The couple who lived next door were both M.D.s, and very busy, and occasionally, when they could find no one else, they asked Ada to babysit their daughter. Ada always made it a point when she saw them in their year, or getting into their cars, to inquire after Elizabeth: "Please bring her over again. She's a sweet girl."

The house was a mess after Elizabeth's latest visit. In the kitchen the chairs were tipped over and covered with a sheet, where Ada and Elizabeth had made a fort and hidden, and told stories. In the sunroom finger paints and crayons lay scattered on the floor. Elizabeth had stepped on some of the crayons, and Ada had to pick up the bits of wax by hand -- the broom simply smeared them on the hardwood. Then she had to wet mop. Her hands were multicolored with the paints, and she had to scrub her fingers. She didn't mind. Elizabeth was fun, and Ada envied her parents, who had the child at home every day. They insisted on paying Ada for the babysitting, always forcing the money into her hands.

Owen arrived home while Ada was cleaning house, and they had leftovers because he was hungry and didn't want to wait for her to cook. They ate at the kitchen table, a band of evening sun coming in the window and stopping just short of the table, coloring a slanted rectangle of the white tile yellow.

"Don't forget," he said. "Mary's mother is dying. You're coming in tomorrow, right?"

"What time do you want me there?"

"No later than eight."

The drive to his office always depressed her: empty lots, houses with cracks zigzagging up the brick, peeling paint, even some land with demolished buildings, the rubble not hauled away yet. Boarded-up businesses. Next time, instead of Gillham and Troost she'd take Main, although the traffic made her nervous.

She let herself in with the key and turned off the alarm on her second attempt. She called the answering service and told them to let the calls through, and wrote down the messages from the weekend.

She was there only to answer the phone. She was such a poor typist that Owen had hired a temp to come in several times a week and take care of that chore, and the filing as well. Ada pulled out her novel and started to read.

Owen called for his messages in mid-afternoon.

"Someone named Don Grady has tried to reach you three times. He has a southern accent and an area code I don't recognize." She read him the number. "Who is he?"

"Thanks. Is that all?"

"Yes."

She wanted to talk, but he was off the line already.

She gave up on reading and sat staring out the window. The atmosphere was getting to her -- the problem with working in an office was that you couldn't hear the birds or feel the air. It was too quiet, and the air was processed by machines, and the space was impersonal.

A city bus pulled up at the stop across the street and discharged several passengers. A tall black girl walked into the auto repair shop. She led her little daughter by the hand. 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 waited. Maybe it was time to consider hiring a surrogate mother. The adoption was taking forever.

The black woman had beads in her hair. For a moment Ada considered doing the same thing, but it probably wouldn't work -- her own hair was straight and fine and red. The little ceramics were beautiful, though; she loved the things black women did with their hair: the Afros, the cornrows, the beads, the cylindrical curls, even the dreadlocks. Such variety and artistry. But Ada knew none of it would work on her, and that if she tried, it would look out of character. She lacked the nerve anyway.

At the end of the longest working day of her life, in which she'd had no work to do, she called the answering service and had them take over the phone. She turned out the lights and set the alarm and locked up.

There was almost nothing of Owen in the office: no memorabilia, no photographs or awards, no college diploma on the wall, no knicknacks, only the name of his company on the door and a picture of her on his desk. The sole personal touch was a photograph of Ada on his desk; this gratified her. But for him the office was only a space, a requirement for getting his work done. It had never occurred to him to decorate it. The pictures on the wall looked like they'd been there before he rented the place; she didn't recognize them. Tomorrow she would bring in a few things and hang them. A vase would help; flowers were always a cheerful touch. Maybe a little Oriental rug in front of his desk. She had a spare. The space was so impersonal it was depressing. Something had to be done.

Everything will be different, even the bread, and the buildings, and the weather, and the sunlight. It wasn't only that this country had more infrastructure -- better roads and buildings -- but everything was so impersonal, even more impersonal than Owen's office. Bureaucratic. Sterile. Oh, Monteverde, Green Mountain. People revealed themselves more directly, more naturally there. Maria was as unaffected and spontaneous as a human could be. She didn't assume that she had to protect herself against someone taking advantage of her. She grew from her native soil. The native soil of the people around Ada now seemed to be cement.

She stopped at Nina's house on the way home.

"How delightful," her mother-in-law said. "Come in. I haven't seen you for too long."

"Can you spare those large photographs from Marshall's den?" Ada asked. "I'm looking for things to decorate Owen's office."

"I'd like to keep them. Why not use those paintings in the guest room? Or the big photograph of Owen with his fraternity brothers?"

They chose two pastels from the guest room, and the fraternity photograph, and put them in the trunk of Ada's car.

At home she added a vase and the little Oriental rug. In the morning she stopped at the florist, and when she got to the office she filled the vase with water and arranged the flowers and put everything else where she wanted it. He wasn't in the office that day, but he was there the next morning. He didn't notice anything -- not the pastels, or the vase of flowers by the window, or the rug. Ada waited two hours, listening to him talk on the phone, and rustle his papers, and look at blueprints.

"I'll be gone the rest of the day," he said.

"Didn't you notice anything?"

"About you?"

"No. The office."

He looked around. "You put out flowers. Nice."

"Anything else?"

"No."

"Look at the walls."

He looked around. "Sure. The guys from my house."

"Anything else?"

"No. Don't look so disappointed. Just tell me."

"The pastels. I borrowed them from your mother."

"Really? It doesn't look any different."

She went to the storage closet and pulled out the drawings that had been on the walls until that morning. "Maybe these look familiar."

"Sure. I see now."

"And I put a carpet in your office."

"Yeah, I did notice that."

"I thought you'd appreciate it. This place -- "

"Remember that house I had in Lawrence? One time I came home and I'd been sitting in the living room for an hour before I realized someone had sneaked in and rearranged all the furniture. Your effort's wasted on me. Look, I've got to go now. I appreciate what you're trying to do, but it's just an office. It doesn't matter what it looks like." Then he was gone.

There were a few calls, and nothing more. Most of his business seemed to happen in the field, or at other people's offices. She tried to work on her dissertation, but was having the annoying dizziness and optical aura that had been troubling her recently. The letters on the page bent and shifted in front of her.

She woke with her face on the desk, her nose and forehead feeling sore from pressing against its surface. She was canted to the side. The sound of the phone ringing had wakened her. She reached for it, too late, and heard the dial tone. Her watch had cracked against the desk and stopped. She compared the time on its face to the time on the wall clock. She must have been out for a quarter of an hour. She called the answering service, closed the office and drove home. An overpowering fatigue sent her to bed, and right to sleep.

Every day that week was longer than the one before it, and she was happy when Saturday arrived. Mary would be back on Monday, and Ada could get back to working on her dissertation full time. Owen was out playing golf with clients Saturday morning, and Ada spent the time paying bills.

She ran out of checks and looked for more in her husband's desk, in his den. None on the surface of the desk, or in the center drawer. None in the left side, either. In the last drawer, the lower right one, a cigar box sat on top of a pile of miscellany. She lifted the box. The pile underneath was a set of photographs.

She didn't understand what she was seeing. She set the 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. Her skin was pale and her hair was blond.

Ada couldn't look away, as if she were watching a terrible accident at the side of a 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 top view 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.

Then there was a side view of the girl lying on her stomach with her arms and legs bound tightly behind her back; in her mouth was a red ball, held in place with two straps that tied in back of her head. It was Amy, the girl who had been in love with Owen at college. In the next photograph, a frontal view, she was bound like a mummy, in white fabric, with only a hole for her mouth.

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.

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 themselves 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 took a manila envelope to his den, filled it with the photographs, and went to the kitchen, where she set the envelope on the table.

"There you are," he said. "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. "Something wrong?" 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?"

"In the bottom drawer of your desk. I was looking for checks."

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

"Strange? Strange? That's an understatement. They're disgusting. Did you take them?"

"Yes. It was her idea. I took two shots of everything. She kept one set." He sorted through the photographs. "Amy. 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. "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 vile. I want these destroyed, and if there's anything else like it, I want all of that destroyed, too. I don't ever want to find anything like this in my house again. I'm going back upstairs for a few minutes, and when I come down, we will pretend this never happened."

She tried to read her novel. She got through one page and noticed that she hadn't absorbed a word of it. She started over. The second time was no better, and she quit halfway. She took 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 ten minutes had passed she set the book aside and went back to the kitchen.

The table was set in the dining room. 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?"

He handed her the plate.

"Thank you."

"Ada -- "

She stopped, her fork in mid-air.

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

"Thank you. I will."

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 Don 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."

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

"Are you serious? I'm worth whatever I can get. It's a free market."

"I wish you wouldn't do this."

"Baby, with what I'm getting we could retire."

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

"It's done. They know they're paying a premium. If they didn't buy me, they'd have to build a company here from scratch. They'd miss the wave. It's cheaper to buy than to build from scratch."

"What will you do after you sell?" Something was wrong with her vision again. The room tipped and righted itself.

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

"I feel odd."

She woke in the living room, on the sofa. Her head ached where she'd hit the table when she passed out. Their male M.D. neighbor 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, hyperthyroidism, 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 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 unconquerable. 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, half-waking 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. She did make the effort to drive the woman home the evenings she had worked, to spare her the hours required to transfer from bus to bus.

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. She accused herself: she wasn't satisfied with ruining her own life, she had to take his down as well. She knew 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?" he would ask.

"No."

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

"I'm worried about you."

No answer.

This lasted into August. That summer was longer than she had thought a season could be. In years to come she would remember these months as vague and heavy -- a time of not moving, not sensing. An omnipresent numbness. Her head was full of gray cotton, her body weighted. 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 dead. Inert, everything. No meaning. She often 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. Simply getting up in the morning was an effort; some days she stayed abed until her bladder drove her to the bathroom. Then, that attended to, she returned to bed. At last she understood why people drank and took drugs.

She looked at the newspaper one day and noted the date, and remembered that school would resume in in two weeks. She would have to get ready. She checked herself in the mirror and was shocked at the emptiness in her eyes, and the blankness 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.

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 rested on a bench and then walked home.

The next day she walked 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 to have 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 had always taken pride in giving her an orgasm before his own, as if it were some husbandly duty. She thought orgasms were overrated, and she didn't have the energy for one right now. She was pleased that he'd lost control, too. 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. I didn't know what to do."

"I know. I don't understand what happened. I don't want to talk about it. Please let's just forget it."

And she did forget. The world was with her again: colors, the shadows of trees on streets and lawns, 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 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 his good cheer cheered her. He took to sitting on the porch when she gardened. She started reading in his den on the evenings he worked there. She felt like she had acquired a new companion -- more than that, a partner. Why had this taken so long? Shouldn't they have been like this 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 begun, 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 in the work, and wanted to spend her time on other things, and the studying was an unrewarding chore.

In November 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. There was nothing wrong, he said. 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 years of wanting a child, of trying to have one, to know that she actually would now was like arriving at the top of a peak and seeing a great expanse in front of her. She was 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.

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.

"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?"

"No reason. You'll see."

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

"Not exactly." He'd kept the sale of his company secret. Why couldn't she have a secret of her own? But she'd never had a secret before. She kissed him. "Be patient," she said.