"I'll give him a bath," said Jared staring at her coldly. "You get yourself sorted out."

But there was no sorting herself out.

Kai told her. It's not that she didn't listen. It's that there was nothing she could do then, or now. In one minute, the life she was living, the entire house was going to come crashing down on her head if she didn't find a way to get herself together.

Funny thing about righteous anger, righteous frustration at the impossibility of the way things are, of wanting to change them and being unable to, of wanting to scream her love from the rooftops and being unable to, of wanting to be free, and being unable to be. Of wanting and wanting and wanting, and being constantly thwarted, of being desperately afraid, the vigilance of every day taking the toll on her nerve endings. She stood in her kitchen being blackened in ways she did not expect. She felt her vision go blank, her legs go slack. What's happening? Am I fainting?

And the next thing she knew she was down on the kitchen floor, opening her eyes and Jared kneeling over her.

He helped her up, got her to the bar stool, got her some water. "What's the matter? You're not well? I knew it as soon as you came in. You looked terrible. You must be getting sick."

"Looked terrible?" Larissa held her head, which was hurting, but not as much as her sore heart was hurting. "Do you not see me? Do you not see my hair, my boots, my sweater? Do you not see my hair? Looked terrible? What are you talking about?"

"Come on, you know what I mean. I can't see past you falling faint on the floor, okay? To me that's not a woman who's feeling well."

"I may not feel well," she said through gritted teeth. "But to you that's how I look, too?"

He began to speak to defend himself, but Larissa cut him off. Cut him off or tuned him out. She was so tired of living like this. She thought she could do it, juggle it all; after all, that's what mothers did. They multi-tasked to the max, no one could juggle life as well as a mother, and yet the b.a.l.l.s seemed to be at her feet at the moment, except for the lead ones in her gutted stomach. She thought she could do the kids, and keep the house, and cook and shop, and prepare Saint Joan, and open G.o.dot, and go out with reasonable people, get her nails done and her hair, buy clothes for her growing family, entertain in her beautiful home, schedule activities for the weekend, little trips out, big vacations, do all this but keep the core of her life, the love of her life, preserved on Albright Circle like a dragonfly in amber, pristine, unbroken, untouched by misfortune. Kai said he was okay with it, and she was relieved, because she wanted him to be okay with it. They had so few options. It was the status quo or it was nothing.

But something had broken inside her. To leave Kai in the middle of the street, having deliberately gotten him out there, having had him pa.s.s three inches away from her breast, to set him up just to reject him, to betray him, it screamed injustice to her so loudly that she could not endure another second of Jared's solicitous face. Now he was solicitous! She had treated Kai poorly. And when you treat people you adore poorly what's left? What does your life mean when you can't even be good to the ones you can't live without?

What if he got fed up? What if he said, I've had enough.

Frankly, that's the only reaction Larissa expected from a young man left on a street corner by his dreadful married lover. He knew he would never come first. Not second. Not even a distant third. On street corners, he couldn't even place. He was not a qualifier.

How long could Kai put up with this? She didn't think much past tonight.

"Excuse me," she said faintly to Jared, moving past. "I'm not feeling well. Suddenly I feel as awful as I look." Larissa didn't know what to do. Not only had she no answers, she was out of questions. But this is what she knew. If tomorrow when she came to grovel to Kai, he said to her, I cannot do this anymore, she would be finished. There was no more life for her except with him. Whatever was going to happen, one thing that could not happen was she could not lose him. That she knew. That was the one true thing. Everything else was on the negotiating table.

She went upstairs, into Emily's room, sat down heavily on her bed, asked her about her day, her science quiz, her book project and listened to her play Dvorak's Humoresque. She went into Asher's room, told him to turn down the stereo and go have a shower before bed, walked past the bathroom where Jared was giving Michelangelo a bath, thought of coming in because she loved seeing her little boy all soapy wet and happily playing, but just then remembered that she left her purse downstairs, and in it the cell phone, and what if Jared looked through her purse concerned about his wife's peculiar behavior, and found the phone? As she trudged back downstairs, to throw out yet another pre-paid cell phone, she miserably thought I wouldn't care if he found it. I want him to find it, I want to have it out, I want something to change. I'm with Bo on this one. I can't do this anymore.

When she took out the cell phone, there was nothing from Kai.

She went outside, by the bushes in her back yard, and called him. He picked up this time.

"I'm so sorry," she said. She started to cry.

"Calm down," said Kai. His voice was cold. "Are you home?"

"Yes."

"Don't do this. Get yourself together. Don'tait's fine. I'm a big boy. I can take it. Just calm down."

"Oh, Kai."

"Hang up, go tend to your family."

"Kaia"

"Larissa, stop. Remember, no man knows what he is going to do until he is faced with it. Now I'm faced with it. But if you don't get yourself together, are you sure you're ready to find out tonight if Jared is merely a sitting and wailing Jonny or perhaps something else?"

Larissa fell mute. They hung up.

She dropped the phone deep inside the Hefty bag in the outside trash, cleaned up her face and went back inside. Jared was in the kitchen. "What were you doing out there?" he asked.

"Throwing c.r.a.p out," snapped Larissa. "I'm not happy with you, Jared."

"What did I do? Did I not play my cello?"

"Go ahead, make fun of me raising my kids," said Larissa. "Jared, every single day you get to come home late if you need to, early if you want to, you get to go out with clients to dinner, you never have to worry about a thing. I ask for one evening every six weeks to go do my f.u.c.king hair in the city, and you give me s.h.i.t over it."

"I didn't give you s.h.i.t."

"Oh, no?" She mimicked him. "Why don't you just do it during the day, why don't you do it with Kim?"

"Well, why don't you?"

"Because I don't want to! Because I want one evening every month where I go to the city and have my hair done by a guy who got written up in Allure, and then have a little dinner, and maybe go to a movie, or go to Barnes and n.o.ble. Why is that so hard to accept? Why do I always have to fit my life into a little snippet of time you allot me? Jared, I'm scheduled up the a.s.s, I live and die by the clock."

"Welcome to the adult world."

"Yes, yes," she said with tired impatience. "But you can have a three-hour lunch if you want to. I can't. You can be out all day driving around, checking out real estate. I can't. You go to nice restaurants and hang out with adults. I don't. I'm scheduled to the clock of children. That's a huge difference."

"But you have time during thea""

"I have no time during the day! You know what I have during the day?" Larissa broke off under the weight of the deception that wasn't quite ready to fall off her shoulders, to slide trippingly off her tongue. Kai was cool on the phone, not livid, and this gave her strength and hope. She was going to try one more time to make this right. "You take me completely for granted. You have no idea what I do during the day and worse, you don't care. For your information, besides cleaning your house and cooking your food and taking care of your children, I'm recasting, painting, rehearsing."

"Whose fault is that?"

"Which part, Jared?" she asked quietly. "Which part there is my fault?"

"I told you theater was going to be too much. You can't complain now."

"I can complain, and you know how you know? Because I'm complaining! But the only thing I'm really complaining about is your awful att.i.tude." She ran her hand through her sleek hair. He hadn't even noticed. "You know what? I need to talk to someone. I do. I need to talk to a professional."

"What?"

"Yes. I can'taI can't do this anymore. I'm overwhelmed. At any second, I'm going to have a f.u.c.king breakdown. We need to stop speaking, or I really won't make it."

"Why did you fire our cleaning lady if you needed help?"

"It's not about the cleaning lady!"

"She helped you."

"That's not the kind of help I need! I need talking help. I need to be by myself help. I need a night cla.s.s in Drew help. I needa"

"So talk to me."

"I'm talking to you now and you're not listening! You're going on about Ernestina like that's the answer to all my troubles."

"I didn't know you had troubles," said Jared in grim puzzlement. "I thought we were living an enchanted life."

"Your life is f.u.c.king enchanted," she spat through her teeth. "That's how oblivious you are to everything that's going on."

"What are you talking about? Ia""

"I had my hair done today! Did you notice?"

"You came in, in the middle of a boxing match with yourself!" yelled Jared. "I'm hardly going to be commenting on your hair!"

"Yes, because otherwise you're very observant, Mr. Reconnaissance man!"

Jared rubbed his face. "Is that what I need to be in my own life, in my own house? Unless you tell me, how do I know you're not happy?"

"I'm very happy. I'm extremely happy," Larissa said, with a cruel face, wet eyes, mascara running. "But I'd like to talk to someone about all my happiness, all right? I have so much happiness I can't deal with it. I feel I'm going to explode from the joy."

"All right, enough," Jared said slowly.

"Enough is right. Because, word of fair warning, if your wife ends up in the loony bin, you'll be rushing home every night, not just once a month, and then we'll see how you like it when you have to figure out how to get Emily to her cello lessons twice a week while Michelangelo has karate and Asher has cross country, and orthodontics, all at the same time. Let's see how many late dinners in the city you can have then, Mr. Chief Financial Officer."

"Larissa, calm down."

"Why is everybody telling me to calm down?"

"Who is everybody?"

"I will not calm down," she said. "You calm down. You say things and act in ways that are mean and upsetting, and then you get all high and mighty like I'm the unreasonable one."

"I'm not acting like anything." He opened his hands. "I'm sorry, okay? How do I act like this? I'm trying to understand."

Larissa got Jared to apologize to her! "Well, understand this. Once a month, your wife needs an evening alone without you and without the kids."

"G.o.d, why do you have to make such a big deal about it? Why didn't you talk to me last week when it came up?"

"Because I wanted you to do the right thing on your own! I wanted you to be considerate, say, okay, Lar. The way you did last summer in Lillypond when you let me have a day on my own. That's what I wanted. But if you like, I'll hire a fulltime babysitter so she can cart the kids around while you work."

"What are you talking about? Stop it."

She was panting. "I'll get myself a full-time job in the city, and then I'll also be away from the house from seven till seven, and maybe then I won't hear any more bulls.h.i.t from you about me spending two hours every two months to color my f.u.c.king hair."

"Larissa! What's gotten into you? Calm down."

"Oh, I'm calm, Jared. I'm calm like the Pacific."

"Larissaa"

"I have to put the baby to bed. Are we done?"

"You tell me," barked Jared.

"Oh, we're done." She stormed off upstairs like she was Emily.

4.

"Shall We Go?"

G.o.dot was opening for three nights on the following evening, and there had been stage setup all that Thursday morning and a final rehearsal of the last act due in the afternoon. By the time Larissa got to Kai's, it was after 12:30. He was fully dressed and sitting at the round table by the window.

"Hey."

"Hey."

He sat like a sphinx, straight up against the chair. His eyes followed her from the door to his table. She sat down across from him. He seemed inaccessible and unmoving.

"Kaia"

He raised his hand to stop her. He didn't say anything. He just sat with his back up and stared at her, mouth unsmiling, eyes unsmiling. Larissa desperately tried not to break down.

"Don't be mad at me, please," she whispered. "I beg you. You know how hard this is for me. I was trying to do something for us, and look what a botch I made of things. I didn't want to upset you."

He sat.

A tear ran down her face.

"It's the middle of February," Kai finally said.

"I know."

"Your play is opening tonight. Valentine's Day is this weekend."

"I'm not going to dinner with him," Larissa said. "I have the play. And then it's our wrap party."

"No romantic dinner with him, or with me. Soon it'll be March. A year since we started this little fandango, as you call it, this happy dance between us."