Jared understands that his mother, though middle-aged, terribly old in his eyes, embarrassingly old, somewhere beyond forty (he doesn't want to know how far beyond, but he knows that his dad is even older) is a seductive woman, a woman to whom adult men are attracted, and this is infuriating to him, unspeakable. He hates it, he refuses to think about it. He's made anxious by the fact, and resentful, though possibly excited, too. Guys saying to him Jeez, Jared, that's your mom? The looks in his male teachers'

faces. Jared! Say hello to your mother for me, will you? Next time you speak to her. And the Preston headmaster casually inquiring Will your mother be visiting us anytime soon?

No! No time soon.

Jared has told himself he's profoundly relieved that his mother and father have finally worked out a custody agreement, removing him from Salthill for most of the year, and allowing him to board at the Preston Academy, on neutral territory. There are other kids at Preston in exactly the same situation. Divorce and custody suits, embittered former spouses who now hate each other's guts. Mostly, the mothers are the left-behind, pathetic ones. Losers. The fathers have new, young wives, why not? It's a free country. Times have changed. God is dead. One of Jared's Preston suitemates asked him didn't he get lonely, and Jared replied contemptu-ously-"Lonely? I wish I knew how."

Maybe he is lonely, sometimes. Sure. But he prefers lonely to the other.

It's ironic that men are attracted to Abigail Des Pres, with one notable exception: Jared's dad. In a memorable phrase that man once confided in Jared he'd "had it" with Jared's mother.

Had it. This might sum up both a man's desire for Abigail, and a man's desire for Woman. Jared is contemplating both.

Inside the car, Abigail can't resist hugging Jared. "C'mon, a real hug.

A hug-hug!" And a wet kiss on his cheek, narrowly missing his twisty mouth. She tugs off the ridiculous baseball cap, runs her fingers through *

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his springy fawn-colored hair, comments that it needs trimming-"Just a little. By your ears. Maybe tomorrow morning?"-and smiles happily, joyously, at him. The baggy black T-shirt with ** prominent on the front, hip-hugging jeans, smelly Nikes worn without socks. My Jared. My love. Jared submits to this with a reluctant smile. It isn't actually so awful, once nobody's watching. He likes his mom O.K. And he's hungry.

Driving out of town Abigail says in her throaty, co-conspirator voice, "I did miss you, honey. Gosh! And this is just for tonight, I promise."

"It's O.K., Mom. I won't tell him."

What do you want from your son, Abigail?

Adam, what a question!

Well. Answer it.

I want- him to be happy.

And-?

I want- well, I want to be happy, too. With him. Forever.

A * Mountain View Inn, Abigail has arranged for them to have dinner alone together in her suite. In a bay window overlooking the sloping lawn of the Inn and, miles away, a dreamy postcard-view of the sun melting behind shadowy mountains. "You're certain this is all right, Jared? We could go somewhere else if-" "This is O.K." "I thought, just the two of us-" Abigail sees Jared hesitating. Possibly he is going to say yes he'd rather go out to eat, anywhere, a real restaurant, with other people, not here, not in such intimate quarters, but since the collapse of his childhood a few years ago he's become a tactful, even stoic boy. He curls his lip at the ornate tassled menu but orders a T-bone steak. With french fries. And a double Coke.

He is dreading something. What?

With a flourish a waiter wheels a cart into the room. White linen table-cloth and napkins, a single red rose quivering in a vase, steaming hot dinners, steak for Jared and fillet of sole for Abigail, beneath silver covers; and a bottle of burgundy wine for Abigail. "Isn't this-festive? Like something in a movie. In the south of France?" Why is Abigail saying such inane things: what does Jared know, or care, about the south of France? The most Middle Age: A Romance **

profound adventure of his young life has been a treacherous white-water rafting trip his father took him on the previous summer in the Grand Canyon region, no matter if Jared sprained his ankle in an upset, and another rafter was nearly killed. Abigail sips wine, and asks Jared careful questions. Unlike his father she will not inquire closely into his summer session courses; she would never bluntly ask what his grades have been so far; she is not spying on him, she isn't the one who obsesses that Jared will be "sloughed off " from his generation when his generation advances to the next hurdle of the American meritocracy, college. (Not Abigail Des Pres: who studied "arts" at Bennington in the late seventies and graduated with honors knowing less math, science, and history than she'd known when she graduated from high school, with a further handicap of not knowing how to think or write except "creatively"-"spontaneously.") So she takes care to ask Jared questions he can answer without shifting his shoulders edgily inside the black T-shirt and avoiding her gaze.

"Sloughed off "-a cruel term. Abigail has heard her ex-husband use it numerous times. There's a Darwinian-evolutionary sense to it, a ring of fatality.

As they talk, Abigail tries not to stare too avidly at Jared. Tries not to touch him too often. She's well aware of the social decorum: a woman may lightly touch a man's wrist while they speak, in harmless flirtation; a man, touching a woman in a similar way, is perhaps being aggressive. But Jared will never touch me. What choice do I have?

Abigail says, "When the session is over, I'll drive up again to bring you home. You're with me, you know, till school starts." There's a breathless pause here. Abigail tries not to watch Jared's face. His eyes that seem suddenly heavy-lidded, his fleshy sullen mouth. He's chewing steak, forehead creased in concentration. "I thought we might go to-Nantucket? Sailing.

You've always liked-sailing."

Jared doesn't reply, chewing and swallowing. He gulps down a large mouthful of his Coke. "O.K., Mom. Cool."

"-the full month of August, through Labor Day. The Sorensons have offered us their guest house on the ocean-"

Abigail has abandoned her food but continues to drink, slowly. She isn't one to drink alone, alcohol goes to her head, red wine especially gives her a heavy sodden headache. She hears her bright scintillate voice echoing in the handsomely furnished sitting room. She hears Jared's monosyllabic replies and occasional forced laughter. My mom has a sense of humor! There *

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is something unspoken between her and Jared. Always there is something unspoken between her and Jared. The constant weight of it pulls at her heart, though her heart is young she is becoming exhausted. Look, I didn't even want to marry. Not that man. Not any man. I was just a girl. God damn, I wanted to be a dancer! No, I was not pregnant at the time. I married for- love. Suddenly she can't remember who the man was whose love she'd accepted so passively, like one succumbing to the plague. The face-Harrison Tierney's?-is a smear like the uneaten mashed potatoes on her plate.

Adam's death. That must be it. Unspoken between them. But, Christ!

She's afraid.

That rambling incoherent message she'd left on Jared's answering machine, the night of Adam's death. When Abigail was paralyzed with shock, grief. When Abigail got frankly drunk. (Roger Cavanagh had come over. To console her. No, they had not slept together though possibly that was Cavanagh's intention.) Well, she shouldn't have called Jared. He's fifteen, just a boy. He must have been shocked, overwhelmed: he hadn't answered Abigail's call, or calls. And when she finally spoke with him he'd been taciturn, sullen-sounding. I'm not coming home. Abigail feels ashamed, and wonders how to bring up the subject of Adam's death, now. She's worried she might become emotional. The strain of this visit, and the glasses of burgundy. And the memory of Jared striding across the campus, talking and laughing with his friends, lighting up a forbidden cigarette, oblivious of her. For those minutes, magnified in the binocular's lenses, Jared had seemed no one Abigail knew, or could claim. The memory frightens her.

But Jared must be feeling grief for Adam's loss. Knowing he will never see Adam Berendt again. Yes. He must! During the worst times Adam had behaved "like a father" to Jared. He'd talked with Jared in private, and would never tell Abigail what they spoke of. He took Jared out walking, bicycling, to quick meals at McDonald's and Burger King. Trying to explain to him, Abigail surmised, what divorce is, how common it has become, what his mother was going through, why she was so-"emotional"-"unpredictable." And what Jared's own natural feelings might be.

Abigail knows that Jared liked Adam very much for he always asked after him, as he never asks after Abigail's other friends. But since Adam's death, Jared has been virtually silent on the subject. Abigail sent him clippings from local newspapers-* , , * *

. And * * . , , *

. But Jared never responded to the clippings.

Middle Age: A Romance *

In the boy's hooded eyes she can see that he fears her. Perhaps he believes that Adam was her lover. That she has lost, another time, her love.

He's deeply embarrassed by her. He pities her. He knew of the biopsy, after the fact; Abigail had wanted to spare him as long as possible. Your damaged mom. Don't remember this breast, do you? I don't use it anymore, anyway. She feels her face tightening. A danger of laughing. And laughter is a hairsbreadth from hysteria.

The Madonna of the Rocks. Suddenly, Abigail remembers.

On one of their Manhattan excursions Adam took her to the Frick Museum, that beautiful setting, a setting for romantic love, where Beauty and the Beast (both were Adam's wry terms) might wander in their gilded fairy tale, untouched by Real Time; for Adam loved her, or seemed to love her, while keeping a certain distance from her, unworthy of love he'd claimed, he was unworthy of love, and of happiness, it was wrong of him to tangle himself in another's soul he said, but there Adam was pulling Abigail by the hand to position her before The Madonna of the Rocks, by an unknown Florentine artist, circa *; forcing her to gaze at the ethereal, waxy-skinned, somewhat fretful and peevish-looking Virgin Mary clutching a squirmy Holy Infant in her rather large hands; against a curious Magritte-landscape of rocks, boulders, sea cliffs, and a dramatically darkened sky; the Holy Infant's head was disproportionately large for his small shoulders, and his halo was alarmingly metallic, as luminous as the Virgin's. Abigail stood astonished and staring, before the centuries-old oil painting as before a mirror only just slightly distorted. Adam nudged her in his chummy way. "So, who's she remind you of, dear?" Abigail's first instinct was to laugh. "But I'm not-am I-like that? Her?" Abigail stammered, "-clutching at her baby with those hands? And that desperate- fanatic-look in their faces."

Virgin Mary and Holy Infant, gigantic figures in a rock-landscape.

Virgin Mary and Holy Infant, bathed in holy-or was it unholy?- light.

Beneath the Virgin's bare foot, a writhing, defeated, wicked-eyed serpent.

Adam said, "See? The snake? The Madonna of the Rocks has the power to subdue Satan. And so do you, Abigail."

The caressing-melting sound of Abigail in Adam Berendt's roughened voice. In memory, as at the time, Abigail feels a shiver of something like dissolution; her eyelids quiver shut.

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But what does it mean, she wonders: the power to subdue Satan?

She drains her glass of wine. It's another time. This unexpected place.

And Jared glaring at her as if he can read her dazed erotic mind. "Hey, Mom? How's about dessert?"

Jared dials room service to order for himself. Abigail is impressed, as she is at such times, by her son's capable manner. He can talk to desk clerks, airline personnel, taxi drivers, in mimicry of adult authority. More relaxed now, actually smiling at his mom. Hey. We get along O. K., it's weird!

But how long can Abigail hold on to her son, here? It's not even eight .. He will want to get back to the campus by nine. As usual Jared devoured his meal swiftly. Abigail hardly touched hers.

Day before yesterday, pondering this trip, Abigail went to the Salthill Bookstore under the pretext of buying some paperback novels to take along (she hasn't read Jane Austen in years, feels it's time to reimmerse herself in that sentimental-astringent seriocomic world of triumphant female will), but really she wanted to speak with Marina Troy; Marina, Abigail's most elusive Salthill acquaintance, whom she hadn't seen since the morning of Adam's cremation. Abigail hoped to commiserate with Marina, yes, she'd heard that Marina had been ill, was going to invite her to lunch to ask her, with some embarrassment, if as Adam's personal executor Marina had yet come upon any of Abigail's personal letters to Adam. Yes, I'm ashamed! Love letters written to a man who didn't respond. But-I couldn't help it. But this was a surprise, something of a shock, as soon as Marina Troy saw Abigail step into the store, the little bell tinkling over the door, she turned away, rigid and white in the face, distracted, nearly rude, flee-ing from both Abigail and another customer-"I'm sorry, I can't help you now. I'm too busy." Marina Troy in one of her ratty jumpers, bare-legged, unshaven legs, rust-red hair straggling down her back. Amid stacks of unsold books, some of them piled on their sides, on the warped-tile floor.

Those eyes! Brimming with tears of alarm and fury. In that instant Abigail saw the eccentric woman as a sister-mourner, a sister-widow. And a rival.

Is Marina jealous of me? And I, of her? Adam would have shaken his head at their folly, laughing.

Abigail says suddenly, as if this were the solution to a riddle she and Jared have been puzzling over, " 'Thwaite' was the name." Jared is eating pecan pie and vanilla ice cream, skimming TV channels. Mostly local Vermont news, which interests him not at all. He won't like it that the Mountain View Inn doesn't have cable, Abigail steels herself for his scorn.

Middle Age: A Romance *

"-the child in the river. The eight-year-old girl whom Adam tried to save."

Jared says, not looking at her, clicking fiercely through the small cycle of channels, " 'Tried to'-? He did."

"Well, he did. But-"

"What you sent me, in the papers, they're saying he did."

"Well, yes. He did."

"Mr. Berendt was, like, a hero. And those asshole kids, fooling around in a fiberglass sailboat, on the Hudson River!" Jared is almost speechless with disgust.

"It was," Abigail says slowly, conscious of the pitiful inadequacy of her words, "-an accident. Oh, God."

Jared says, "Some people think there aren't any accidents."

"Well, when you get older, you see, honey, there are. In this case the conjunction of-unsupervised children in a sailboat, and Adam, and Adam's personality, and his-cardiac condition."

Jared doesn't want to hear about Adam Berendt's cardiac condition.

Any discussion of the physical conditions of his elders, including even their ages, makes him squirm in adolescent mortification. To acknowledge that such old people have bodies-! Jared says disdainfully, "There's a 'Thwaite' at Preston, a guy. I don't know him." Almost inaudibly he mutters, "He's an asshole, too."

Abigail, who despises the Thwaite parents, the ignorant selfish strangers whose parental neglect precipitated a tragedy, feels she should defend them, as one erring parent might defend another, to lighten the charge against herself. "The parents are very-stricken. They've said so, publicly. The little girl, Samantha is her name-you wonder what she'll be told. That a man died for her."

Jared says, sharply, "Mr. Berendt didn't die for her, jeez, Mom! You exaggerate all the time. He didn't know who the hell she was, or any of them. He just did it. You know what he's-he was-like."

Was. Abigail shivers at that word, in Jared's mouth.

Abigail has had dreams of Thwaite, not that pretty little blond-haired girl whose picture was briefly in the local media, but Thwaite as an impersonal force like electricity, mud; a substance into which you fall, and sink, even as you struggle to escape; the muck into which Adam fell, and sank.

Unworthy of love, why? Unworthy of happiness, why? For a long moment, staring blindly at her angry-looking son surfing TV channels, punching at *

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the remote control with childish violence, Abigail can't speak. She feels how close she is to that dissolution, herself. A sudden turn of the car's wheel as she'd sped north along the interstate, oblivion in flaming wreckage against a concrete overpass upon which fading red graffiti proclaims * .*. '.

Well, Abigail Des Pres did not succumb. And will not.

Pouring herself another half-glass of this quite good, tart, thrilling burgundy.

For the fifth or sixth time Jared clicks onto a baseball game being played in some luridly bright-green space. "Fucking Mets. Those shits."

Clicks onto an overloud overbright advertisement for razor blades. Clicks onto an overloud overbright advertisement for- Abigail cries, exasperated, "Jared, God damn. Turn that damned thing off."

Jared clicks the set off and tosses the remote control down onto the carpeted floor with enough violence to break it.

Abigail laughs.

"Apollo! You should see that poor dog."

"What about Apollo?" Jared asks, immediately concerned.

Jared who has never had a dog of his own, loved Apollo. Walking with Adam above the river and in Battle Park, and Apollo trotting ahead. The husky-shepherd invariably barked excitedly at Jared's approach. Jared hugged the dog, buried his face in the dog's silvery coat. Once, appalled, Abigail witnessed her son who shrank from her kisses as from a bad taste, turn his face to Apollo's lavish tongue-stroking kisses, letting the dog lick even his eyes, his grinning mouth.

Abigail says quickly, "Apollo is-all right. He's heartbroken, of course.

He keeps turning up. People's houses. Early in the morning. Before we're awake. He brings us things of Adam's, an old glove, a shirt." Abigail has saved the old gnawed gardening glove, a talisman from the other world.

She recalls the mysterious scratching beneath her bedroom window: how could the dog know precisely where Abigail's bedroom is, in the sprawling house with six bedrooms upstairs, and a guest wing? Not Apollo, it's Adam.

But did Adam know the location of Abigail's bedroom?

Abigail sighs dreamily. Thinking of how a few days before his death she'd seized both Adam's hands in hers and kissed them and when he tried to escape she laughed and pressed his hands against her breasts saying, teasing Oh, what an old prude you are, you're ridiculous and she'd kissed Middle Age: A Romance *

Adam Berendt full on the lips, laughing even as she kissed him, feeling his sexual arousal, and Adam grunted, his face flaming red, and grabbed Abigail's elbows, and- Jared is asking, incensed, "But where is he? Where does he live? "

"Who?"

"Apollo!" Jared glares at her.

Abigail shakes her head to clear it. It's as if her head is a glass paper-weight, filled with snowflakes and a mysterious transparent liquid. "Oh, yes-Apollo. I think he stays with Camille Hoffmann most of the time.

Sometimes Marina Troy. I've tried to keep him, I feed him in the kitchen.

And he sleeps, sort of fitfully. Then he whines and sniffs around looking for-Adam, I guess. He has actually growled at me. When he can't find Adam, he scratches to be let outside, and I let him out, and he trots off sniffing. Poor thing." Abigail doesn't want to tell Jared that Apollo now limps, his left rear leg was injured.