The drive out to the park at the north end of the lake affords me some time to run through these events and review my behavior. Was I out of line? Could I have behaved differently? Well, of course I could’ve, but what’s done is done. The whole episode is already receding into the past for me and you know how I feel about that. The past. Before I can get too lost in “who’s to blame?” or “should I call and circle back?” I see the hand-painted signs and balloons that mark the route to a makeshift parking area. Twenty minutes later I’m on the front lines of our annual volleyball game and I don’t give that earlier ordeal another thought.

It’s been several years now since the events I’ve just described and I’m happy to say that my wife and I are still together. She is essentially a good woman, and despite a rough patch or two, our married life has been pretty much OK. “Clear sailing,” as my uncle used to say (a man who never sailed a day in his life). Never again have I mentioned the offending mark on my wife’s body, to her or to anyone else. I also refrain from suggesting more appropriate clothing choices, concealing makeup, or cosmetic surgery. On occasion, I even run my fingers across it, very casually, to let her know that I do not fear the thing or worry about it in the slightest.

But sometimes, some days when I’m walking through the mall or out near one of my other personal spots at lunch, I have a vision. I do. A rather elaborate dream where I find myself holding her down, pinning my own wife down on the wooden floor of our bedroom at, say, midnight, catching her groggy and off guard as I plunge a potato peeler or something else suitably sharp into the offending mound and tear it from her body. It’s only a fantasy, of course, but it has the color and fury of vivid reality in my head. Her, fighting and clawing me as I push her face into the parquet, a handful of nightgown in my fist as I work that kitchen tool deep into her shoulder. Burrowing in. Finally, yes, finally freeing her and myself of that thing. That imagined creature that has come so deliberately between us.