So I sat with him, present in body, if not in mind, and we played cards and watched television and sometimes went out for long walks and talked about how the neighbors had valiantly and vainly tried to make their homes unique via the extravagant use of greenery.

The days went along, one after another after another. I cooked a small turkey for us at Thanksgiving, Christmas approached, and as it did, the nights became terribly cold. Space heaters were dusted off and brought out, so were the quilts and blankets. I began to get used to Lewis’s sexual rhythm, and tolerated his advances with less distaste. We bought matching red sweat shirts and began to talk of Christ­mas presents and New Year’s activities.

There was a contentment in my body; it was relaxed and well fed and exercised—but there was a hollow place in my mind and a yearning in my soul. I had to get out. I had to break away from this little-­wife role, if even for a little while. I had to do something else, something more, something different—some­thing young.

Just when I thought I could stand it no more, just when I began to seriously think about leaving Lewis, just when I thought I would burst from the frustration of forcing my true feelings to the back of my priorities—Lewis’s mother died.

The call came while we were having breakfast. The telephone rarely rang; Lewis was not a gregarious person. It surprised us both when it rang, so uncharac­teristically, at seven o’clock in the morning. Lewis went to the living room to answer it. I heard him gasp, then continue to listen, so I went and hugged his back while he talked, and I saw the silly Christmas tree in the corner looking out on baked desert ground, and I knew someone had died, died just in time for Christ­mas, died just in time for me.

He turned around and hugged me, and tears dripped onto my shoulder. It was his mother, he said. Stroke. He had to leave immediately for California and would probably be gone three or four days.

I was sorry for Lewis. My arms went around him and I held him, and while his sobs shook my whole body and he sniffled and his tears wet my hair and my clothes, I tried to understand his grief. My cheek against his chest, I watched the little plastic icicles on the Christmas tree flutter in the breath of movement in the room. It matched the flutter of excitement in my belly as I thought that tonight I could go to the bus station, to let the tide of darkness once again wash over my mind.