She told Jared she didn't want to go to Lillypond. "But you love that house," Jared said. "What happened to, if we could, we'd live there year round?"

"I'm not feeling the love this year, okay? Plus the children never get to hang out with their friends, they never get to do any of the fun summer stuff their friends do. They want to spend July at the Swim Club. Emily wants to go to music camp."

"No, I don't!" called out Emily from the computer in the den.

"Asher wants sports camp."

"No, I don't!" called out Asher from the TV in the living room.

"Michelangelo wants to go to day camp with his friend James."

"I do, I do, Daddy!"

Jared didn't understand. "Why even have the place if we're not going to use it in the summer?"

Larissa didn't say anything. "Well, maybe you're right, hon. Perhaps we should sell it. Is there an economic downturn? Is your job secure? Maybe this isn't a good time to be carrying two houses."

He looked at her funny. "Is my job secure? What are you talking about? You want to sell Lillypond?"

"I'm just saying. I don't want us to pay for that plus the kids' camps. It's too much. That's not being practical. We should be careful."

He watched her carefully.

"We'll do what you like, honey," Larissa said. What she was doing wasn't working. She had to try another tactic.

"I want to go to Lillypond. The kids love it there."

"It's hard for me, Jared," Larissa admitted. "You're not there for six weeksa"

"That's not true."

"aI'm taking care of the house, the kids, the laundry, the cleaning, the cooking, the shopping, all by myself. It's hard. It's nice that you roll in on the weekendsa"

"And a week in August."

"aAnd everything is done for you. You play with the kids for a few hours and then go back to your grown-up world. But I'm with them twenty-four hours a day, I don't have any adults to talk to, and I just don't want to do it anymore, okay? It's too much for me."

Jared reached for her, but she was too far away. She moved herself too far away, imperceptibly, as she was speaking, and when he reached out, he couldn't touch her. "I didn't know you felt this way. Why didn't you tell me?"

"I'm telling you now. This is called telling you."

"The kids are getting older," Jared said in confusion. "It should be easier, not harder. It's not as hard as it was when they were babies, is it?"

"Maybe to you it seems this way," said Larissa. "But the c.u.mulative effect of the years of taking care of the kids by myself must be having its toll. It's like the clouds. They don't seem like much, one by one, but get enough of them together, and there's a downpour. I feel a little bit like that."

Some of this was true. She did feel isolated. In the past she would go, hoping to read, relax, get away from the urban life, as she called the school year in languidly suburban Summit. But in the wilderness there was no Ernestina and no husband; Riot was always running in soaking wet and muddy, the kids always needed the rowboat pushed out, and everyone's clothes were in a perpetual state of filth even though they hardly wore anything but bathing suits. There was no time for reading. She never had a moment to herself. Michelangelo came everywhere with her. So did Emily. And Larissa was going to be three hours away from Madison! For six weeks. And then they were going to Miami. It just wasn't going to happen. She couldn't not see Kai for two months. Simply couldn't, that's all there was to it.

Jared and Larissa compromised. The children went to day camps for the month of July, and in August, Jared insisted on taking two weeks off to stay with her in Lillypond.

"I can manage two weeks on my own, Jared. Don't take off."

"No, I want to. I don't want a crisis on my hands, an unhappy wife."

"I'm not unhappy, darling. Not at all. Believe me."

"I believe you. I'm still coming. We'll spend the month together. Two weeks in Lillypond, then two weeks in Miami." He smiled broadly at her through his thick-rimmed gla.s.ses. "Happy?"

This is what happened when you made up bulls.h.i.t reasons for your decisions to a good man who tried to help you. He helped you. She wanted adult company? He came and kept you company.

In July, Larissa lived like she suffered, she lived like she was blockaded and in famine. Kai worked from sunrise to sundown, from six in the morning till noon at Cortese Builders, seven days a week, and then at Jag from two until closing, every day except Monday. She carved out three hours every Monday when he was off in the afternoon and her kids weren't back from camp until 4:45. They spent those stifling summer hours in a tortured perspiring embrace, clammed up even as they were opened up.

"You're not going away forever," Kai kept saying to her. "It's just for a few weeks. I'll be here when you come back. Right here. I'm not going anywhere."

She couldn't speak, couldn't tell him that she couldn't do without him, couldn't be without him. She thought if he filled her up with himself those three hours, filled her up, like a tank of gas, all twenty-two gallons of him inside her, then she wouldn't run on empty when she was in Lillypond.

But when August came, and her family packed up the house and the kids and the two cars, and the dog, and drove out to their summer retreat in the woods on the lake, not a day went by when Larissa wasn't on empty, dragging her limbs, all of her listing down, down, down like a willow in the rain. After the first day, she couldn't imagine another hour without Kai, much less a whole month. The cell phone that was once her friend was now her enemy. There was no cell phone signal in Lillypond. In the previous years that was part of the delight, and now it was a blight on her soul like a plague of locusts. Not even a call to hear his voice!

After suffocating for two more days amid the pastoral sunny pleasures of the great outdoors, Larissa tore her bathing suit. Tore it with her hands, and told Jared she had walked into a tree branch, and look, she'd only brought the one.

"You only brought one bathing suit?" He was incredulous.

"I don't know what's wrong with me," she agreed. "I'll just run out and buy a new one. I'll be an hour or two. Will you be okay?"

"Will I be okay while you run out to buy a bathing suit? Yes, I think I'll manage. We'll go fishing. I'm going to teach Michelangelo how to row a boat. But where are you gonna get a bathing suit around here?"

"Oh, there must be a place somewhere."

"I mean, something you can actually wear."

"Well, you're right. That might require some searching."

She and Kai met at Lake Harmony, sixty miles away, about halfway between Lingertots and Madison, at the Resort at Split Rock, a sprawling vacation destination for families. There was no time to get a room, plus Larissa wasn't sure if the Great Pocono Lodge on Lake Harmony was the sort of three-star holiday establishment that rented rooms by the scorching afternoon. They met in the parking lota"they were used to thata"and made feverish, clothed, cramped, desperate love in the pa.s.senger seat of her tiny Jaguar, parked in a remote corner at the edge of the forest. Lake Harmony was one of the Pocono lakes, the entire area given over to families coming with their children for fun and frolic in the fjords of Pennsylvania, where everywhere you looked were placid trees and lakes and gently rolling rising rocks and mountains, where oak and ash grew abundant over roads, and families came to play badminton and volleyball and rent boats for water adventures. In a secluded green corner of that unspoiled esthetic, Kai and Larissa succ.u.mbed to a corner of their own rising rocks and falling ash. He made her take off her clothes and sit naked on top of him for the second time around, with the windows open and the roof off, daring her to moan, to keep quiet, his palms on her wet back, his mouth at her throat.

They slumped afterward, their bodies glued together, until she told him she had to go, and he said of course you do, squeezing her hard nipples in his regretting fingers. After she went, she realized she hadn't gotten a bathing suit. The Resort Shop in the Galleria sold simple black one-pieces with the Split Rock logo st.i.tched in. Larissa pulled out the threads that fastened the logo to the fabric with her teeth and brought the suit home without the bag that read, "THE POCONOS! ENJOY YOUR PLACE IN THE SUN AT LAKE HARMONY!"

Jared didn't think much of her choice. "This is all Wilkes-Barre had?" he said with a critical shrug. "You would've done better going back to Short Hills, to Neiman's."

"Oh, I'm sure you're right. But too far. I didn't want to leave for the whole day."

"Nonsense. You should," he said. "Me and the kids will be fine. It poured in the afternoon. We're going to go tomorrow to see if we can find any mushrooms."

"It rained?" Not sixty miles away it hadn't. "But Jared, you hate mushrooms."

He laughed. "I know. I'm thinking of the children."

"They hate mushrooms, too."

"It's time they learned to pick the things they hate," he said. "Go tomorrow, if you want. Leave early, though, so you have all day. Go shopping. Get yourself a facial. Pamper yourself. Go to a movie, buy some sandals, have lunch. Have fun." He brought her to him and kissed her, his amber eyes soft and affectionate. "I didn't realize how hard this is for you. I haven't been considerate. Go. I do this so rarely, it's a treat for me. I'll be mom for a day. I'll put on your ap.r.o.n, bake brownies."

"Jared," she said, still in his arms, "I don't own an ap.r.o.n."

"Maybe you should get one tomorrow."

With Jared's blessing, she went. Kai called in sick, to both jobs.

They rented a room at Split Rock, the "Woodland Retreat," on the ground floor, with a kitchen, a Jacuzzi, and a small patio overlooking the lake. Kai paid in cash. They bought baby oil at the hotel sundry shop, they ordered room service sandwiches, coffee, water, champagne. They put a "Do Not Disturb" sign out.

They had eight hours. It was like a waterfall.

2.

Spilled Milk

"So how new is this life for you?" They were soaking in the Jacuzzi, sitting across from each other, their legs intertwined. She'd had too much champagne, was feeling woozy in the hot water.

"Which life?" Did he mean him?

"The house and all."

"Oh, the house is over seven years new. A little older than the baby boy." She probably should get out. They'd been in for a while. She was losing grip on her speech.

"The boy came with the house?" Kai chuckled, flicking water at her. "Why didn't you stay in Hoboken? Continue to teach theater."

"Why? This is a much better life."

He said nothing at first, his hands moving in cliches, in circles. "Is it?"

"For the children, absolutely."

He kept silent. "Did you do it for the money?"

"We did it for a better life, Kai. We were broke, fighting all the time, the kids were unhappy. And then our college friends Katie and Scott came over for dinner one night, and we found out that they paid their babysitter more per week than what Jared and I made. Combined. And we had all been English majors. English, theater. We had all been in the same boat at NYU, yet there they were and here we were. Chris had an MBA, and was the head accountant for Shearson. And they didn't seem stressed and unhappy like us. They were happy. Like they didn't have a care in the world. So after they left we talked it over for weeks. We said we also have a choice. We can continue living Evelyn's life, and our life, and Ezra and Maggie's life, or we can try to build a different life. It was a joint decision. We both wanted it."

"Did you?"

"We did."

"No, that's not what I'm asking. I'm asking, did you?"

Larissa tilted her head back. And slowly blinking, closed her eyes. Definitely too much champagne.

She was speedwalking down Henry Street in Hoboken, nine months pregnant with Asher and huge like an elephant's a.s.s, with Emily barely a year and in the stroller. She was carting a half-gallon of milk in a plastic bag hooked over the handle, because they had only one car and Jared took it into the city to look for work before he went to his night job, and the plastic bag broke, and the milk fell and crashed and spilled all over her shoes and coat and strollera"milk! All over everything, the small child in the stroller crying, hungry, and she cursed the milk and the stroller and the crying, and possibly even the small child, and resented Jared because he was out gallivanting in their only vehicle while she was rolling back the years, and stomped back to the store, wet with sticky milk, to get another gallon and this time she asked for a double bag, and it was a quarter-mile back home to the three-room apartment they were renting on the fifth floor, and when she got to the store, thinking it couldn't get any worse, her water broke.

Three years pa.s.sed. The MBA nearly all finished, one more year to go, and they struggled insurmountably to make ends meet. They couldn't afford to drop the milk because they wouldn't be able to buy another gallon, and she diluted the milk a little bit with water for the kids' cereal, hoping they wouldn't notice, waiting, waiting until the day the MBA would change their life and make it all go away.

"Yes, Kai," she said. "I really wanted it." She didn't sit up, didn't look at him.

He splashed her. She came out of it. "Are you happy?"

"Of course." She paused. "Though the Chinese food was better in Hoboken. But now I can afford it. And I can still get Chinese when I go visit Evelyn, but at least I get to come home to a house with a ping-pong table, a breakfast nook, a bills nook."

"You need that."

"Yes. Lots of bills to pay. Just like before. Difference is, now we can pay them."

He was pensive. "House is beautiful. The dog especially."

"Boy is beautiful, too."

"The boy that came with the house? Yeah. Must be nice to have kids."

She watched him carefully. Studied him. "It is."

"Do you have a chandelier? Mood lighting?"

"Yes."

"Fireplaces?"

"Three."

"I know you have a pool."

"With a diving board. And a movie theater room."

"With popcorn?"

"A popcorn maker."

"Drink holders?"

"And remote controls built into the arms of the reclining leather couches."

Kai whistled appreciatively.