The days Ada didn't have to drive the hundred miles to K. State she studied on the third floor. In her room three dormers jutted out onto the roof. The middle one was wide enough for a small desk, where she worked on the dissertation for her second Ph.D. 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 stairs up, then halfway 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'd 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. On the east side of the central hall were two small rooms and a half bath, and on the west the big room that ran the length of the house. She'd fallen in love the first time she'd seen it. There were the three windows along the outside, and higher, smaller windows on each end, north and south. Knee 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 hiring others to do her work 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, looking 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, and know that she hadn't moved from the chair except to go to the bathroom or 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 to eat, or bring in the mail, or at least stretch her legs occasionally.

Today she couldn't pay attention. She looked 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 back of the desk, was her old, 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 Monteverde now, though she'd been eager to leave, and to begin a different life, and forget the place. The last time she'd seen her father and brother had been the wedding, several years ago. Owen had paid to fly them up. When he discovered that they hadn't brought suits (in fact, 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 their plainness, and their awkwardness -- their strangeness -- but he had tried to conceal this, had almost managed to hide this from Ada, though not quite. Nina had seen the intense Thomas' and Henry's discomfort. She had understood that they never saw people in suits, they never attended weddings in rose gardens with fountains, and 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 by the two men 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. His blue cotton had been the focus of the scene among the dark wools of the men and the vivid fabrics of the women, as he had certainly known. Even later, in the wedding pictures, the eye went to the two men first, they were so out of place. Ada didn't mind; she felt only compassion for him, and his discomfort.

Now she longed to see him, and home, and Henry. Owen would give her the money, but she didn't want to ask. He never grudged giving her money, he usually asked why she didn't simply write out a check, but she didn't like to depend on him. The money, to her, 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 whatever she admired, and to do whatever she wanted, 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 explain, he hadn't understood: her presence was worth everything. She knew he meant it, she knew she should stop fretting, but she couldn't. 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 looked at had all been boring, surely something better than those was hiding somewhere, waiting to be discovered if only she 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 encouraging her to change. She liked jeans and sneakers, but 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 tend to but the two of them. 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, where she's not very welcome anyway. It was time to talk to Owen again about adopting, more forcefully. She would demand it, if she had to. What was she supposed to do, spend her life earning one doctorate after another? Two Ph.D.s would be enough. Too much, actually. It was past time for children.

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 service was 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 ate at that time of day. 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. The simplest thing was not to be deflected from the subject she'd wanted to talk about in the first place. "Dear, 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."

"The doctors are the experts. They haven't figured it out yet."

"I know about Amy."

"Amy was a friend. That's all she was."

"I know you got her pregnant."

"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."

"Why did you pay for the abortion?" He didn't reply. She lifted a hand, in a waving-goodbye gesture, and dropped it back to the table. "Never mind. That was before we were together. It was between you and her. I want to talk about us. We talked about this before the wedding, and you agreed, and you've been putting it off ever since. I can't conceive. I want children. I'm going to have them. That means adopting. I'm going to call an agency. Promise not to 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 stood. "I'm supposed to meet someone in fifteen minutes." He bent down and kissed her on the forehead. "I love you," he said. "What did I do to deserve you?"

"What do you mean?"

He turned away, saying, "I really have to go."

Deserve? What did he mean by that? It was so vague. It could mean anything. But that didn't matter. It only meant that he treasured her. She got up to follow him, to get another kiss, 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 several 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 had continued, but they'd become friends, and often simply talked. Whenever she drove to Sarah's, Ada tried to see as her friend did. She tried to notice the interesting arrangements of space, and the clothing and posture of the people on the street, and the incompatabilities of adjoining buildings. However hard she worked at this, she succeeded only briefly. Sarah's work was her obsession, and Ada loved to watch her friend behind the camera. She was consummately focused there, but her personal work, which Ada had never seen her do, 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 tried to follow Ada to the City Union Mission and the other odd places Ada went, but Ada's attraction for the dispossessed, the marginal, the odd and eccentric, was compassionate, not aesthetic, but Ada refused: privacy should be respected. The notion of privacy was alien to Sarah.

She always left the door open for Ada, the 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 wood chair.

"Take off your sandals," she said. "Bare feet." Ada complied. She hadn't spoken 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."

"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.

"I'd rather not."

"Owen will be out of town."

"All right, then. Weeding 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 the session to be over. Sarah finally declared it finished, as much from compassion as from thinking she had enough photographs.

Ada said, "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 look exactly like Elizabeth Siddal. Not the way Rossetti painted her. Millais. 'Ophelia'? Except your face is thinner. Don't look so angry. You're scaring me."

"What's next?" Ada snapped. "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 pensive? I hate that! I'm not like that at all!"

Where was the camera when you needed it? "I know you aren't," Sarah 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."

"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," she said. "Yes, thank you. 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 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?"

"I only found out this morning. He -- he didn't call me."

"Is that why you're blue today?"

Of course, Ada thought. How could I not see it? She had to get over it, acting like a calf after all these years. A married woman mooning over an old boyfriend like a lovesick teenager. Why hadn't he called?

Sarah was reading the article. "This is fantastic! That solo album is one of Dougal's favorites. The man is brilliant. 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 could ask, but he's probably unlisted. It may take some time to track him down. It may not be any time soon."

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

They went to the Corner for a late breakfast, and after that Sarah dragged Ada, who disliked bars, next door to Davey's.

"It's time you learned to shoot pool," she said.

Two college boys in Metallica tee shirts tried to pick them up. Ada talked to them until Sarah interrupted.

"I'm flattered," Sarah said, bending over the pool table and lining up her shot, "but we're too old for you." The shot sank one ball and left another blocking a corner hole, for an easy shot later. "I have three kids, and she has one, and we're just killing time. We're supposed to meet our husbands in -- " she looked at the clock above the bar -- "just over an hour."

After the boys had left, she said to Ada, "You have to learn to be less polite."

"They were only trying to be nice, making conversation."

"Girl, I love you, but you are so naive, sometimes I can't believe it." She chalked her stick. "Your shot."

Ada left after the third game of pool. The album, forgotten, remained at Sarah's.

Saturday morning it rained, but Sarah came anyway.

"I brought the album. Is that okay?"

"Yes."

"If you change your mind, I'll understand. I don't want to be pushy."

"Actually, it's the perfect excuse for finding him. I should probably be thanking you."

They spent the morning talking in the kitchen, with long pauses while they watched the drizzle. "It reminds me of home," Ada remarked, "Although it didn't rain quite this way. But there was always a lot of moisture. I think that's why I like the sun. The rain and mist were depressing. I'd probably be happy in Arizona." There was a long silence while 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."

"I don't understand why he hired you to take the pictures at our wedding."

"No idea. It surprised me."

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

Sarah laughed. "Yes, of course. That would be it."

"You're so good at what you do. You have your independence, and work you love. I envy you."

"Come on, what's all this?" Sarah waved her hand, indicating the room, the big house, the back yard. "Like your Ph.D. doesn'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 my jobs 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. After I got the first doctorate, it was missing, and it's missing now, 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." She pressed her palms and forehead to the window panes. "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. But I'm almost thirty, and I still don't know what I want to do. Why isn't there anything for me?"

"Ada -- "

"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. 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," she said, "It's the same as not having a calling. 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 sees that I feel this way, he thinks 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 can't stand to think he's failed me, and that's the way he feels when I try to tell him this. He thinks I'm rejecting him. He resents that I feel this way."

"Owen isn't the problem. You are."

"I know," she cried. "But what can I do? How can I change who I am? Even in the place I grew up I always felt like a foreigner. I've never learned the language, the language everyone else knows."