In the freezing winter and raw spring before he and his family had moved from that town to this one, six miles distant, there was a long social season in which they all continued to rotate in each other’s vicinity. Sam moved to a bachelor rental in yet another town, three miles away—not so far as to be out of reach of sympathetic gestures from their large communal acquaintance. Frank and Ann hunkered down in embattled, recriminatory renewal of their vows, mixed with spells of humorous weariness. And Maggie found herself marooned in her big house with the two children, an eight-year-old girl and a six-year-old boy. Their formerly shared friends, forced to choose among these explosive elements, opted for the intact couple over the separated one. Sam, though his face seemed redder than ever and his eyes were narrowed as if his face had been pummelled, established himself as willing to co-exist in the same room with Frank, and even to exchange a few forced courtesies. But Ann fled the one occasion, the annual Christmas-carol sing in the historical-society mansion, where Maggie had dared appear. Maggie showed up late, in a dazzling sequined long-sleeved green top and a long scarlet velvet skirt. Frank smiled at the audacity of the outfit; Ann gave a whimper and whirled from the room, straight down the hallway, hung with old daguerreotypes, toward the front door, prized for its exemplary Federalist moldings and fine leaded fanlight. Chasing her out with their coats into the cold, Frank said, “That was a cruel thing to do.”

“Not as cruel as trying to steal my husband.”

“That isn’t what she tried.”

“Well, what did she try? Fucking as a spiritual exercise?”

“Please, Ann. People are looking out of the windows.” Though in fact the choruses of “Good King Wenceslas” rolled obliviously out the tall windows onto the snowy sidewalk. The town had seen worse spats than theirs, including a Unitarian-Congregationalist church schism in the 1820s. “Put on your coat,” he said stiffly, and led her by the arm to where their car was parked, the station wagon in which Maggie had solemnly told him she had been an absolute whore, but whose interior now was awash in the childish odor of candy-bar crumbs and spilled milkshakes. In truth, the marriage had in the short run fattened on the affair: Ann was impressed that he had made a conquest of the spectacular Maggie, and Frank was moved by his cool wife’s flare of jealous passion. It was as if Maggie, in her bereft, ostracized state, were a prize they had jointly dragged home. “If you can’t hold it together in public,” he told her, “it means she can’t go anywhere where you’re apt to be.”