"Didn't you hear, Mags?" said Larissa, not turning around. "Black is the new black. How are you feeling?"

"Today, a little better, thanks for asking. I'm getting used to living with my new warped and tired body. That's all I can ask."

Larissa didn't turn around. "You definitely look better."

Jared didn't see what Evelyn saw; he thought his wife looked pretty good, no matter how black-clad and pale she seemed to others. The jersey dress draped s.e.xily around her slim figure, she wore high-heeled black pumps, her hair was down.

That was at the beginning of the evening. Larissa stayed in the kitchen until dinner was served, and during dinner she must have gotten up three dozen times, without exaggeration, to help the nine kids with their food. Larissa got up to bring them b.u.t.ter, to cut their bread, to pour more drink, to scoop the peas from the bottom of the pot, to get a new spoon for Michelangelo and a straw for one of Evelyn's children. She spent the entire dinner bent over their table, cutting up food or b.u.t.tering, spreading, pouring, salting, fixing napkins and mouths. "Larissa! Sit down. The kids will be fine," Jared kept repeating. This wasn't just a different-looking Larissa; this was a different Larissa.

"Yeah, really, Lar, they can fend for themselves," said Evelyn.

"They're only children," Larissa said. "They need our help."

"Oh, it's time they learned," said Malcolm. "They'll be out on their own soon. Right, kids?"

Usually there'd be a witty riposte from Larissa. Not tonight. She was back at the kids' table, hovering over Michelangelo. Her own food got cold. "I don't mind," she said when she came back to Jared's side. "I always eat it lukewarm anyway." She had made beef bourguignon and potato skins with bacon and cheese. She didn't touch her tepid food.

"Why aren't you eating?" Bo asked.

"I can't tell you how much I had while I was cooking." Larissa chuckled mildly. "I didn't realize how stuffed I am."

"Lar, you want more wine?"

"No, I'm good, thanks."

She was good if by good she meant her wine gla.s.s was still full, the red bobbing in the hollow bottom. Oh, she swilled it, she just didn't swill it down. Carefully Jared laid his hand on her hand. Carefully she smiled, turning to him halfway like an animatronic Disney figurine, and then bobbled slowly away, on a little spring that wouldn't let her turn all the way to face him.

Much of the dinner conversation was taken up by the travails of Saint Joan. Larissa barely contributed. The troubling Megan was Larissa's responsibility, and Jared thought she didn't want to be blamed again for Megan's obdurate softness. Why did Joan have to wear boy clothes, Megan wanted to know. Did she really hear saints' voices? Could Joan be made into a secular Joan? She had done the impossible with G.o.d; could she have done it without Him?

Larissa might have partic.i.p.ated in her own defense had she not been up at Michelangelo's elbow, wiping up the melted cheese he dripped over his brand-new sailor suit.

Jared and Jonny had a long discussion about which era was best for rock music. Malcolm and Ezra and Evelyn got into a heated debate about who was the greater military leader, Saint Joan or Napoleon. Maggie and Bo chatted about the Met's newest exhibition of "Truth and Illusion in Contemporary Photography." Jared caught the tail end of that when he stopped talking about who had the greater influence on modern music: The Who or The Stones, and heard Bo say, "Sugimoto was stunned by the fact that no matter how fake the subject, when photographed it became completely real."

Jared realized Larissa was not back at the table. Excusing himself, he got up and went to the kitchen. She was cleaning up. "What are you doing?" he said quietly.

"We're going to have cake soon. I want to get the table ready."

"It's your birthday, I don't want you to clean up after cooking all day. Come on, sit down. You're making everybody feel bad."

"Who's everybody?" said Larissa, wiping down the granite. And it was true, the noises from the dining room were of happy people drinking and talking.

"Do you want me to help?"

"No. You go sit. Otherwise that would be plain rude, the host and hostess both missing."

So Jared went back, and she cleaned up, and then served her own cake. They put candles on, a number 4 and a number 1, and after they sang "Happy Birthday," she blew out the candles before they had finished the last note.

"Whoa, Larissa," said Maggie. "You blew them out so fast, I don't think you had time to make a wish."

"Well, I already made a wish on my actual birthday," said Larissa. "No sense irritating the G.o.ds with repeat wishes."

Maggie nodded with friendly approval. "Did you hear that, Ezra? Our Larissa doesn't want to irritate the G.o.ds."

"It's so considerate of Larissa to even think of them," remarked Ezra.

Silently Larissa moved her own slice of cake around on her plate for a while and finally got up, disappearing again.

Half an hour had pa.s.sed and she wasn't back. When Jared went to look for her, she wasn't in any of the bathrooms, nor in the bedroom upstairs. Puzzled he came into the den to ask the kids if they'd seen their mom, and found her on the couch, watching a Nickelodeon show, with Asher on the floor by her feet, Emily leaning against her right shoulder, and Michelangelo on her lap, pressed against her as she embraced him with both arms. He watched her from the back for a few seconds; she hadn't stirred. He tapped Emily on the shoulder and mouthed, "Is Mom awake?"

By way of answer Emily pointed to her mother's face. Jared walked around the couch and witnessed a gla.s.sy Larissa sitting blank-eyed, unreacting and unemoting. "Larissa?" he said, expecting her to snap out of it, the way people did when they've s.p.a.ced out for a moment. But she didn't snap out of it. Slowly she blinked, and then raised her eyes to him, as if she had not been entranced at all, but fully aware. "What are you doing?" he asked. "Come to the table."

"I will, hon, in just a sec. I cooked and cleaned all day. I'm a little tired."

Lowering his voice, he said, "That was your choice. No one made you do it."

"I'm not complaining." But she had already turned her attention back to the TV and stopped blinking. "I just want to sit here with my kids."

"Yeah, Dad," said Michelangelo, nesting against her. "Leave Mom alone. Can't you see she's busy?"

Slowly Jared returned to the table.

She didn't come back to the dining room. Half an hour later Jared found her upstairs giving Michelangelo a bath.

"Larissa!" he hissed in the steamy bathroom. "What the h.e.l.l are you doing? We have guests downstairs! Evelyn and Malcolm are about to leave."

"Jared, the boy is not feeling well and needed a bath. I'll be down in a minute." She was kneeling against the tub. She didn't turn around.

"I like it when Mommy gives me a bath," said Michelangelo, splashing his mother, still wearing her black dress, "because she puts bubbles and colors in, and you don't, Dad."

Downstairs only Maggie and Ezra remained.

"What's wrong with Larissa?" asked Maggie.

"I honestly don't know," Jared replied.

"She's so out of it," Maggie said. "The shrink doesn't seem to be helping her."

"No kidding. I actually think she's worse. Ever since starting counseling she's been having awful mood swings, unlike ever before. She's either like this, or she's maniacally frustrated with the kids' shoes, notebooks, baseball glovesa"

"Maybe she's got a bipolar disorder?"

"What, she suddenly developed one after finding a psychiatrist?"

Ezra waved his hand at both Maggie and Jared, downing his remaining wine. "Don't be so overwrought, both of you," he said. "I talk to her at school. She is fine. Why is it unreasonable to a.s.sume that when she is in her own house, she might feel exhausted from being so front and center all the time? That exhaustion can show itself either in silence, like tonight, or in impatience. She's not a performing monkey. She is a human being. And sometimes, human beings get tired. You know?" He stared pointedly at Maggie.

Maggie lowered her gaze.

Ezra casually continued, "She is okay during the week. There's a lot of stress with Saint Joan. I feel partly responsible. I roped her into it, and I think she regrets it now. Blame me, but don't be so hard on her."

The three of them quickly changed the subject to Dylan's gifts in sports and arts, and how unfair it was that he had to choose one or the other before he entered college. Soon it was time to go. Larissa came downstairs to say goodbye. Upset with her, despite Ezra's mollification, Jared went to yell at her for spoiling her own d.a.m.n party that he wished to G.o.d he'd never arranged now, and found her on the floor in Emily's room, playing Scrabble with Emily and Asher, and he wanted to say, oh, to talk to adults, you're all out, but to play Scrabble, that you've got a brain for, but the three of them looked so cute on the floor.

"You wanna play, Dad?" asked Emily. "We just started. We'll go easy on you. We'll give you a thirty-point handicap. Right, Mom?"

"Thirty? Let's give him at least fifty."

"No, you guys go ahead," said Jared. "I'll go check on the ballgame."

He didn't mean to, but he was also tired, and he fell asleep on the couch around midnight. When he woke up it was six in the morning and his back was sore and cramped from sleeping in a sitting position. He couldn't believe she hadn't come to wake him, and she wasn't even in bed herself! Larissa was with Michelangelo, sleeping on top of his covers, her arm around him. Jared thought about waking her, but reconsidered, leaving her where she was.

3.

Scylla and Charybdis

"Larissa." Kai closed the door, but made no motion to touch her. She couldn't even smell him. Usually, he had his happy-go-lucky, come-hither-and-take-what-I'm-offering smile, but not today.

"What's the matter?"

"You know what the matter is."

"Kaia" Her arms went around herself.

"I'm waiting."

"You're not giving me time to think."

"It's been twelve weeks!" He made a helpless gesture with his hands. "Oh my G.o.d, no, it's been seventy weeks."

"It's not enough time."

"Not enough time for what? What are you waiting for?"

"I don't know." Oh, the hated phrase!

"Do you want me to call him? Go to his work? Come to your house?"

"No!" Larissa, still standing, backed away toward the door. "What are you sayinga? No. Never."

"Then what do you want?"

"Kai, what's wrong with you. You're never like thisa"

"I'm like this now."

"But you've beena"

"Been so what? Patient? Nice? Tolerant? Adaptable? Easygoing? Doesn't my cup ever get full, too? Doesn't it spill over?" When she didn't answer him, he said, "What do you go to your doctor for, if not to work this s.h.i.t out?"

"I go so I can see you at night."

"Okay, but even en pa.s.sant, without meaning to, don't you manage to resolve anything, since you do actually speak to her once a week?"

"Clearly, we haven't resolved this."

"Clearly."

She stood. He stood.

Minutes pa.s.sed. "I can't do this anymore, Larissa," Kai said. "I can't do this for another day. I can't have you go to him, sleep with him, live with him. It would be one thing if you never touched him, buta" He trailed off. "I had been hoping that my love for you would make you see the light."

"I see light." I see lots of things. Darkness, too.

"Apparently not. Look, that's it. You love me? So stay with me. Or you love me, but can't? Then walk the f.u.c.k out that door."

"Kaia"

He raised his palm to stop her. "No more. Tell me we had so much, and it was good, but what I ask of you, you can't do, you can't go with me." His young face was dry, grim.

"Not many could do it," she whispered.

"You're right. Many could not lie like you, deceive like you, pretend like you, live a double life like you, be married to one man while you say you love another quite so well as you. Many women are not you, Larissa. But then I'm not with them. You can't do it? So tell me you can't do it."

Larissa didn't speak. Kavanagh had been right. Nothing could stay. This especially.

"Kai, I'm still trying to work out a way we can live here," she said in a halting voice. "I leave him, and come to live with you, and then I can still seea""

"Larissa, don't f.u.c.king lie to me. You have not been working it out! You have been coasting and floating. You haven't been working out a single d.a.m.n thing. Don't bulls.h.i.t me. You've been taking Ambien at night so you never have to think about it, and you've been filling your days with all kinds of bulls.h.i.t filler so you never have to deal with it. You're all about rehearsals and book projects for the kids, and driving around with the music on a hundred decibels! I know how loud you have it when you turn on your car to leave me every afternoon. To obliterate all thought, right? And every time in the last three months that I've tried to talk to you about this, you've refused! Plain refused. You've changed the subject, you've diverted mea"oh, you're very good at that. You've asked me to play more music, play your guitar, Kai, play the uke, Kai, sing to me, Kai. More noise so you don't have to think for a single second about anything."

"I have been thinking about it, I havea"

"Look, there are two choices here. Either we go and live with what's left for you and me, or you go back to your old life."

She couldn't tell him the woman who lived that life was gone. "I don't understand what the hurry is. Why do we have to go at all? We don't have to stay in Madison. We can go toa""

"I'm leaving," Kai interrupted. "I can't stay because I've been here about fifteen months too long. I came to spend a month with Gil, have some fun. And look what happened. My time here is finished. I'm not staying. What about that don't you understand?"