The child after that she saw at MoMA, a somber boy of seven or so with horn-rimmed glasses, who had wandered away from his school group and stood in front of a Mondrian, biting his thumbnail, baffled.

She found Morton one October night in his library, writing in one of his hardbound books—writing in his diary, she now understood. Bursting into tears, she told him she had completely misunderstood herself, and her life. She told him that she wanted to have a baby, after all.

He offered her a handkerchief—Morton being the sort of man who still carried handkerchiefs—and then, peering over his reading glasses, he said, “You know of course that this means we would have to share.”

“Share?” she said, confused.

“Share our time with each other. Our lives would no longer be about us.”

She felt weak. She dropped down in the chair across from him. “Have you thought about later, when we’re older…?”

“Later is sooner for me, Costanza. Later is now. I can see seventy from where I sit.”

“The actual arithmetic is that you’re closer to sixty, Morton. You do know that.”

“And you know that if we have a child, you’re likely to be her, or his, only parent for a much longer time than we will be parents together?” She merely listened as he went on, “People never really think about how much life changes when a child comes along. How much work is sacrificed. How much freedom is lost. You can no longer move so easily through time and space, or even think the way you used to, your mind is always on that marvelous but needy little creature.”

“All this is so negative. So bleak.”

“I think it’s realistic. It’s important to be realistic.”

“You’ve never had children. How do you know it’s even—even accurate?”

“I’ve observed, haven’t I? My brother, my friends. And I’ve listened, I’ve read and imagined. Imagining is my occupation, after all.”

“Imagining an experience is not the same as living it.”

Now it was his turn to remain neutral. There was no hint, no flash, in his eye that transmitted what he was thinking.

“Obviously I haven’t forgotten that you’re older than I am, Morton. Only you’re healthy now. You could live until our child grows up. Is in college even. It’s not unreasonable. And I do truly believe that you and I could give—that our lives would only be—that we would live more fully if we could experience—”

Even as she said them, the words sounded rote to her, almost platitudinous, while the feeling behind them was anything but. “And besides—”

And besides, a thorn is lodged in my heart, and there are days when I am finding it difficult to breathe.

“And besides, this is what I want more than anything.”