I don’t answer.

“Do you think it’s more moral to pull a Gwendola or a Gauguin?”

“Is she all right?” Ernest calls from outside the door.

“Don’t tell him,” Catherine whispers.

“She’s fine,” I say.

“Just the birthday girl blues,” sings Catherine. “I’m forty today.”

There is a sigh outside the door. I’m not sure whether Catherine hears it through her laughter. I’m sure she doesn’t hear my answers to her questions.

22

At breakfast the next day, Catherine won’t talk to us. She stares into her plate. She looks betrayed. She slouches.

“Sit up straight,” Ernest scolds her. “You don’t have to act such a fool because you’ve turned forty.”

“I’m not acting this way because I’ve turned forty,” she pouts.

He tells her he doesn’t like self-pity. He tells her to stop pitying herself. She’s on this beautiful island and she should be happy. Nothing’s wrong with her. There’s nothing to pity.

He mentions the faces we saw on TV the other night. Drought and famine victims. They trivialized any of Catherine’s complaints, any of ours.

“Can we adopt one of those children?” Catherine had asked. (She said adopt like “adapt.”)

“You can’t take care of yourself,” said Ernest, watching the screen.

“But we ought to be able to save at least one of them. We can ask that friend of yours in Doctors Without Borders. He should know how.”

“You can’t save yourself,” said Ernest.

“He looks like Haile Selassie, doesn’t he? Look at that face.

You can ask that friend of yours. We should try to save that child.”

“You’re enough of a child to save.”

When they gave the place to send money, Catherine got her checkbook. I couldn’t help but think of that Godard movie where Jack Palance plays the movie producer—“Every time he hears the word ‘culture,’ he gets out his checkbook.” But of course that had nothing to do with this.

And it wasn’t the time or place for a joke, not even a dry one.

“Get out your checkbook, Honey,” said Catherine.

He got his out.

She glanced at me.

I got out my traveler’s checks.

“Forty’s good.”

“It’s not because I’m forty,” she says.

“Sit up straight and eat your breakfast. Smile.”

She sits up straight, but she doesn’t smile. “Can’t I be depressed too?” she asks. “Can’t I be depressed sometimes like any other woman?”

“If you had something to be depressed about. But you don’t. You’ve got everything.”

“Amanda’s not sitting up straight. You didn’t tell her to sit up straight.”

“Listen to this brat. Forty yesterday. Amanda’s not mine.”

“And I am.”

He’s silent, then, “Of course you are.”

“Who does Amanda belong to?” she asks, the imp.

He says nothing, then he says, “Well, herself, I suppose, since she’s divorced.”

“If Amanda’s her own, I want to be my own too!”

“Do you want a divorce?”

Catherine stares into her plate, then up. “No chance, buddy.

Why should I care if I’m yours or not? The Birdcatcher’s mine.”