But snow ceased falling by midnight, less than three inches accumulated. Pryde's snowplowing service did not show up.

The fell of dark. Not day. There was the dark-furred cat silhouetted against the snow. Marina stared from her window, as if the creature had called her name.

How brief days were. A patch of lighted cloud surrounded by gigantic storm clouds. Virtually no sun.

"Could mankind imagine a sun, if there'd never been a sun?"

But there was night, so reliable. There was Night.

The snow-creature outside her window. Its coat was thicker now with winter, and lustrous. Tufted ears, flattish owl-face, eyes glaring like reflectors. Marina. Marina!

"I must be terribly lonely. These delusions . . ."

Hair in her face as she crouched at the window. Crept like a clumsy animal from the darkened bedroom and into the next room, to another window, crouched at the sill, hoping to follow the big cat as it circled the house. If she made a careless gesture Night vanished.

Except: she was wakened from sleep by something making its stealthy way through dead leaves, where they'd been blown up against the house.

Marina left meat scraps for the cat. Though probably raccoons got there first. Behind a curtain she waited to see what creature approached, but none did, not so long as she was watching; yet in the morning the scraps were gone, the aluminum plates tossed rudely aside like trash. And in place of the food was the part-devoured carcass of a rabbit or squirrel.

Mangled bloody flesh-remains the size of a man's fist; how curious, the heart and inner organs had been removed as if with surgical precision, and left conspicuously in the snow beside the carcass. Sometimes Marina gagged, but always Marina looked. Night was leaving these for her.

W ** of the drafty old stone house Marina's things were accumulating.

The moth with wide ragged beautifully marked wings. Skeletons of

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birds delicate as lacework. Buttons prized from the cracks between floorboards. A baby's wooden rattle, green-glass doll's eyes. Newsprint smeared in rust-colored patterns like distant constellations. And more, small random things of no value that struck Marina's eye, touched at her heart.

She was a bird making a nest, of materials found close by. She was a pack rat, greedy and ingenious.

In the frigid air of early morning, her breath steaming, Marina took Polaroid shots of the things left for her in the snow behind the house.

Bloody mangled fetuses they seemed to her. A mockery of her childless-ness. Ugly, obscene, piteous the suffering of such defenseless creatures, Marina half-shut her eyes yet she was determined to take the photos, for this felt like fate.

The wild cat's footprints in the snow, amid the blood-trail, these too Marina photographed, in fascination.

Such things Marina Troy accumulated through her winter in the old stone house, stark square Polaroid prints on her windowsills, for what purpose?

Night, Marina was never to photograph.

A one day while searching for materials for Adam's sculptures, she discovered a box of mildewed papers.

It was a small cardboard box hidden amid tattered lawn furniture, filthy with cobwebs and mouse droppings. Most of the papers appeared to be badly faded computer printouts of columns of figures. Bank statements? If these belonged to Adam Berendt, there was no identification.

Eventually Marina came upon a name on another document: Ezra Krane.

Teasingly familiar, but Marina couldn't remember why. At the top of a printout from Revenue Canada-Statement of amounts paid or credited to nonresidents of Canada-there was another vaguely familiar name, Samuel Myers.

Marina continued to rummage through the printed documents, few of them of much interest, until by chance she saw a torn sheet of paper with familiar handwriting on it.

Adam's handwriting! Marina would recognize it anywhere.

But the name, the signature, was unknown to Marina- Middle Age: A Romance

-repeated in a column covering the page.

Why? Why would Adam sign another's name?

"Adam? Was 'Francis Xavier Brady'- you? ''

If so, keep the secret.

Who Brady was, where Brady came from, Adam hadn't wanted us to know.

If you love him keep his secret.

Yes?

Marina tore the paper into shreds. Though she would remember Francis Xavier Brady as keenly as if Adam himself had revealed it to her.

O * Marina plaited her hair carelessly, wound it around her head headache-tight and secured it with pins and pulled a wool cap low on her forehead. Pale and plain and capable-looking she was, in her trousers, boots, fleece-lined khaki jacket. She liked the relief of being sexless; at first glance she looked like any youngish guy in Damascus County, driving a Jeep. She drove through town and out onto the highway past the Timber Hill Ski Resort where in good weather skiers were visible from the road, flying down the dazzling white slopes fearless of accidents, injury. Marina envied these strangers their courage and their playfulness for it seemed to Marina that life required almost too much courage, and there was no time for play. She was in an anxious mood. She wasn't making much progress with Adam's sculptures, and

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why? How badly she wanted to complete them! She'd taped photos of his best work to her walls but these images weren't inspiring her. She was feeling constrained, intimidated, for under the spell of Adam's work she could only imitate him, yet of course she couldn't openly imitate him, that wasn't at all what she intended.

Adam Berendt's most successful sculpted pieces were blunt, clumsy-seeming yet to Marina's eye magical combinations of wildly disparate ele-ments. Scrap metal, wood, plastic, earth tones or transparencies, with abrupt, sometimes jarring touches. These might be whimsical sculptures or they might be starkly beautiful, they might be purposely ugly, disturbing. It had been Adam's intention to make them appear haphazard, but Marina knew there was nothing haphazard in their creation.

At the Shawnee Scrap Yard, Marina asked the bull-necked owner if she could look around. "My husband is a sculptor and he sends me out for materials," she said, and the proprietor regarded her with curiosity, saying, "We don't have 'sculpture' supplies here," and Marina said, "He doesn't want supplies, just things. 'Found' things. Anything." The proprietor shrugged and told Marina sure, look around all she wanted. Marina would see the man watching her from his trailer office as she drifted about the yard. She was trying to "see" with Adam's eyes. She'd had a week of frustrating days but was feeling optimistic now, in the open air.

It was Christmas week. A week of unbridled American optimism.

Though Marina wasn't celebrating Christmas, and had come to dislike the tyrannical holiday, she felt the Christmas buoyancy in the air. Even the Shawnee Scrap Yard was decorated with ugly flapping tinsel and a shiny red plastic Santa Claus perched on the trailer roof.

"Adam, what looks good? What do you like?"

She selected twisted, discolored pieces of metal from wrecked vehicles.

A cracked headlight, a stained floor mat, a broken stick shift. Badly rusted license plates. Kewpie dolls lewdly dangling from rearview mirrors, stiff with grime. Knobs, handles, mirror fragments. So much broken glass in this world, and much of it mirror fragments. The owner of the yard, who called himself Steve, came outside, to ask Marina if she needed help lug-ging these things to her Jeep and quickly she told the man thanks, but no, she was fine. And she was fine: she'd become strong, in her new arduous life. When she asked the man what she owed him he waved her away.

"Hell, ma'am, it's just junk. You're welcome to it." "But five dollars, at least? Please?" The man frowned, backing off; as if Marina had inadvertently offended him; but she too had been offended by the "ma'am"-it so Middle Age: A Romance

distanced her from the life of this community, set her off as a stranger, worse yet a tourist. She heard herself telling Steve that she and her husband lived close by, on Mink Pond Road north of Damascus Crossing, in an old stone house built in the *s; she heard herself asking (but why, why was she doing this!) if he'd ever met her husband Adam Berendt, and the man shook his head, no he didn't think so. Steve was younger than Adam but had Adam's stocky build and peely-flaky-burnt-looking skin. "I bet you've met him, a few years ago," Marina said, "he'd have come here, looking for things. 'Adam Berendt,' the sculptor."

" 'Berendt'?" Steve frowned as if trying seriously to remember but finally, no, he shook his head. "Guess not, ma'am. Sorry."

D then Marina wondered: why would it have mattered so much to her, that the scrap yard owner remember Adam?

"What is happening to me?"

P-C** * * at the Salthill Bookstore were "pretty good"-"some days bustling, almost"-"not too bad, considering." (Considering what, Marina wondered.) Molly Ivers cheerfully reported having to keep the store open until seven .., sometimes eight .. But even her cheery voice sounded frayed, like sound piped into the telephone receiver. Marina who'd wished to take the young woman's enthusiasm for granted felt a stab of dismay. Are we losing money? Going bankrupt?

The bookstore, like the village of Salthill and its suburban environs, had become remote to Marina, as an anesthetized part of one's body becomes remote; yet Marina knew, whether she felt pain or not, there might be pain to feel. The damned-"quaint"-bookstore was her livelihood, unless she quickly found another.

"That rude, pushy man who used to come in here asking about you, that lawyer, Cavanagh, I think his name is-he's stopped coming in. That's good news, Marina, at least!"

P*-C** * * at Home Depot, Kmart, Wal-Mart, Sears, JCPenney, Discount King . . . Marina drifted through the giant warehouse stores like a ghost among solid fleshy Brueghel figures. Why were

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these Americans so much more real than Marina Troy? And so many of them: pushing shopping carts heaped with merchandise, returning presents, making exciting new purchases at "slashed" prices. Christmas carols were still being piped loudly into stores, the holiday spirit prevailed. In January would come the slack, dead season, but not just yet.

Marina, a home owner, was alert too to bargains. She could not afford to scorn sales. Kitchen appliances slashed by percent, terrycloth towels in untidy heaps, women's waterproofed boots slashed by percent, snow shovels, mousetraps, shower curtains, underwear, television sets, carpet remnants slashed by 6 percent . . .

There must be something I want? Something I need?

Sometimes in the warehouse stores Marina thought she saw individuals she knew. At the far end of a crowded fluorescent-bright aisle there was Beverly Hogan with rouged cheeks and ash-blond hair shiny as a wig.

In Wal-Mart, a shock to see Beatrice Avery-but of course it couldn't have been Beatrice, the woman would never have set foot into a Wal-Mart anywhere. Yet Marina saw men who resembled Salthill acquaintances, she saw women who resembled glamorous Augusta Cutler, always at a distance. Crowds of shoppers blocked her view, loose-running children collided rudely with her, the piped-in Christmas music made her head ache.

Yes, she saw Adam Berendt, sometimes. She stared, and her vision wavered. Adam Berendt, heavier, shopping in Sears with his stout middle-aged wife, pausing to consider linoleum tile "drastically reduced" . . .

Marina turned blindly away. "Am I lonely? I am not lonely." In the parking lot between Sears and the garishly lighted Mexican Villa, Marina saw a couple seriously quarreling, the angry youngish man was Rick Pryde, with long straggly dark hair, drooping moustache and beard, in a crimson satin jacket with a black logo (wolf, wolverine) on the back; but this Rick Pryde didn't limp, and his voice was higher-pitched. The girl was young, no more than nineteen, with a full petulant-pretty face, very like the girl-cashier at the -Eleven in Damascus Crossing with whom Marina had brief, friendly exchanges. The quarrel appeared to be escalating by quick degrees. Marina, who never quarreled, Marina Troy, who was of a class, and in Salthill-on-Hudson an entire society, in which voices were never raised in public, listened in fascinated alarm. No man had ever, no man would ever, speak to her, Marina Troy, in such a way. "You bitch-" "God damn you, you can't-" "Listen, you-" "You listen-" "Fuck you, you listen-" Marina was standing beside the Jeep and unlocking the driver's Middle Age: A Romance

door slowly, distractedly. She seemed to have misplaced her gloves, her fingers were bare, chilled. It was very cold, gritty soiled snow underfoot, above the garish Christmas lights of the mall was an achingly clear night sky. Marina had driven to the Delaware River in daytime and had lingered, taking photographs in a trance, and on the way home she'd stopped impulsively at the East Stroudsburg mall, in no hurry to return to the drafty deserted house on Mink Pond Road. Now, so unexpectedly, she stood listening to strangers quarreling. The sexual fury of young people unknown to her. Don't get involved, Marina warned herself even as she positioned herself where the young man could see her, staring in his direction, for now he'd backed the girl against a car, and appeared to be twisting her arm; the girl was sobbing and slapping at him in a way that looked, to Marina, dangerously provoking. It was a movie or TV scene of a kind Marina Troy rarely saw and yet she spoke boldly-"Excuse me? Is something wrong?" Her voice sounded stronger than she felt. "What's happening there?" The face turned toward her was a variant of Rick Pryde's raw, male, aggrieved face, furious at being challenged. "This ain't none of your business, ma'am. Best mind your own fucking business, ma'am." His voice was heavy with sarcasm.

Marina's heart was beating violently. Never had she behaved in such a way. Yet she couldn't turn away as if nothing were happening. She asked the girl, "Is he hurting you? Do you need help?" The girl burst into louder sobs, broke suddenly away from the man in the crimson jacket, and ran clumsily to Marina. The young man cursed them both, but advanced only a few feet before he halted, for there were security guards at the mall, he wouldn't have wanted to draw their attention.

The girl begged, "Could you give me a ride, ma'am? I just want to get the hell out of here." Her young face was damp, swollen, flushed, with small close-set eyes luridly smudged with mascara. She was panting, hair in her face. It occurred to Marina to wonder if she and the angry young man were married.

What am I doing, this is a mistake!

But Adam too behaved recklessly. He, too, was brave.

Marina unlocked the Jeep, the girl clambered inside. There was Marina, hand trembling so badly she could barely insert the key into the ignition, starting the engine, and driving out of the lot as the young man shouted after them. Bitches! Cunts! It was a TV-movie scene. And how would it end, Marina had no idea. She would recall afterward that she'd

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been both excited and calm. Inappropriately calm perhaps. But how does one know how to act, how to behave, in such circumstances, what is appropriate behavior! She saw the crimson jacket, the furiously gesticulating man with the full moustache and beard, following briefly after the Jeep, his face contorted with rage, and his fists clenching and unclenching.

Then Marina left him behind, driving the Jeep bumpily along the shoulder of an access road. Traffic lights swirled and spun toward her. Not knowing what she did she ran a red light. Now she was driving on a county highway, a sobbing girl, a stranger, beside her. The girl was muttering, "I hate him. Hate hate hate him." Striking her thighs with her fists.

Marina offered to drive the girl home but the girl seemed not to hear. "All he wants, ma'am, the bastard wants to hurt me, he don't show up and I'm the one to blame. I wish we were both dead."

Marina drove blindly, not knowing what to do, or to say. In the face of such emotion. She appeared to be headed south toward the city of Stroudsburg, in the opposite direction of Damascus Crossing; it was past seven o'clock. The sobbing girl took up so much space! As if a giant baby had climbed into the Jeep, bursting out of her tight showy-sexy clothes.

Big-hipped, with a large glistening face like a glaring moon, and hair that looked electrified. The girl wore designer jeans with metallic studs, a smart fawn-colored suede jacket opened over a cheap yellow sweater that fitted her young, jutting breasts snugly; there were numerous glittering studs in both her ears, and what looked like a tiny pearl pierced into her left eyebrow. She smelled of cigarette smoke and hair spray, spilled beer and hot female anguish. Quarreling with her lover had aroused her, clearly; her eyes were dilated and her nostrils widened. Marina could hear her harsh breathing.

Another time Marina asked where she should drive the girl, yet still, stubbornly, the girl seemed not to hear. She was incensed, indignant. "He hurt me, the fucker. You saw it, ma'am! I've got witnesses! He's got no right."

Marina asked, "How did he hurt you?"

"Different ways! All kinds of ways."

"Should we go to the police, then? Should I stop, and call the police, and report him?"

Now the girl turned to look frankly at Marina. Her expression was one of mild shock. "Jesus God, no! No ma'am, no cops." With an air of disgust she said, "He's a cop, Christ sake. And so's his brothers."

Afterward Marina would think calmly He could trace my license plate Middle Age: A Romance

number. If he's a police officer. He could find me, if he wanted to. But at the moment, she had no thought for anyone except the sobbing girl beside her.

They stopped finally at a diner. The girl wanted to get cleaned up, and make a telephone call.

It was a large place, noisy with mostly young customers and blaring rock music, brightly lit as a stage set. They were given a rear, corner booth.

Never would Marina learn where the girl lived. Her first name was Lorene, she refused to disclose more. "You're not, like, a social worker, are you, ma'am?" Biting her thumbnail, crinkling her forehead so that her soft doughy skin puckered alarmingly. "Like-for the county?"

Marina laughed. "No, I am not. I'm a private citizen."

"Not from around here, though?"

"Yes. I live near Damascus Crossing."

The girl shook her head doubtfully. As if she'd never heard of Damascus Crossing. "You don't sound like from around here. Or look like from around here."