“Sylvia, I would love to see your book—The Colossus, isn’t it? Would it be all right if I take a look? Maybe some of your good fortune will rub off on me. Of course,” she adds, “I’m not serious about it, as you are. I just play with poetry. Decorative arts are more my métier. Needlepoint. I can put it in my handbag and forget about it—”

“Be my guest,” Sylvia answers, a bit dryly. “You’ll find it in the parlor, on the little walnut secretary. The American edition, with the blue cover—it just arrived by mail.”

As she watches Assia descend the flagstone step and enter her house, Sylvia continues to tug at the hose to keep it from crushing her seedlings. Just for a second as she works the hose Sylvia notices how the grass springs back, supple and resilient, in the spots where her feet or the hose had flattened it moments before, as if she’d never touched it at all.

*   *   *

Low voices and bacon frying. The sounds and aromas of Sunday morning float up the stairs and reach Sylvia, who is lying on her side in bed, nursing Nicholas and trying to convince herself that she might still sleep. For the fourth night in a row Nicky has cried through the night; if the Wevills hadn’t come she might have moved him for a few hours into the carry cot in Frieda’s room, but for graciousness’ sake she kept him in the bed and didn’t sleep herself, again. It might be a growth spurt; it might be teeth, though Sylvia has run her index finger along the baby’s gums and hasn’t felt so much as a swelling. Whatever it is, she feels the familiar sense of ruin; she’s enervated and raw, all of her senses on edge, yet beholden to meet the day and the guests. Ted has obviously already gone down. It was time.

Voices, pricking in her head. Sylvia smooths the back of her hand across the cheek of her baby, sated now and calm, then gently slides the tip of her pinkie into the corner of his mouth to break his latch on her breast. His chin flutters, eyes slowly opening; a dribble of milk runs out of his mouth as she rolls him, milk drowsy, back on the mattress before turning on her hip and setting her feet to the floor. She opens the bedroom door a crack and the voices blare sickeningly, but she can’t tell to whom they belong. Down the hall, the guest room door is closed.