching a terrible accident occurring on the other side of the highway. How had this girl been forced into such a thing? Had she survived the ordeal?

She turned over the photograph, then another, and another. The series was a posed set of shots, front, side, and back photographs of the girl standing on her toes, hands pulled above her head, the mask concealing her face. Then a series of shots, close up and at medium distance, of her breasts with wooden clothespins clipped around her nipples. The sight was so strange that at first Ada wasn't sure what she was looking at. Then similar photographs of clothespins clipped to the girl's hairless vagina. Following that was a series of photographs of the girl bound in uncomfortable positions, wrists and ankles bound together so she made a circle, or her legs spread far apart, or her knees on her chest and her ankles bound behind her head so her vagina was fully exposed. Then a series of shots of red marks -- stripes -- and bruises. Near the bottom of the stack, a series of the girl, now unbound, inserting things into her vagina: first a banana, then a champagne bottle, then something that might have been a cucumber. A photograph of a penis half-inserted into the girl's rectum. The final shot, slightly blurred, showed the top of her head. Her face, invisible, was pressed against the bottom of the man's belly. The belly looked like Owen's.

Ada put the photographs back the way she had found them and set the box on top. She went to the bathroom and retched, but nothing came up.

For a week she struggled with the question of what to do -- whether she should confront her husband, and how. Then she'd overheard the conversation with Gina, and she'd forgotten the photographs until now. She would have preferred they remain forgotten. The girl behind the shop counter, who was the size and shape of the girl in the photographs, was smiling at her.

Gina beckoned Ada to come in.



Reconcile the new part above, with the old part below, and with the preceding chapter. Combine into a single chapter.

Get in line, Ada thought. Get in line and wait, for who knows how many years. Too many couples, too few babies. She was willing to adopt an older child, but Owen wanted an infant. She was willing to go to Korea, but Owen wanted a child that could pass as their own. All the interviews and paperwork were done, and now they faced a long wait. Maybe it was time to consider hiring a surrogate mother.

She was looking in the window of a jewelry store, looking without seeing. Something in the store's interior caught her eye. Someone behind a counter, watching her. A young woman. The thick hair, the heavy eyebrows, the round face and full lips were familiar. Italian looking. It took a moment to place her. But she was pregnant. Ada entered the store and accosted her.

"Gina?"

"Hello, Mrs. Fischer."

"Gina, I thought you left. I thought you went home. To..." She couldn't remember.

"Home?"

She remembered now. "Joplin. What are you doing?"

"I work here. I live a mile from here."

"But Owen - I thought..."

"I stayed here."

"Does Owen know?"

"Yes. I talk to him every day." She smiled. "Well, not exactly talking." She rested her right hand on her swollen belly. "Are you still trying for a child? It must be you. He didn't have any problem with me."

It was so far beyond unfair that she lacked words for the injustice. The pain could only be felt, not named. She couldn't have a child, and she was going to have to wait forever to adopt one, and her husband's old mistress had reappeared and knew about it and rubbed Ada's nose in the private misery of her barrenness, and on top of all that the mistress was still having the affair, and having a child by him, too. Ada was starting to shake with rage. She turned and left, to deny Gina the satisfaction of seeing the effect of what she'd said.

She was sitting in her rocking chair in the sun room when Owen arrived home in an especially cheerful mood. He was whistling.

"Good news." He stopped. "Is something wrong?"

"Why did you do it? Did you think I wouldn't find out?"

"Do what?" He waited. "Find out what?"

"You know what I'm talking about. Don't pretend any more. It's too late for that."

"No, I don't. I don't have any idea." He sat next to her, but she rose and crossed the room. "Tell me," he said. "What is it?"

"I saw Gina today."

Silence.

"She says you're having sex."

He bolted from the chair. "That's a lie," he shouted.

"I don't believe you. You knew she was still here, didn't you?"

"Yes. So what? I tried to make her leave. I tried to make her keep her part of the deal. She just took the money. What was I supposed to do, tell you? That would have been stupid."

"She's pregnant and she says it's yours. She even taunted me about, about my not being able to."

"Maybe I mentioned it once. So what? It's not mine. I didn't even know. I haven't seen her in a year. God, Ada, you don't believe her. You can't. She's lying. I wouldn't do that."

"Why not? You did it before. With her. You're a good liar. The best. I know you. I know how deceptive you can be. How good you are at it."

"I didn't do it. I haven't seen her since the day I wrote the check, the day after we settled everything. All I ever did was talk to her on the phone and try to get her to move away. That's all. I never even saw her again. I gave up calling after a couple of weeks. She wasn't going to leave."

"I don't believe it. You should have told me. We're through. I'm leaving you."

He crossed the room.

"Stop," she said.

He stopped when he was close enough for her to feel his breath on her face. She stepped back. He said, "Don't throw this marriage away. You owe me that. I'll do whatever you want. Take a lie detector test. You can hire a private detective. Sue her for alienation of affection and put her under oath. Anything you can think of. But don't go until you're sure. Find out for sure before you make up your mind."

"Go. Away."

"You know why she said that, don't you? She's getting even because you made me fire her." He waited. "Fine, ignore me. If you don't trust me, call someone else. Call Sarah or my mother. Someone. Talk it over with them." He looked at her but she was staring at the floor. "I've changed, Ada. You can trust me now. I've worked hard on this marriage. We've worked hard. Sure I cheated, but think about it. You knew when things were wrong. Have they been wrong lately? In the last year?" He waited, but got no answer. "I'll come back later. I'll sleep in the guest room until you decide."

She spoke when he reached the door. "How many were there?"

"What?"

"How many women have you - been with - since we've been married?"

"Don't dig up the old trash. It won't help."

"How many?"

"None. Not in the last year. Before that doesn't matter. It would hurt you."

"That's magnanimous."

"No it isn't. I just don't want you throwing it at me later. I don't want you brooding on it and using it to work yourself up so you can leave me. You've wanted to leave almost since the day we married. Whatever else I may not understand or be capable of, I do understand how this marriage was made. Is made. I know I'll always have to work to keep you. You've never really liked me. You love me and need me around, but you could be that way with anyone. I see the times you look at me and then look away. The times you flinch when I touch you. You love me, but you don't like me, and you don't understand me. I can't afford any mistakes, so I'm not going to make any. I don't want to lose you." He opened the door. "I'll leave you alone for a while."

"You - you," she yelled, unable to think of the right insult. "I don't feel that way! I don't act that way at all!" She ran to the door, but it was too late, his car was backing out. A dirty trick, getting the last word and leaving her to stew in it.

She sat in the rocking chair. There has to be a way. Think. What is there about that girl? What clue? She stared out the window and watched the light fade and the neighbor's gas lamp brighten at the end of their driveway, and the blinking of an out of season firefly. Lightning bugs, she thought. They have funny names for things here. She sat and watched the darkness grow and the wall at the far end of the back yard gradually fade and merge with the shadows above and below it. Of course. It's simple. She's pregnant.

In the morning she looked in the phone book and chose a lawyer at random, and called and explained what she wanted.

Four days later, a letter arrived. "Dear Mrs. Fischer," it began. "Enclosed is a copy of the marriage certificate for Daniel Isaacs and Gina Parisi, dated October first of last year. Also enclosed is a copy of the legal description of the house at which they reside, and which they purchased three days after they married." She dropped the letter on the kitchen table without bothering to read the rest of it.

She hoped he would forgive her. She hoped he didn't take advantage of this. But something was dead. Owen was right, in a way: though she hadn't wanted to leave, had felt the revulsion he'd accused her of only after the discovery about Gina, she felt it again now because his accusation stung, and was unanswerable and unfair. She'd done everything she could to make the marriage work, she'd forgiven him and taken him back, and yet he had it stuck in his head that she still disliked him, when she needed him as much as he needed her. He was rotten. If he couldn't ruin their marriage one way, he'd do it another. Their marriage was a sham, because after all this time he was showing her that he didn't believe her, which was the same as not trusting her. Now they'd have to start all over again, but she was too tired to do it. All she felt was a vast weariness, and the desire to go away, when instead she should be happy. Yes, she should. But she couldn't. She had no control over anything. Years of effort, wasted.

She went upstairs to the bedroom. She would read in bed for a while, but the novel on her bedside table didn't appeal to her. There might be something in the little sitting room.

The large-format bird books on the middle shelf were getting dusty. She pulled out the thickest one and blew the dust off the top and flipped through; this wasn't interesting, either. She was about to put it back when she noticed a manila envelope through the gap where the book had been. She reached over the other books and fished it out.

One of the metal tabs sealing the flap broke when she straightened it. She sat on the floor and tipped the envelope. Polaroid photographs spilled out.

The first one was a side view of a black girl lying on her stomach with her arms and legs bound tightly behind her back; what looked like a ball was in her mouth, held in place with two straps that tied in back of her head. It was the girl Owen had been with the night he was beaten. Cheryl. In the next photograph, a frontal view, she was bound like a mummy, in white fabric, with only a hole for her mouth. Ada didn't understand the third photograph for a moment, then realized that it was a closeup of Cheryl's breasts with wooden clothespins all around, deforming them so they no longer looked like breasts at all. The fourth photograph was similar, but the clothespins were attached to the girl's vagina instead of her breasts. Ada left the room. She didn't want to know what the rest of them looked like.

She took off her clothes and crawled in bed and eventually fell asleep, to odd dreams. She was wandering in a forest like Monteverde, but strangely altered. The colors were wrong. The cries of birds were continuous, but the birds were never to be seen. She climbed the inside of a strangler fig, where the original host tree had rotted away inside the strangler, leaving an empty inner tunnel. There was no top to it, and she climbed forever. She woke as tired as she had gone to bed and heard Owen rattling pans in the kitchen. She dressed, returned the photographs to the manila envelope, and went downstairs.

"There you are," he said. "I saw the letter. Now do you believe me?"

"Yes. I want you to look at this." She set the envelope on the table.

"Right now? I'm cooking trout almondine. You liked it last time." He looked at her, but she was looking out the window. He moved the skillet to a different burner and turned off the gas.

"What is this?" he asked.

Ada gestured, as if to push the envelope to him, but without actually touching it.

He reached in and pulled out a handful of photographs, and laughed. "Oh, these! I haven't seen these in years. Where did you find them?"

"The bookshelf in the sitting room."

"I'd forgotten all about them. Funny, aren't they?"

"They're disgusting. Did you take them?"

"Sure. Why not? It was her idea. She was kinky. I took two shots of everything. She kept one set." He sorted through the photographs. "I wonder what happened to her."

"I don't want these photographs in my house. I want them destroyed."

"No problem." He waved a handful of the photographs. "Don't be upset. It was a long time ago. We were just playing around."

"I never would have married you if I'd known about this. No. Be quiet. I don't want to hear your excuses, you always have an excuse for everything. This is, this is - vile. I want these destroyed, and if there's anything else, I want all of it destroyed, too. I don't ever want to find anything like this in my house again. I'm going back to bed for a while, and when I come down, we will pretend that this never happened."

This time, she couldn't sleep, and tried to read her novel. She got five pages past the bookmark before she noticed that she hadn't absorbed a word of it. She started over. The second time was no better. She pulled a pen from the nightstand drawer and started editing the text, to force herself to concentrate. Her head was spinning, and the words swam in front of her eyes.

When she came downstairs, the table was set. She sat at her place and removed her napkin from the napkin ring.

"I forgot all about those - "

"Dinner looks lovely," she said. "Thank you."

"Ada - "

"Would you pass the bread, please?"

"Yes. Here you are."

"Thank you."

"Ada - "

She stopped, her fork in mid-air.

"Fine," he said. "Have it your way."

"That's better."

They ate in silence for a few minutes.

"I wanted to tell you my good news the other day," he said. "Grady and Toole made an offer for the company. That's why David Grady flew in from Atlanta that day you dropped by the office."

"Your company?"

"Yes."

"You're not going to sell, are you?"

"Yes. It's a very generous offer."

"How much are they paying?"

He snickered. "Twice what the company's worth. More than twice."

"But, Owen, that's not honest. How can you do that?"

"Are you serious? The company's worth whatever I can get. It's a free market. Buyer beware, and all that."

"I wish you wouldn't do this."

"Baby, with what I'm getting we could retire. We could spend the rest of your lives - "

"I don't think it's honest."

"Well, it's done. Knock wood. They know they're paying a premium. If they didn't buy me, they'd have to spend years building a company here from scratch. They'd miss the wave. It's cheaper to buy me."

"What will you do after you sell?" Something was wrong with her vision. Owen and the room tipped and then righted themselves.

"I'd have to train my replacement. Then in a couple of years I could quit and do something else... Is something wrong?"

"It's been a very bad day. I feel funny."

She woke in the living room, on the sofa. The neighbor, an M.D., was looking at her. He questioned her at length, while Owen hovered in the background. Two days later Ada went to Saint Luke's for a battery of tests. The diagnosis was anemia, hypothyroidism, underweight, and depression. She was beyond caring that whatever was wrong with her had a name, or names. The world had lost its color. She listened to the doctor with half an ear - the explanation of the medicines (thyroid medicine, antidepressant, iron supplement, et cetera), the schedules for taking them, the possible side effects, did she have any questions?, she should call if these didn't seem to help and they could change the medications, try something else...

The spring semester was nearing its end, and she told her adviser that she would return in the fall to defend her dissertation. She stopped studying and going out. For the first time in her life she started waking late, and lay in bed and read trashy novels and dozed most of the day. She was careful to take her medicines on schedule, but that was all. She had always bathed every day. Now she dropped the habit and began bathing irregularly, about twice a week. The listlessness was inconquerable. She slept and read. When she couldn't stay awake enough to read, but couldn't sleep, she closed her eyes and simply lay in bed, sliding in and out of a dull, hypnagogic state. The laundry piled up and the dust collected. Owen hired a woman to clean and cook three days a week. Even the pangs of conscience at having a servant didn't rouse Ada, though she drove the woman home the evenings she had been at the house, to save her from having to spend hours changing busses.

With the acquisition Owen was even busier than usual, but he made a practice of coming home for lunch on the days the maid wasn't there. He made sure Ada at least sat at the table and ate. He bought her a puppy, in the hope that it would cheer her up, and encouraged her to take it for walks, but she ignored it. He had to give it away before a month had passed.

He called her several times a day. When she didn't answer, he drove the five miles home to check on her. He took to working irregular hours. He grew a crease across his forehead. His shoulders were bowed, his appearance old and disappointed. At first Ada didn't notice; when she did, it added to her despair. It wasn't enough that she was ruining her own life, she was taking his down as well. She knew that he needed to work even more than usual: the sale of the company was time-consuming, and there was no one he could delegate the work to. He began to bring work home for the first time, and to read and scribble on a lap board in the bedroom armchair, to be near her.

"Can I get you anything?"

"No."

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

"I'm worried about you."

No answer.

This lasted well into August. In years to come she would remember these months as vague and heavy - a time of not moving, not feeling, not sensing. Her head was full of gray cotton, her body weighted with lead. She couldn't think. Later, she couldn't comprehend how all her energy, all her interest in the world, her studies, her volunteer work, had drained away, leaving her life devoid of interest and dead as a stone. Inert, everything. No meaning, no interest. Often, she lacked the energy to answer the phone. The ticking of the clock was the most substantial thing in her day, and had no significance. She looked forward to night, when she could sleep again. Simply getting up in the morning was an effort; some days she stayed abed until her bladder drove her to the bathroom. Then, her body attended to, she would go back to bed. She finally understood why people drank and took drugs. That summer was longer than she had thought a season could be.

She looked at the newspaper one day and noted the date, and remembered that school would resume in little more than a week. She would have to do something. She checked herself in the mirror and was shocked at the expression in her eyes, and the affectlessness in her face. If she went on like this, she would have to be committed. This had lasted too long. It was making her husband distraught. Poor man, he had shown nothing but loving concern and patience. She had misjudged him. The first faint stirring of feeling returned, like a humid wind after a long drought.

She splashed cold water on her face, dressed, and went for a walk. She was out of breath before she reached Loose Park, but she pushed herself to go the last couple of blocks. She sat on a bench and rested and then walked home.

The next day she walked halfway around the park. The day after that she bought a bicycle and began to ride slowly around the neighborhood and around Brookside and Mission Hills, varying her routes. She resumed gardening, and cooking for Owen.

Finally she felt normal enough to have sex again, and dropped a hint. Owen got to it the moment they went to bed that night. It had been so long that his style no longer seemed familiar; this must be what it felt like when you had sex with a stranger. But the awkwardness didn't last long: he was so sex-starved that his orgasm was almost immediate, and Ada was relieved at his speed. She had been dreading something drawn-out. She didn't feel up to the job, and Owen usually took pride in giving her her orgasm first, as if it were some husbandly duty. She thought orgasms were overrated anyway, and she didn't have the energy for one yet. He was falling asleep when it occurred to her that he had come so fast that he could not have been having sex with another woman. The thought cheered her up.

In the morning he visited her on the third floor. She was sitting at her desk. "Are you feeling better?" he asked.

"Yes."

"I've been worried, but I didn't know what to do."

"I know. I haven't had any energy. It's over now. I'm better. I don't understand what happened. I don't want to talk about it. I only want to forget it. Please let's just forget it."

And she did forget. The world was with her again: the colors of things, the shadows of the foliage of trees on the streets and lawns, the children laughing on swingsets, the splashing of fountains, the shapes of clouds, lovers holding hands and feeding the ducks in the park, even the texture of moss on a tree trunk. It was as if a knob had been turned, and a dim light had become bright. She felt less tired, cooking was enjoyable, gardening was a pleasure, and she loved her bicycle rides. Her husband seemed a different man; he was relieved, he doted on her. He laughed and smiled more, and it cheered her. He took to sitting on the porch when she gardened. She started reading in his den on the evenings he worked there. It felt like she had acquired a new companion - no, more than that, a partner. Why had it taken so long? Shouldn't they have been like this after their first year? It was wonderful and strange, to fall in love with her husband again.

The only thing wrong was that she was too busy. The fall semester had started, and she was getting up before the sun, to study and prepare to defend her dissertation, and often to drive the hundred or so miles to the campus. She had lost interest, and wanted to spend her time on other things, and the studying was an unrewarding chore.

In October she felt dizzy, nauseous and tired. Afraid of a relapse, she called her doctor. He ordered some tests, and made a follow-up appointment to discuss the results. She was anxious. He was reassuring. There was nothing wrong, he said; it was the most natural thing in the world. She was pregnant. The combination of conditions being treated by her medications had probably prevented her from conceiving. She had never been sterile, she had perhaps wanted a child too much - it was common - and her medical conditions had made conceiving difficult to begin with. They had probably contributed to her depression, as well. Was she feeling better?, he asked, just as Owen had. He touched her on the wrist.

"Oh, yes," she replied. "Now I am. I'm feeling better than I have in years."

"You should continue taking the medicines."

"No. I'm quitting the antidepressant. I don't trust it. I have to think about the baby."

"That's fine. But take the others. Same schedule."

She had finally solved the great problem. After all the years of wanting a child, of trying to have one, to know that she actually would have one now was like arriving at the top of a peak and seeing an enormous vista, a great expanse waiting to be explored. She felt physically lighter as she walked out of the medical building. The people passing by looked preoccupied, or blank, or unhappy. She stopped at the library and checked out several books of baby names, then read them at the kitchen table while she waited for Owen to come home. She wouldn't tell him just yet; the memory of what had happened to her mother was a reminder that things could go wrong in the most unexpected ways. She would wait a little while.

Owen arrived late and half-drunk, with the news that the oft-delayed signing of the papers had been completed that evening, and the company was now sold and he was officially a double millionaire. As soon as he'd said the words, "double millionaire", he looked embarrassed. He was pouring their best bottle of wine, a gift from their wedding day. They'd been keeping it for a special occasion.

"Let's have a toast," he said. "I built a business and sold it before I turned thirty-five, and you're going to be a double Ph.D. A toast to us, and how well we've done."

He was surprised when she insisted on matching his toast with ginger ale instead of the wine: "But this is an occasion. It's special."

"I saw the doctor today. Tests. You know. I can't have it right now." She blushed. She couldn't remember the last time she'd told a lie. After the toast she said, "Are you planning to move us to a different house?"

"No."

"Good. I want to remodel the back bedroom."

"Why?"

"It's a surprise. You'll see."

"Do you need the room for something? After you finish school?"

"Not exactly. That reminds me - I changed my mind. I'm not going to defend my dissertation. I'm dropping out of the program."