Catherine took a while to answer. She seemed deep in thought. "I just know," she finally said.

As I head toward home, I find myself studying the neighborhood, now that I'll be leaving it for good. Houses have changed color again since I last noticed, houses whose hues seemed so indelible when we first arrived that the neighborhood will always look fake to me. Most of our friends have split up and moved; different cities, different countries, strange, unlikely fates. Someone told me Katy Alistair's daughter is a stripper in Guam; Joel's childhood friend Bobby Zimmerman was found hanging from a light fixture in the Tenderloin. But these are only the most dramatic cases; most kids have simply gone off to college, their parents divorced, husbands married to younger women and starting second families. I see young, strange faces through the windows of houses I've been inside so many times, unfamiliar children hitting tennis b.a.l.l.s against garage doors. It galls me, how at home they seem. I have a lunatic urge sometimes to go up to one of those kids and say, "Understand something, junior: you don't really live here. Not like we did."

Two different families have lived in our house since we moved. The second, the Weisels, invited me to a dinner party several weeks ago. Against my better instincts, curiosity led me to accept. I wandered through the familiar rooms, remembering the paint samples and fabric swatches Ted and I had argued over-all gone, the curtains gone, the walls a different color, a vast Chinese urn where we used to put our Christmas tree. I could almost hear the scuttling of Joel's footed pajamas across the floor-those same boards! I searched the walls and corners for some trace of our lives, something left behind by mistake. But there was nothing. The house might never have existed before that night. As I ate my lemon mousse, I felt lightheaded, giddy, as if I myself had narrowly escaped the same oblivion. I drank another gla.s.s of wine. By midnight, I had to ask where to find the bathroom.

Catherine Black shot herself in the South of France two summers ago. People were shocked, of course, but less so than they might have been if she'd done it a few years before. She had gone, as they say, downhill, appearing more and more often alone, distracted, without the high spirits she was famous for. It was a.s.sumed that the men she saw were all married. I've tried lately to imagine the scene of her death: Was she staying in some man's villa? Aboard his yacht? Was it a fit of pa.s.sion, or did she simply look up one day at the palm leaves flapping against a blue sky and know that it was time?

Rover and I take a detour and stop before what used to be my house. I almost never do this, although my apartment is only a few blocks away. But in two days the moving trucks will come and take me to my new apartment on Russian Hill. After so many years in the same ten-block radius, I feel like I'm leaving the country.

It's finally dark. The foghorns honk and call, sounds as familiar to me as my own voice. The house is a strange gold color now, the ivy overtrimmed, without the chaotic appeal it had while we lived here. It must have been the vitamins my children used to toss into that ivy each morning as they left for school (after pretending to swallow them) that made it grow so wild. Once, during a hard rain, dozens of half-disintegrated pills washed onto the path.

Rover pants quietly beside me as I watch the lighted windows of our old living room. Beyond the open curtains someone moves, and I wait, half expecting to catch a glimpse of Ted tossing a log on the fire, of Joel running past with a tennis ball in his hand. Or myself, reading the evening paper, drinking tea. If I saw us, I suppose I would believe it for a minute, as if those memories were still real, my presence out here the illusion. But as Frank Weisel moves into the light to adjust the volume on his stereo, I feel unexpected relief. I'm weightless. There's nothing left here-I'll take it all when I go.

Like most things that happen well after they should, my divorce from Ted three years ago was unpleasant. In one of many confessions I could have lived without, he admitted to having been involved with Catherine Black off and on over the years.

"How many years?" I asked.

"I don't remember exactly."

" 'Years' is not specific," I said. "I want a number: two? three? five?"

"Calm down," Ted said. "It was insignificant. You know Catherine, she was around. She made it easy."

"When did it start?"

"I don't know when. It was some years, all right?"

" 'Some' means a lot."

"It meant nothing, Charlotte," Ted said, growing frantic. "Zero. Nada. We were treading water, she knew that as well as I did."

"Probably better," I said.

Ted glanced at me, but seemed afraid to pursue the topic. I went on packing books into boxes; books from college, Book-of-the-Month Club books, so many I still hadn't read. I thought of that day when I'd ridden the chairlift with Catherine (six years before? seven?), and was appalled at what an idiot I might have been-how, that whole time, she might have been laughing at me. The thought haunted me for months after Ted had gone. But eventually I stopped wondering whether or not it had already started between them. How could it matter? What I felt on the chairlift with Catherine wasn't spite or cruelty, not even smug satisfaction. She'd been left outside my world, that was all. And from there she saw how quickly it would pa.s.s.

Back at my own apartment, I weave my way among packing boxes to the kitchen and pour myself a gla.s.s of Chardonnay. I call Jessica at her dormitory, and to my astonishment, she answers. "Sweetheart. How are things?" I ask.

She sounds breathless. I hear music in the background. "They're crazy," she says. "I've got way more than I can ever do."

I see her, brown curls dangling in her eyes, thrilled by the dire earnestness of her life. She hollers "Shut up!" at someone, and I hold the phone away.

"I'm sending you some clothes," I tell her. "That rose-colored suit, for instance. The suede?"

"You're giving that to me?" she asks, startled. "But you've had it so long."

"Exactly." I wait a moment, then ask, "So. What do you hear from your father?"

Jessica hesitates, for try as I might to make the question sound neutral, it is always tinged with my hope that she'll answer, "Nothing. I've decided never to speak to him again."

"He's visiting next weekend," she says.

"With Beatrice and the baby?"

"I think so," she says. "But Mom? How're you doing?"

"Just fine," I say.

"Had any dates?"

"Here and there." I decide not to mention the one last month who revealed to me, as we sat kissing on my couch after too much wine, that he'd been a Roman centurion in his previous life. "Actually, I'm going out tonight with Bud Templeton," I say. "Remember him?"

"Amy's father?" She sounds aghast.

"That's right. He and his second wife have split."

"You're going out with Amy's father?"

"Should I have asked Amy's permission?"

Jessica laughs. "No, it's just, I don't know. It seems weird, you and Mr. Templeton going out together."

I find I am at a loss. There is a pause before I answer, "Well, I think so, too, sweetheart. But that's what happens." After a moment I add, "I call him Bud, though."

"Well, have fun," she says, though I sense she feels the possibility is remote.

We hang up, and I go back to my closet to do another hour's work. I'm looking forward to tonight-I always liked Bud Templeton, though I've hardly seen him in years. I still think of him as the tall, wry neurologist I loved to chat with over plastic cups of wine at school plays. We would congratulate each other on our daughters' performances as orphans or lost boys, one eyebrow raised to show that, unlike some parents, we had this all in perspective. But perspective was what I lacked, it turns out, for my life had felt as permanent as childhood. I've even outgrown the clothes I wore as a young wife: summer suits, skirts below the knee, tall black boots-none of it fits; I've become a smaller version of myself, distilled from an earlier abundance I was not even aware of. I take unexpected pleasure now in packing these outfits away and stepping into a sleek, narrow dress I bought last week. I carry my wine to the window and wait, my face near the gla.s.s. The sky is clear and dark, the lights of the city trembling beneath it. As I watch them, I'm overwhelmed by a feeling I haven't had in years: a sweet, giddy sense that anything might happen to me.

Catherine Black. Sometimes I imagine she was everywhere for those years, quietly watching me live. Waiting-for what? I see us on that chairlift, our skis casting long gray shadows over hills like piles of sugar. Her skis were slightly pigeon-toed, I think. We're there, eyes fixed to the top of the hill, both counting the moments until we can reach it and ski away from one another.

PUERTO VALLARTA.

On their last day in Puerto Vallarta, the fathers rented horses. Ellen's father let her come along, though she was only eleven and hadn't ridden before. She stayed close to his side, staring at the tin shacks and rows of hobbled corn along the back streets. Her father drank wine from a pig-bladder pouch and gave her a sip when she asked. It was sour and hot. He bought her a sombrero embroidered with green and pink flowers and placed it carefully over her head. Gradually they drifted apart from the others.

Ellen was rarely alone with her father. She and her parents had joined two other families in Mexico, and for ten days they all had descended in large, whooping groups over local cafes and beaches. Her father told jokes and chose restaurants, whatever people wanted. He was Master of Ceremonies.

"Aren't we meeting Mom for lunch?" Ellen asked when she and her father reached a strip of pressed, pale dirt leading out of town.

He nodded. "Want to turn around?"

"I don't want to ..." Ellen said tentatively, laughing.

"Neither do I," her father said.

He set his watch back. It took an instant, a twirl of the tiny hands, and they were free. Ellen felt a thrill of mischief. She did not think of her mother, only of a hurdle she and her father had leapt together. As they rode on, she stared greedily at each dry bush and blotched, scampering pig.

"When I was eighteen," her father said, "I bought a motorcycle and rode around Europe for months."

Ellen had never heard this before. "Was it fun?" she asked.

"I lived like a maniac."

She paused, unsure whether this was good or bad. "Was it fun?" she asked again.

"Fun. Was it fun." He stared across the miles of dead gra.s.s and shook his head. "It was the best time of my life."

Ellen felt suddenly shy. She followed her father's gaze to the horizon, where faded earth nudged a faded sky. It looked like the edge of something hidden, a place he alone had explored.

"Let's go," she said, kicking the s.h.a.ggy sides of her pony. As it stamped into the hot, dry wind, she felt a longing never to go back.

"You're a hooligan," her father said, laughing when he'd caught up to her.

"I'm a maniac," Ellen said.

The sun was low when they finally returned to the beach. Ellen's mother, Vivian, waited on the cooling sand. When she saw them, she jumped to her feet. "Thank G.o.d!" she cried. "I thought you'd been robbed or something."

"This G.o.ddam watch," Ellen's father said. "I swear it's running backward."

"Well, lunch is here if you want it," Ellen's mother said. "Then I guess we'd better pack."

Ellen sank onto the sand and began eating frantically. The sandwiches were warm from hours in the heat. Her mother didn't ask where Ellen and her father had been, she just gazed across the water. It was the last day of their vacation.

"I'm sorry, Mom," Ellen said through a mouthful of food. "I'm sorry you were by yourself."

Her father cleared his throat and stood up.

Her mother looked at Ellen curiously. "Relax," she said, smiling. "What could you have done?"

In the five years since that trip, there had been no time for family vacations. Ellen's father traveled too much on business. This year he was selling franchises for Tommy's, a lobster restaurant in downtown Detroit. "They use real b.u.t.ter-sweet b.u.t.ter," he would tell prospective investors. "Quality like that is a dying art." Ellen imagined sometimes that Tommy was the name of his child from an earlier marriage, some young prodigy living in another state.

At one time Ellen's mother had gone with him on some of his trips. But lately she'd stayed home, conditioning her hair and soaking her Boston ferns in the kitchen sink. She grew thin, and reminisced about their trips.

"I was almost killed in Jamaica," she said at breakfast one day. "Your dad swam away from our boat and a wind came up. I started sailing out to sea." She spoke with the urgency of a first telling, though Ellen had heard the story many times.

"Jesus, what a nightmare," her father said, looking up from his paper. "You were going so fast I couldn't catch up. I was splashing around, screaming how to turn the boat, but you couldn't hear me."

"So what happened?" Ellen cried, caught in the story.

"I jumped off," her mother said. "I swam back to your father. The boat kept going." She was washing apples in the kitchen sink. Now she stopped, still holding the colander under the running faucet, and turned to Ellen's father. They looked at each other, and Ellen felt a current of something between them that startled her.

After a moment they looked away. Her mother shook the colander under the water. Ellen heard apples b.u.mping against its sides. Her father put on his coat, shaking the sleeves gently over his arms. He was leaving for the airport, catching a plane to Australia.

"I have an idea," he said, kissing them each goodbye. "Easter's six weeks away. We'll go back to Puerto Vallarta."

While her father was in Australia, Ellen went with her friend Renata to Mama Santos, a Mexican restaurant in Glencoe. It was a train ride outside Chicago, but Renata's brother, Eric, was a bartender there and had promised to serve them alcohol. Ellen had never been to a bar before. She ordered a rum c.o.c.ktail crowded with small umbrellas and leaned back, crossing her legs in a way she hoped was sophisticated. Then, at a corner table half hidden by a ficus, Ellen saw her father.

She sat very still, lips on her straw, and tried to make sense out of this. He had left for Australia six days before and was not due back for four more. He sat with another man and two women, one of whom wore the striped tennis sweater Ellen had given her father last Christmas. The woman had on salmon-colored lipstick. Her hand rested on Ellen's father's shoulder.

Ellen carefully set down her gla.s.s. She blinked at her smeared reflection in the strip of bra.s.s that ran along the bar, then looked back at her father. He had a large dynamic face shaped like the spade on a playing card. His eyes were silvery gray. Ellen was struck by how handsome he looked-handsome the way strangers are, people on buses or in the supermarket. A terrible emptiness opened inside her stomach. Her father was handsome, a handsome man in a restaurant surrounded by other handsome people who were his friends. He talked, he moved his hands, and as Ellen watched she felt that she herself had no right to be here. He belonged wherever he was.

When the group stood up, she swiveled toward the bar and hunched over her drink. Renata had gone to the bathroom, and Eric was washing gla.s.ses at the sink. Ellen heard her father's loud laugh right behind her, and was overcome by sudden, dreamlike calm, as if a part of her had shut off, or gone to sleep. A car pulled up to the restaurant. There were shoes on the pavement, laughter, shutting doors. When the left rear door stuck and had to be slammed twice, Ellen knew the car was her father's. Six days before, he'd driven that car to the airport. Ellen had waved goodbye to him through the tinted windshield.

When she heard only silence, Ellen slid from her stool and went outside. She was panting, and her heartbeat made her dizzy. It was dusk. A curved driveway arched toward the door of the restaurant, and beyond it sprawled the wide suburban parking lot. Ellen looked across it. She stared at the pa.s.sing cars, at the pale moon rising over the asphalt. She felt a pain somewhere inside her but couldn't find its source. "Where does it hurt?" her mother would ask if she were there. "Where does it hurt the most?" It hurt everywhere, Ellen thought. It didn't hurt enough.

She searched the frail rim of trees around the parking lot, the sky soaked with dusk. Two hours before, she and Renata had skipped across this lot, running their hands along Cadillacs and loudly debating what drinks they should have. Martinis? b.l.o.o.d.y marys? Pina coladas? It seemed an ancient memory, a scene from her childhood. Ellen longed to pick up where that memory ended, to burrow in the company of Eric and Renata, but this seemed impossible now. He was gone. He'd driven away in his car with the blond woman and his friends, leaving to Ellen this restaurant, this parking lot, this iridescent sky. They looked like nothing.

During the ride back to Chicago, Ellen rocked against the seat of Eric's car, impatient to throw herself in her mother's arms and be soothed. Her mother had long, cool hands and hair like a lioness's. She was the most comforting person on earth.

Ellen found her mother seated on the living room floor, her hair in a scarf. She had the dreamy look she often wore after spending several hours by herself. "I'm rearranging," she said. "Dusting."

Around her lay things she had bought on her various trips: inlaid wood chests, corn-husk dolls, animals carved from ivory. In a gla.s.s dish were the colored marble eggs she had bought with Ellen's father in Florence. Ellen felt a nervous fluttering under her ribs.

"I've lost perspective," her mother said. "Can you see any difference?"

Ellen wished she were back at the age when she would howl shamelessly while her mother used a tweezer to pick bits of gravel from her skinned knees. Her mother looked as delicate now as the blown-gla.s.s vase she was holding.

"Mom," Ellen said.

Her mother looked up. The room was very still. Ellen felt the weight of the old house, its dense curtains and clean, swept kitchen. Her mother's world was pure, steadfast, decent. But it wasn't enough for him.

"What is it?" her mother asked.

Ellen sank to the floor and lifted a crimson egg from the dish. She felt a ghastly power, the kind she felt sometimes when using a knife or scissors. Once, while chopping celery, she had glanced at her mother's pale arm and thought with horror of how easily she could cut the soft skin. She had pictured the bright stripe of blood, her mother's startled look of pain. She had tortured herself with these thoughts for several moments before putting down the knife and wrapping her mother tightly in her arms. As she hugged, her mother began to laugh. "Such affection," she said. "What have I done to deserve this?"

"Oh, your father called tonight," she said now. "From Sydney. He sends a kiss."

Ellen stared at her. "How's he doing?" she managed to ask.

"Lonely," said her mother. "At least the weather's good."

Ellen leaned back against her hands. She watched the long cords of her mother's neck, the fragile blade of her chin, and was suddenly furious at her for letting herself be fooled, for knowing less than Ellen did. "How come you don't go with him anymore?" Ellen demanded.

Her mother shrugged. "He's busy." She polished another egg, then looked back at Ellen. "What makes you ask?"

Now Ellen felt a surge of guilt, as if she and her father were in this thing together. She avoided her mother's eyes. "I don't know."

"He works too hard," her mother said.

Ellen's father brought her a gla.s.s paperweight shaped like a kangaroo and a T-shirt that said SYDNEY. She felt senseless, goofy relief as he talked about the vineyards he had seen, their red dirt and acrid smell of ripeness. The night at Mama Santos was something separate, something cordoned off. It made no difference. She thought about it constantly.

Ellen and her parents flew to Puerto Vallarta two days before Easter. They rented a small house outside of town, where flowers poured from the cliffs in a bright, clotted rush. Their first morning, they sat outside on the terrace, eating sweet Mexican rolls and drinking coffee.