Out of mercy one of the others indicates to Wes that his wife is behind him. In tall stiletto heels, teetering.

  “Ah! Hannah.”

  With exaggerated husband courtesy turning to the wife as if startled, gentlemanly in tight black tie, slightly puff-faced for Wes Jarrett has been drinking for two hours and twenty minutes. Claiming to detest these fundraiser evenings he has no choice (evidently) but to seek out companions who share his convictions. His eyes crinkle in irony. Out of the slant of his mouth joking, the others laugh loudly.

  The wife, though not quite hearing the joke, understands that it is playful, meant to be harmless, funny and not cruel, she laughs, too, for the others to register.

  Wes sets down his (empty) glass on a table, as sharp as a retort. Abruptly now they are leaving. Wes has had enough, he is leaving. Headed for the nearest exit scarcely checking to see if Hannah is behind him.

  Driving home, in silence. Except Wes is humming to himself, a guttural sound that conveys satisfaction, or a defiant pretense of satisfaction, a new habit of his. Hearing him, often in his bathroom in the morning, Hannah wonders uneasily if these are secret thoughts of Wes’s own, emerging without his awareness.

  “You never used to like those people,” Hannah can’t resist saying though probably (she knows) she should remain silent for there is dignity in silence but rarely dignity in words even if those words are resolutely unaccusing, unreproachful. “You’d told me, how many times.”

  “Well, then. I’m a hypocrite, am I?”

  “Are you? I didn’t say that.”

  “Didn’t you!”

  “No. I did not. I said—”

  “I know what you said: ‘You never used to like those people.’”

  Wes laughs, and shrugs. He is drunk, which is why he feels good about himself.

  The kind of selfish good feeling, Hannah thinks, that deliberately excludes another.

  “But that was then, this is now, Hannah. Even a rat in a corner has to ‘like’ someone.”

  This, too, is meant to be funny, Hannah knows. Out of the slant husband mouth, much that is meant to be funny, not hurtful.

  In any case Hannah isn’t hurt. Hannah is too beautiful and poised to be hurt. Hannah laughs, she, too, is in a good mood. You would think that Hannah is amused by her witty husband but in fact Hannah is armored against him as if encased in steel.

  And that night calling her lover after her husband has collapsed in bed. Speaking in a low quavering voice on the phone in the guest room where she will spend the night.

  Missing you so badly, what can we do.

  … will have to make some decision. Soon.

  Oh God. I love you.

  Think of me tonight?—with you? All night.

  All night! Yes.

  • • •

  Except: With the children, no armor protects her.

  Feeling now a new tenderness toward the children, who know nothing of Mommy’s truest self. How, in her lover’s arms, in a delirium of sensation, reduced to harsh helpless sobbing, Hannah forgets them entirely as if a part of her brain had been scooped out, obliterated.

  This wonder that has touched her, through the years. That her own mother could look upon her children with detachment, in her eyes a curious flatness of affect, as if something had been extinguished inside.

  Don’t ask me to be “mother” any longer. I am worn out, I am finished with “mother.”

  But not Hannah! Hannah feels panic, that she might ever be so detached from Katya, and from Conor.

  As soon as she sees them, whatever thoughts have been preoccupying her vanish in an instant. She is theirs, utterly.

  As, she recalls, her breasts had leaked milk at the sound of their cries, as babies; a few times, astonishingly, at the mere thought of them. The thrill of the mother who is needed.

  For no one else in Hannah’s life needs her. If Wes ever did, as a young husband eager to make love with his wife each night in their bed, in response to his own intense need, it isn’t that way any longer, and has not been in years.

  Being needed, a kind of addiction. But a sweet, pleasurable addiction in the service of others.

  Reading to the children not just at bedtime but at other times. Nap time, that happy time when both the children were younger; for now, Conor is likely to be restless, fretful. Katya is still little but Conor insists he is not little.

  Soon, they will have separate rooms. Conor will want a room of his own away from his little sister …

  Still, Conor likes Mommy to read to him, most nights. Katya falls asleep almost immediately, Conor actually listens to Mommy. Nothing more pleasurable, Hannah thinks.

  Leaning over to kiss a sleeping child’s cheek. The warmth of the cheek, the miraculous softness against Mommy’s lips.

  Yet, there is more pleasure now, Hannah basking in the (imagined) vision of her lover.

  Beautiful Hannah! It’s no surprise your children are beautiful, too.

  One day, he will meet them. But—how soon?

  Hannah trembles with excitement, apprehension. It will—must—happen within a few weeks, surely.

  But how does one introduce small children to a lover? A (potential) stepfather? Surely this is commonplace for divorce has become commonplace.

  Fifty percent of American marriages end in divorce!—this statistic seems unbelievable to Hannah, who knows very few couples who have been divorced, in fact.

  In the days of her own childhood, in the 1940s, divorce was a rarity, a scandal. Very wealthy people divorced one another, you read of their scandals in the newspapers; but wealthy people did not count.

  Conor? Katya? I’d like you to meet …

  … my friend, a new friend, his name is …

  Hannah’s hands have turned icy, the children’s book nearly falls from her chilled fingers. A sensation of weakness wells up in her, a kind of nausea.

  Then, the book does slip through Hannah’s fingers, falls to the floor with a thud, waking Conor who has just fallen asleep.

  “Mom-my?”—Conor is startled, frightened.

  Fortunately, Katya isn’t wakened. Hannah soothes Conor, shows him that it was just the book, nothing to be frightened of, don’t be silly. Leaning over him, another kiss, a hug, Mommy, too, has been frightened, but Mommy has recovered, switching off the bedside lamp that is the figure of a long-necked white goose.

  Hannah lingers in the half-light until Conor has fallen asleep. A voice quiet in her ears, as stealthy as a caress.

  You will always be the mother of your children, dear Hannah.

  Pearls

  God help me. I am so happy.”

  The eye sees the pearls, not the (plain sturdy) string that binds them together. Each pearl perfect, exquisite. And the string that binds them invisible, undetectable.

  He has become the string, binding Hannah’s days together. Miniature islands of happiness, a sequence of hours. And all secret.

  Without the string, the pearls would fall loose, scatter in a dozen directions.

  Without the string, chaos.

  “Hannah! You’re looking quite radiant lately.”

  Wes smiles his tucked-in smile, a slant sort of smile, even as his eyes move upon her quizzically.

  Hannah feels blood rush into her face. She laughs uneasily, she has been trying to fasten a strand of pearls around her neck.

  It is rare that Wes has looked at her in recent weeks. Rarer still, he has addressed her in a way that might be interpreted as intimate, almost teasing.

  Unless, just slightly reproachful.

  Why are you happy, when I am not? What is your secret, that we are not sharing?

  Upstairs in their bedroom preparing to go out for (another) evening. In this room in which they are so often silent, brooding. In this room in which, standing at her mirror, Hannah has so often observed her husband across the room, his back to her, oblivious of her.

  Only a few weeks ago Hannah’s eyes had filled with tears of wonderment, hurt in this very room. That this man with whom she shared a bedroom, and a bed; this man with whom she’d had two children, beloved by both parents; this man who’d been the first man she had loved, seemed no longer to love her. No longer cared for her.

  He is unfailingly polite to her, however. Or usually.

  Only just so often absent. In his being, and in his thoughts.

  Except now, Hannah is protected from hurt. Y.K. has come into her life newly in love with Hannah, her life has been transformed.

  His eyes observe her in all of the mirrors of the house. In reflective surfaces like aluminum, glass. Fleeting glimpses of Hannah’s beauty that passed unnoticed for so long.

  Fleeting glimpses of the face she’d long shrunk from seeing, now indeed radiant.

  Wes has returned home from work earlier than usual, he has shaved for the second time that day. Hannah smells his shaving lotion, as familiar to her as the scent of her shampoo, her hand lotion. The faint scent of Chanel No. 5, which she dabs behind her ears and at her left wrist.

  Hannah sees that Wes has changed his clothes for the evening. He is wearing a necktie that doesn’t look familiar to Hannah, soft-silver stripes, a silk tie, surely a designer tie; his skin is ruddy from the shower, his hair parted cleanly and severely right-of-center of his head.

  Hannah chooses to take her husband’s remark as a compliment and not a veiled accusation. Always wisest to take a husband’s words literally, and ignore his tone.

  Yes, Hannah says, she has been feeling good lately. Now that the children are back in school she has resumed yoga classes three mornings a week …

  “Yoga! I hadn’t realized that you’d quit.”

  Can’t be true, of course this is absurd. The husband knows well how the wife had quit most of her activities in town, had scarcely left the house for months.

  The single strand of pearls Hannah is fastening around her neck once belonged to her mother’s mother and was passed on to Hannah at the time of her wedding. Pink-tinctured pearls, luminous, beautiful in Hannah’s eyes though (she is sure) they are only cultured pearls, far less expensive than genuine pearls would be.

  Family legend has it that the pearls are from the South Sea. (Wherever that is: Hannah has no idea.) The clasp appears to be genuine gold, rimmed with tiny diamonds.

  Hannah rarely wears these pearls, they are oddly shaped, old-fashioned, not chic. Indeed, Hannah hasn’t worn them in years.

  Made self-conscious by Wes regarding her in the mirror Hannah fumbles with the clasp.

  “Shall I help you, Hannah?”

  Hannah smiles, shakes her head no, but Wes insists. These odd unpredictable occasions when Wes seems to rouse himself to a husbandly task though usually Hannah would rather he did not.

  Still, Hannah is grateful for the offer. A gesture of kindness.

  “These are beautiful pearls. You should wear them more often.”

  But Wes’s fingers are clumsy, as Hannah could have predicted. As the necklace begins to slip from Hannah’s neck Wes grabs at it too roughly, the string breaks, pearls tumble away in a dozen directions.

  “Damn! I’m sorry.”

  Quickly Hannah kneels, to gather up the pearls. She doesn’t dare look at Wes, her face smarts with annoyance.

  Dismay, anger, guilt. But now, everything is guilt.

  Wes apologizes profusely. His lightly veiled sarcasm has vanished. Awkwardly he stoops, searching for pearls on the carpet, one has rolled beneath a chair, he grunts as he retrieves it, Hannah sees that he is genuinely contrite.

  Hannah assures Wes that the string was old and must have become weak, the necklace is very old, she should have had it restrung years ago, it’s all right, not to mind. So quickly Hannah reassures her husband, she risks offending him by seeming to placate him, revealing that she is frightened of him, his moods, his temper, his rage at her, none of which he ever displays for he is Wes Jarrett, he is above such petty behavior.

  “Put the pearls in an envelope, and I’ll take them to be restrung myself. I’ll do it! I’m so sorry, Hannah.”

  “Oh, Wes! Really. It’s all right.”

  “No, I want to. It’s the least I can do.”

  Hannah is touched, Wes is being so gracious. There is no time now, they must leave for their dinner party, Hannah will search on her hands and knees for the rest of the pearls in the morning.

  Of course, Hannah has no intention of entrusting her grandmother’s South Sea pearls to Wes, she will take them to be restrung herself. By morning Wes will have forgotten the necklace entirely, she can depend upon it.

  A Door Closes. A Door Opens.

  Almost casually it is suggested: travel together, a new life.

  Almost casually: a child of our own.

  In his ropey-muscled arms unclothed, vulnerable as if the outermost layer of her skin has been peeled away. As if lovemaking has been the way in. And once the lover is in, love will course giddily through her veins, love will inhabit every part of her as an invasive microspecies inhabits its (unwitting) host nurtured by the moist warmth of the host. In his arms after lovemaking and floating, too, in a wine-sweetened haze, happiness of a kind unfathomable in Hannah’s life until now. Confiding in her as (he has claimed) he has never confided in anyone before. Not any woman, not ever. For though he has known many women he has never loved any woman until Hannah.

  Never wanted to have a child with any woman until Hannah.

  How flattered Hannah is!—not yet awash with unease, panic at the prospect of a pregnancy at her age but rather dreamy-lulled, suffused with joy for in the euphoria of love all is possible.

  Beginning again, anew. After coming close to losing each other. And now, certain of each other.

  In his family, among older relatives who’d emigrated to America in the early 1930s it was said often—A door closes. A door opens.

  He owes his life to her. It is that simple, and that profound.

  Disjointedly now he begins to speak. Voice quavering, eyes spilling tears. Hannah is deeply moved, she has rarely seen any man cry, indeed she has never seen her husband cry.

  Years ago she’d seen hot tears shimmering in Joker Daddy’s eyes like molten glass. But those had been tears of rage, not sorrow.

  So deeply unhappy with his life he’d been determined to take his life. After their father’s death a struggle with his older brothers over his father’s estate, for (it was revealed) the brothers had falsified a section of the will with the (apparent) connivance of their father’s attorney; worse, it came to light that (evidently) the brothers had embezzled from the family business during the last years of their father’s illness. And his mother dependent upon him to shield her, keep from her the devastating truth of her older sons’ betrayal. For he was the youngest and most loved by his mother—always resented by his brothers. Truly he’d thought they might kill him when they were boys. It was a shock and an outrage but not a surprise that his brothers had stolen from their father; what was surprising to him was that certain relatives in the family sided with the brothers, for what reason he could not know. But he’d wanted to avoid litigation. He’d wanted to avoid bringing charges against his brothers, for their mother’s sake. Months they were negotiating, trying to work out a settlement, at which time Y.K. had frequent business in Detroit and had to be here. Then the brothers fired their lawyers and defied Y.K. to take them to court. Knowing he would be reluctant to tell their mother, who was emotionally unstable after their father’s death. It would be a tragedy for her if the family was split, she would be denied access to her grandchildren. In just a few months she’d become broken, frail, once so beautiful, already in her early seventies beginning to suffer from dementia yet Y.K. had been determined to claim what was his mother’s and what was his …

  Hannah comes to learn that Y.K. is the youngest son of a large immigrant family. His parents were not educated, had to quit school to work during the Depression, yet his father managed to start his own business, eventually he became a (relatively) rich man but he was never content, never satisfied, always insecure, combative, buying new properties, buying and selling, quarreling with his own brothers, pitting his sons against one another. As a teenager Y.K. was lonely, friendless. He had higher grades than most of his classmates, especially in math. He avoided sports, he disliked physical contact. It was his fate to be singled out by teachers in a way that made others resent him, hate him; he surprised everyone by dropping out of school before graduation, to go to work (initially for his father, but that didn’t turn out well); at eighteen he enlisted in the army, qualified for flight school in Colorado then was sent to Vietnam where he’d almost died and where he’d been disgusted by the war, the drugs, the corruption, in Saigon he’d seen for the first time in his life child prostitutes, as young as ten, taught the coarsest obscenities to mouth at American soldiers. For he’d been naïve, inexperienced. For there had been many like him. Contrary to what is generally believed, the average American soldier in Vietnam was very young, religious, even pious, many Catholics, hadn’t had sexual experiences, had to be trained to be insensitive killers, brutes; and among these, many who could not be so trained, who were just destroyed. But he’d survived, some part of him. Like a husk. Hit by shrapnel, almost killed. Developed a drug habit—heroin. Took years to get clean, back in the States. His father had wanted him to join up with the family business but he’d been wary. He began to have some good luck, accepted into a business-school program for returning veterans. He began to do well. In the sixties when things were booming especially here in Detroit: Motor City USA.

  But the family business, the family situation, worsened. He’d hoped to keep clear of it but could not, he couldn’t abandon his mother. And there were other family ties, obligations. IRS demanded a costly audit of the business. There were accountants, attorneys. He was angry much of the time, and then he was depressed. He started to drink heavily. He got involved with some people it was (maybe) a mistake to be involved with, some of them here in Detroit. But this anger—it had always been part of him, even as a boy—along with bouts of depression, despair. Wanting to die—he couldn’t remember a time in his life when that wasn’t in his thoughts, in some way. And finally one night this past summer—a hot July night—he was in a city (not Detroit: five hundred miles away) and driving along a riverfront area where there were taverns, a certain sort of street life, prostitutes on the streets, he saw a woman with a young girl no more than ten or eleven who seemed to be her daughter, a very young girl, angel-faced, like the child prostitutes in Saigon, and he’d been upset, agitated, he’d brought the woman and the little girl back to his hotel room, so that they would have a place to stay; he gave the woman money, extracted a promise from her that she would take the daughter off the street but just a few nights later he saw them again in the same part of the city … He’d gotten drunk, parked his car by a bridge at about two A.M., walked out onto the bridge trying to summon the strength to throw himself into the river, could not think of a single reason to keep on living except he remembered someone who’d jumped from a bridge but struck an abutment on the way down, it was said that his bones had jutted up through his thighs, part of his skeleton had been thrown out of his body … And then, too, he was remembering Hannah: how they’d met, how he’d known as soon as he saw her that she was unique in his life, he’d known but had not wanted to accept it, he’d been frightened of loving her, throughout his life he’d been frightened of loving anyone, and of being loved; his mother’s love had kept him alive, yet he had not been able to keep her alive; he’d failed her, he feared that he would fail anyone who loved him, he was just not strong enough. But the memory of Hannah returned to him, her face. Her beautiful face. Her love for him.