It is strange, although I do not see this right away, that what I recall are only the rhythms of the life, and later the lack of rhythms. There is a coldness, a distance about them, an unreality and a lack of substance, as if they come from someone else’s life. Perhaps that is a fault of the memory; or maybe it is that I was then unreal and without substance, and so am helpless to remember any other way. I cannot tell. I know, however, that the memories are painful now. I am unconnected with them, and yet they hurt me.

But this is what I remember; this is how it was.

Elliott was eleven; Katie nine. My husband’s name was Stephen. My name was Abra.

Those were the labels we used for each other.

And of course there was the dog, Fletcher. We got him from the Humane Society for Elliott’s seventh birthday and let him name it. He chose Fletcher, after his first grade teacher, Alice Fletcher, because he hadn’t liked her, and he knew that although he loved the puppy there was an insult in naming it after a person. He said he was going to tell Alice Fletcher what he’d done, but he was neither so brave nor so cruel. Stephen and I worried for a while, though, about such a curious, inheld hatred in the child.

(I considered, when I was leaving, bringing Fletcher with me. He grew to be a big dog, part German shepherd, and I thought he would be not only company but also protection if it turned out that the new life was frightening. In the end, of course, I couldn’t, not just because he was Elliott’s dog, but because I knew that if the thing was to be done at all, it must be done alone. I was fond of him, though; I should ask Katie about him. I expect he’s dead by now.)

We had a big house. Stephen was (is) a stockbroker, very successful, unusually successful, I was told, and we were, I suppose, what was called upper middle class. Still we had fairly simple tastes, accustomed to comfort but unused to luxury, and the house was the biggest thing we ever bought, quite extraordinary when I think about it.