"She had the most heart, that's for sure. Good race." He coughed and reached up to unbutton the pocket of his shirt. "Hey, Niece, maybe you could help." I reached in to his pocket and found the vial and unscrewed the top. My uncle opened his mouth and I tried not to breathe in the blast of his breatha"cigarettes, beer, Chinese heart medicine, old-man decaya"as I slipped the pill under his tongue.

The band was playing "Blue Moon of Kentucky."

"So much excitement." Uncle Richard's color was still off but he was smiling. He took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose, trying to be casual. The gesture reminded me of Carey. "Next time we sit upstairs in the air-conditioned part. I take you to the infield because it's your first time, you want to see the dogs close up."

"I really think we should go home now."

"What if I really have a heart attack? Can you drive fast to the hospital? How fast can you drive? Can you break speed limit?"

"Not funny. Remember the boy who cried wolf."

"I don't fake, Niece." Uncle Richard put on his glasses and leaned forward in the plastic seat to scrutinize yet another batch of racers. "Who do you pick this time?"

"I don't want to play anymore."

"You with this power, you don't want to use. Okay, okay. We go home now." He got up, brushed off the seat of his pants. "How much money you lose?"

I told him.

"Not too bad. You are cautious, like a crab."

"What about you?"

"I net about what you lose, so we just break even."

"It was fun."

"Yeah. More fun make money."

"Better than losing."

"You are funny, Niece. You expect to lose. No gambler's spirit."

We collected my uncle's winnings at the window and went back to say good-bye to his friend, who was in a good mood because Shady Lady had performed so well. He let me give her a Milk-Bone and she licked my hand. She was just a normal dog, way too normal to be racing.

In the car I was already beginning to feel like an old hand, easing us around the lot to the arrowed exit. The little Toyota had its quirks, like the way it would slip out of gear between first and second, but I was learning to put that little extra pressure on the heel of my hand while pulling back. At the exit, as I waited for a window in the traffic I told myself, Watch it, Sally. You're not totally yourself yet. Your reflexes aren't up to snuff.

As if contradicting my thoughts, Uncle Richard said: "Good driver," and I looked at him and saw that his eyes were beginning to blur over again. He manipulated his seat back, loosened the parrot tie. "Okay, back to the movie. What happens to the good couple?"

I made the turn out of the parking lot and we were on our way back to town. "Well, they get together, you know, and it's obvious they're having an affair and their spouses are furious, but they don't care, they're happy. They deserve each other. She cuts his toenails in bed."

"What?"

"They meet in a hotel room and she loves him so much she says she wants to trim his toenails."

"Boy-oh-boy."

"What?"

"So French." The traffic was getting sluggish, it was four o'clock already, the start of rush hour. "Could you turn up AC, Niece?"

I fumbled around the dashboard. "It's already cranked up to high. Are you sure you're okay? I'll take you to the emergency room. Or we can stop somewhere and I can phone your doctor."

"I tell you, Niece, I'm fine now. And don't mention to your aunt, you hear me?"

"Uncle Richard, she's worried about you."

"Yeah, yeah, you just see, she die before me, she kill herself with worry."

I flicked on the radio. Warmer tomorrow, less humidity, and then some news about a guy who had set his girlfriend on fire and stuffed her charred body into the trunk of his car. He was being arraigned on charges of first-degree murder. I turned the radio off and we drove in silence. I thought my uncle had fallen asleep when he suddenly said: "It's funny, Niece, how you two, you and your sister, both turn out to be artistic type. Everyone always think one of you be a scientist, like your father."

"I know."

"You hear what they tried to do in PRC," Uncle Richard continued. "Remember the Four Modernizations! Everyone in the country is gonna be scientist at the turn of the century. Or businessman."

"Well, that's kind of sad. What about the artists and intellectuals?"

"You know your ma-ma always say you're made to be a surgeon. Because of your hands."

"Uh-huh."

"Whatever it was, we knew you were gonna be something special." My uncle cleared his throat and then he said, "You want to know about your father. I tell you this: if his luck is better he'd be very famous. You should be proud of an ancestor like that. You should live up to inheritance."

"Uncle Richard, I don't even like science."

"That's not what I mean. You have good genes. Brilliance of your father, tough character of your mother. No reason in the world to waste."

"Last chance," I said. We were passing the hospital with the palm trees.

My uncle ignored me. "I waste my life. You see me? I end up in Florida, who knows where this is, live on pension and disability, gamble away my money. But you, you could do anything. What an education you have. What connection. All this American stuff."

"Okay, okay."

We drove in silence for a while and then Uncle Richard sighed. "You are a good girl. Your aunt always tells me this, what a good girl you are. No more old-uncle lectures."

When we got back to the house I realized that there was no point in even trying out our movie story. We hadn't fooled Aunty Mabel at all. "Ding-ah!" she said, and gave me, what was for her, a dirty look. She made him go to bed immediately. There was already a pot of medicine bubbling on the stove.

19.

Dear Fran: Yep, this is the year we hit twenty-eight, two years till the big three-oh. Thanks for the birthday card. Still vegging away in the sun but I am drawing a little. My uncle has to go for some tests, but they think he's going to be okay. Talk to you when I get back.

Love, Sally While Aunty Mabel took Uncle Richard over to the hospital every day for a week, I ran what errands I could for her on foot: grocery shopping, bank, dry cleaninga"kind of like I'd planned to do for Ma in New Haven before I got sicker. Suburban therapy. I trimmed the hedges in front of the house using giant power clippers borrowed from the pastel lady next door. Lally Escobar would have been proud. But my piece de resistance was the garage. I covered it with a fresh coat of Antique Blue and even did a little scallop design on the eaves in off-white.

Aunty Mabel was impressed. "Like professional!" She'd finally forgiven me for the greyhound expedition.

I contemplated quitting New York City and becoming a house painter. It wouldn't be the worst of fates. I'd be a nice dumb girl with muscles.

Mornings, before the humidity got too mind-numbing, I went out into the backyard with my sketch pad, like I had on Woodside Drive as a teenager. Only now I was doing automatic drawing, something I'd learned way back at RISD and never appreciated until recently. A trick to plumb the depths, like stream-of-consciousness writing. I'd started keeping the pad on my nightstand in the hospital, and more mornings than not, as soon as I'd wake up I'd start to scribble. These drawings were completely abstract, full of floaty pieces and jagged, broken-off lines. I had no idea what they were about.

Later in the day I drew from life. The vegetation in Florida had a wildness to it, things would grow rampant the minute you turned your back.

In the house I drew my uncle asleep on the sofa under the violet and kelly green afghan, the black cat a ragged splotch at his feet, his wire-framed half glasses splayed on the teeming coffee table before him. I drew my aunt, a tall thin shadow with no features, standing out on the patio shading her eyes and gazing out onto the back lawn, which was already beginning to look unruly again.

One lazy afternoon after lunch I was out on the patio, having given up on the St. Pete Times and wondering what was up with Mel, since I hadn't heard from him. My uncle's tests were finally over and I could hear him in the house on the phone to his bookie while my aunt was out grocery shopping. A few minutes later the sliding doors scraped open.

"Hey, Niece!" Uncle Richard was carrying a tray. He had made us iced tea in plastic glasses with watermelons on them, and there were plum candies in a cereal bowl. "I know your aunt uses special dish, but I can't find." He set the tray down on the frosted glass tabletop and pulled up the second chaise alongside mine. "Look at us, the two invalids! Not such a bad life, eh?"

I plucked a candy and undid the waxy wrapping. Most of my American friends hated these. Who wanted salt and a hint of bitter when they expected sweet?

"I've only gained about ten pounds since I've been here," I said.

"Good, good! Men don't like too skinny, you know."

"I'm not looking for a man, Uncle Richard."

"Sometimes you don't look, you find." He sipped his tea and smacked his lips. "Lipton's mix. You don't tell your aunt. So what's wrong with that husband of yours? Why you get divorce?"

"It was time, Uncle Richard. We both changed too much."

Uncle Richard frowned. He knew this was bullshit.

The truth was, I'd run away.

Safety was what I was looking for, and safety was what I thought I'd found. Carey Acheson. The name had the comforting resonance of old money. Bourbon money, I found out later. We met at a lounge party at Brown when I was a freshman, dragged up the hill by a RISD roommate. My father had just died, I was listless in my classes, dreaming of I don't know what. Carey was a junior, a gangly slow-talking molecular biologist from Cincinnati, prep school all the way. That he was even attracted to me was amazing, given my own boarding school experience, although that summer on the Cape Fran and I had perfected our slumming in local bars, flashing the IDs that proclaimed that we were newly eighteen and of drinking age. That was back when eighteen was the drinking age.

The first time we made love Carey whispered in my ear: "I want to be where you've been." Goat's Head Soup was blasting to cover up the noise from his apartment mate's room next door, to cover up what we were about to do. I thought of Marty and Schuyler.

"You don't know where I've been."

Starfucker starfucker starfucker star.

He began unbuttoning my shirt.

Of course it was different from Monkey King. First, I knew what was going on. Mutual consent. And I liked it, a little. Although I wasn't lying when I said it hurt, much more than I'd expected.

At one point Carey asked: "Are you sure you're a virgin?"

I stared at the green light of the stereo. The music had gone off. "Of course I'm sure."

"It doesn't seem like it."

It's Carey, I told myself. A boy you know.

I shut my eyes and pretended I was my sister.

When it began to get light I put my clothes back on and I: walked back down the hill to my dorm. I was exhausted and I queasy, but I had done it, taken the first step to breaking the spell.

My mother looked Carey in the eye and loved him. We drove down from Providence one Saturday night to have dinner with her. It was just the three of us, since Marty was away for the weekend. Ma and I were in the kitchen clearing up while Carey, seated at my father's place in the dining room, was smugly polishing off the Burgundy we'd brought. He knew he'd been a hit.

"It's a good thing he's scientist," said Ma. Then she turned on the tap full force so I couldn't say anything. It reminded me of when I was small and she'd be lecturing me about something in the car. Just as I was about to answer she'd say, "Not now, Sal-lee, I have to concentrate on this turn."

But this time I continued covering bowls of leftovers with plastic wrap until she turned off the water, and then I asked, "What does that mean, it's a good thing he's a scientist?"

"You are a dreamy artist," Ma said, pointing at me with a wet finger. She was wearing a navy-and-brown-checked dress for the occasion, and her cheeks were slightly flushed from the wine. I hadn't seen her look so good since Daddy's death. "Scientist is down-to-earth. This is a good match."

It was true that on the outside Carey was perfecta"intelligent, well-bred, and much more handsome than I deserved. He'd sung in the church choir when he was little, attended two boarding schools (he'd gotten kicked out of the first one for growing pot in his closet, but I didn't tell Ma that). His parents were social register.

"Carey's so dignified," Ma told me. "I think your daddy would have liked him."

True to character, Carey got into every grad program he'd applied to but decided on Columbia because it was in New York City. We'd been going out a little over a year, and I knew this was the best shot I'd ever have. It was I who proposed to him, over a late breakfast between classes at a greasy spoon on Thayer Street, although he'd first put the idea into my head by implying that I'd like sex better if we were married. When he asked me about my own plans for school I said I didn't mind dropping out of RISD, I was sure I could get into Parsons.

"Well," he said. He shook his head and smiled. "I guess I could picture us." He put his fingertips on either side of my chin and brought my face close to his. "For the rest of my life, every morning waking up to this. Yes, I can see it."

That was about as romantic as Carey got. I remember that the waitress was clearing the table next to ours, making a huge clatter, and I felt like telling her to get lost, but that would have made things worse.

I never got around to applying to Parsons, I guess I was sick of school. I got hired as a pasteup artist at the first place I interviewed, a small advertising agency whose specialty was toy accounts. My first big break came when they gave me a brochure for a new game, something to do with the alphabet and the names of different dinosaurs. I stayed late every night for a week, rifling through everyone's type books, deconstructing letters into reptilian shapes. The result was a collage that got me promoted out of the pool to assistant designer.

Carey and I lived cozily in one of those rambling university housing apartments between Broadway and Riverside. After dinner, if he didn't have a night lab, he'd take me into his lap and surprise me with presents from gift shops in the neighborhood, odd and mysterious things, like a bowl made of lava, or brass earrings crafted by an Italian monk.

The sex got better, but what I loved most about Carey, what I missed about him after the divorce, was simply his physical presence. Nights, I'd wait for him. Even if I fell asleep, some part of me would still be waiting, anticipating the dip of the mattress, the heat of his body. I knew this always, even through my dreams.

The second phase of our marriage, what I later thought of as the yuppie phase, was marked by Carey receiving his doctorate and a tenure-track teaching position at Columbia. By that time my agency had expanded and merged with a Madison Avenue one, and I'd been promoted from designer to director. It's only now that I understand I was throwing myself into my job the way I'd thrown myself into painting at boarding school. I did it in order to numb the monster inside me, the one who wanted to murder Monkey King but instead ended up trying to murder herself.

We moved ten blocks downtown and over to Riverside into a fifteenth-floor co-op. One Saturday I started looking through my old boxes and found brushes and paints, which prompted me to set up a skeleton studio in the spare room that was supposed to be the nursery for our future progeny.

It's funny how all the big decisions I'd ever made were about escape. Maybe that's why I was able to make them so quicklya"they were all basically the same decision. While Carey was away at a conference I went down to Charlottesville to visit Marty. God knows how she'd ended up there, something to do with an old boyfriend, like all her expeditions. I hung around in the old blues club where she was tending bar, Miss Exotic, the sleek mink in a pen full of mice. "What about your acting?" I asked.

"They let me sing here, sometimes. It's worth it. It's experience." She was smoking a lot, to roughen her voice. Give it character, she said. I remember this: she had an Ace bandage wrapped around her left wrist.

"What's that?" I asked.

"Coffee burn."

She was lying, but I didn't call her on it.

I returned to the city, dropped my bags in the living room, and stood there in the dark looking out at our spectacular view: the midnight blue Hudson with the George Washington Bridge stretching jeweled and serene to the north into New Jersey. But when I turned on the light I was surrounded by the oppressive furniture of my life: the dining room table with its six walnut chairs whose flowered upholstery took Carey's great-aunt twelve years to embroider, an elaborate teak sideboard with baroque scrollwork, ancient pale Oriental rugs, and four extremely ugly table lamps in the shape of bucking horses which Carey adored. The shelves were crammed with textbooks, lab notebooks, and boxes upon boxes of slides my husband had shot of the new kind of bacteria that had been the subject of his thesis. There was not a whisper of me in this room. I might as well have not been living there at all.

I played back the answering machine tape. There was a message from Carey, which I buzzed past. I changed into my painting clothes and went into my studio and started scraping away at an old canvas so I could start again. I was twenty-six years old and I wanted to start again.

Youdon't know how to give in. You don't know how to love like a wife has to love.

Maybe Ma had been right.

I came home from work the next day and saw my husband's suit bag draped over the sofa and his shoes side by side on the carpet, heard the shower running. I sat down in the living room and waited till he was on the way to the bedroom, towel wrapped around his waist.