She reached for his hand. She slid her foot across the sheets, seeking his leg. She rolled over voluptuously, in anticipation of the warm obstacle that would stop her. But she rolled, unhindered, all the way to the edge. Nothing prevented her, nothing held. She had the cool expanse entirely to herself. Her husband was no longer there.
He’s coming right back, she thought. He’ll be here in a heartbeat.
Because maybe he wanted a glass of water, or else drank too many before he went to bed. Maybe he heard footsteps on the stairs, and was waiting, dictionary raised, behind the door. Maybe he was saving them. Maybe he was thirsty. Or maybe, like her, he had fallen in love—with the gypsy queen and her raven hair. The tiny girl tucked inside a tulip. The mermaid, the shield maiden, the daughter crying from the tower. Maybe it was the siren who had called to him. And maybe he had answered, and was gone.
THE BEARS
Once, when I was convalescing, I was sent to a farmhouse in the country. No one there knew I had been sick. A woman came to cook in the evenings, and her daughter would appear at odd hours with a mop and bucket, keeping the place clean. There were many kinds of tea to be found in the kitchen, and a woven tray on which you could arrange the tea things. Also there were deep old wooden chairs lined up along the front porch, so you could sit as long as you liked, looking out over the fields, the trees, and sometimes even the mountains if the sky was truly clear. Because of the porch and the tray and the slow way the day ended, I felt, in this place, though no one knew of my miscarriage, as if I were being gently attended to, as if all the demands of the world had been softly lifted away, and that I should rest.
I had been invited there to finish a chapter on William James. I was to do so in the company of eight other people working on interesting, improbable projects. The invitation had come as a great surprise to me and had a magical effect on my confidence. As soon as I set foot in the farmhouse, however, every thought and hope I had about William James flew out of my head, like bits of charred paper up a chimney. He had been my companion for several months, and now he turned into a man I barely knew. His sudden disappearance made the days seem long. Soon I discovered that the pastimes I had always imagined I’d enjoy—such as dipping into newly published novels, and drifting off to sleep in the middle of the afternoon—left me with a stiff neck, as well as a feeling of dread.
My only relief was in walking along the sides of the highway and the roads. Though they were country roads, they were not laid out in a haphazard way, and I decided that if I was to set out, and turn left, and then left again, turning and turning until I found my way back again, I would be all right. I walked slowly, but for distances that surprised me. I walked without my wallet or my glasses, and my life felt far away. The city I lived in, the appointments I made, the students I taught, my dog, my friend—it seemed as if what held me to them had loosened and let go. When I thought of home, all I remembered was a route I would sometimes follow as I walked to the bus stop, a route that took me past an empty parking lot, where long grasses and weeds had been allowed to grow in profusion. Even though it wasn’t strictly on my way, I liked walking past this empty lot because of the wild, sweet smell it sent out into the world. No other lot or overgrown yard I knew of had managed to achieve the right alchemy of grass and clover and tall spindly wildflowers, and no other place could secrete this same smell. But here, along the side of the highway, the smell was everywhere.
Reading the signs that appeared on the road, I learned I was walking through a part of the countryside that had yet to be discovered and made over in a sentimental way. This area remained practical and suspicious. At frequent intervals, sometimes only two or three trees apart, the signs were posted: PRIVATE PROPERTY, they said. Then came a list of numerous activities, followed by the words STRICTLY FORBIDDEN, and for final emphasis, the phrase SHALL BE PROSECUTED. As if these yellow signs left room for doubt and interpretation, some residents had gone to
