"Christ! I didn't hear you come in." He padded toward me making wet footprints, and I thought he looked just like a dog, all brown-eyed and hopeful.

"We have to talk," I said.

"Okay, okay, let me put on a robe and my glasses. Did you get my message?"

"Uh-uh." He looked perplexed and then went to the bedroom while I steeled myself. When he came back I said, "I think we should try living separately for a while."

He looked absolutely floored and I felt cruel but continued. "I've been thinking things over. I'm not happy, Carey. I don't know whether it's us or what. I think I need some time away so I can think things out."

"Sally. Dear." That was his only endearment, and a rare one. He sat down on the sofa beside me. "Being alone is going to let you think more clearly? I don't understand that."

"Well, it's true. Maybe not for you, but for me."

"We can see a marriage counselor. There's no need for hasty decisions."

"We can see a counselor, but I still want my own apartment. I just need to be by myself for a while. Is that so much to ask?"

"Look, I told you anytime you want, you can just quit working. Don't you want a baby? I thought you wanted a baby."

He sounded simpleminded. I gripped my hands into fists. "I'm not talking about ending anything, Carey. I'm talking about a break."

My husband looked down at the floor, noticed that his wing tips were out of alignment, straightened them, and then said, "Okay, Sally. If that's what you really want. We'll try it. How long were you thinking of?"

"Six months."

He folded his arms across his chest. "Do you think you can find a place to rent for six months?"

"I don't mind breaking a lease."

"You're sure of this now?"

"Yes."

"All right." He was being so reasonable I wanted to scream, pick up one of his damn shoes, hurl it across the room, and shatter a horse lamp. But I didn't. We just sat there in silence for a while and then he leaned over and said softly: "Sally." My stomach clenched.

"How can you want that now?" I asked him. "How can you even think it?"

"If we're going to be living aparta""

"No," I said. And it was as simple as that.

I was happy, at first. I went out with people in my office, who said, "God, Sally, we always thought of you as such the perfect little wife, and now here you are acting crazy like the rest of us." I played pool, started wearing my skirts a little shorter, but not too short. I was not the one with great legs. Ma called every night. Carey had been talking to her, he was such a responsible, generous husband, he loved me so much. After I hung up with Ma, I'd call Fran. "I feel so free," I said.

"Then stay free."

"I want rapture."

"Then hold out for it, honey."

My husband did not let me alone. He sent me roses, took me out to every new restaurant that opened in town. It was the courtship we'd never had. I gained weight, from those dinners and from all the beer I was drinking on pool nights. Carey said I looked terrific. "Could you be, maybe you're. . .?" he asked me once.

"I'm not pregnant," I told him.

Six months turned into eight. Neither of us had done anything about counseling.

"I want you home," he said. We were at a Tex-Mex place in Chelsea, where the food was so beautiful, blue corn everything and every color pepper you could think of, that it seemed a pity to eat it.

"I can't," I said. "I need more time."

"I need a wife," he said. Nothing more. I should have known. I didn't hear from him for three weeks and then he called me at the office. "My lawyer will be in touch with you."

"Why?" Panic did not begin to describe how I felt.

"I want a divorce."

"Have you met someone?"

"I want a divorce," he repeated.

I thought: so it begins, you asked for it, Sally, here it is.

It never occurred to me to try to win him back.

When I told this to Uncle Richard, naturally I left out the sex parts. He kept saying, "Mmmhmm, mmmhmm" until I realized that he hadn't said it for a while. When I looked over he was fast asleep, his mouth open, the big belly rising and falling gently, one hand dangling childishly over the chaise as if he had dropped off in the middle of reaching for his glass of iced tea.

20.

The calamondin was ripe, practically falling off the bush, and the day after my tete-a-tete with Uncle Richard I decided to pick them. In terms of worms and insects they had fared better than the grapefruita"every third one or so was salvageable. Aunty Mabel saw what I was doing and came out to help. It was around three o'clock, nearly one hundred degrees, and I was wearing Schuyler's T-shirt and shorts, now paint stained, my hair tucked up into a bun under the Derby Lane hat. As we were stooped there, working, we heard a car zoom by the house, stop, back up, and then the spray of gravel as it slid into our driveway.

"Plumber not supposed to come till tomorrow," Aunty Mabel said.

I didn't recognize the car, an old teal Oldsmobile, but why would I, I'd never seen Mel out of the hospital, I didn't know what he drove.

"Christ! You never called, you said you would call."

"Good to see you, too, honey." He was slightly smaller than I'd remembered, leaner, and as he removed his Ray-Bans I saw faint laugh lines that surprised me. The gold stud in his left lobe had been replaced by a pale sapphire that seemed especially picked for the Florida light. So neat, everything about him just so. A sight for sore eyes. He leaned to kiss me on the cheek and then he held out his hand to my aunt, who had come up, frowning, fruit gathered in the corner of her apron.

"Mel LaMonte. Mrs. Ding, it's a pleasure to meet you. Sally's told me so much about you."

My aunt fussed with her hair a little, pushed her own sunglasses up on top of her head, shook his hand. How could I have forgotten the pure charm of him, those manners that would have put any of the snide New York boys I'd hankered after as a teenager to shame.

I said, "We'd invite you in, but my uncle's resting."

"No problem. We'll go to the beach. Get your bathing suit."

I turned back to my aunt, who flapped her hand at us. "Qu,qu, qu."

"But what about the fruit?"

"One more teeny-weeny bush, big deal, I can do."

He'd driven two days, stopping the night in North Carolina where a friend of his lived. He had a billion friends, something else I'd forgotten about him.

"How'd you know I was still here?" I asked him. "Why'd you take the chance and come all the way down without calling?"

"You're never going to believe this, but I ran into your sister."

"Marty?"

"On Chapel Street, in New Haven. She's kind of hard to miss, with that sling and everything. She was awfully friendly."

"I'll bet."

"I told you, honey, with her it's so much surface. With you, on the other handa""

"Make a left here."

"Where are we going?"

"My favorite beach. But we kind of have to sneak in."

"I love it."

Mel was a graceful driver, maneuvering the tanklike Olds as adroitly as if it were my aunt and uncle's Toyota. This was his dad's car, he explained, he was sorry it didn't have air-conditioning. I didn't care. It was romantic with the windows rolled all the way down. He had his arm along the back of the seat, right behind my neck, and I could feel all the little hairs there rise in response. I felt like the kind of teenager I'd always wanted to be, the kind that Marty and Darcy had been. The radio was on, a song that was popular that spring, about a girl being the captain of a guy's heart. Mel hummed along and then he laughed. "I think I've heard this idiotic tune two thousand times since I left Connecticut. Why so quiet, Sal?"

"It's just so strange to see you out of the hospital. Like two worlds colliding or something."

"You look great," he said. "Like a Tahitian princess. Like that French artist, what's his name."

"Gauguin."

"Yeah. Gauguin."

"So how is everyone at Willowridge?"

"Well, the MHs are the same. There's this new guy, Colin, from England, who's into Gestalt and makes everyone play these games where you have to say stuff like: I am this Coke bottle and I feel empty. Everyone in our group is gone except for old Doug."

"What's up with him?"

"They want to discharge him, but he obviously can't live with his mom, and his father won't take him. And you know how he feels about halfway houses."

"So what's going to happen?"

"I have no idea. He's going to have trouble finding a job, that's for sure, with the way he looks now."

"How about Rachel?"

"Her parents packed her off to some spa in Germany."

"I can see it. She'll probably meet a rich Italian count there and live happily ever after. What about Lillith? Has anyone heard from Lillith?"

"Didn't you get the postcard?"

"What postcard?"

"She sent you a p.c. at Willowridge, I thought they'd forwarded it. She's out, honey, back at that place she was living before."

"That's good, I suppose."

"I thought about stopping by on my way down here, but I wanted to make good time. I guess I'll go see how she's doing when I get back."

We parked in the lot across from the Don Ce Sar. I'd asked Aunty Mabel which beach we had gone to the time we came down to visit as kids, and she told me that it had been turned into a resort on Gulf Boulevard. Private, for guests only. A couple of days ago I'd cased it out for myself. The main building was huge, sprawling, and pink, in a kind of faux-mission style, like something out of Disneyland. I'd parked on the street and peeked into the glass doors of the lobby. It had seemed almost deserted.

"You better lose those earrings," Mel said to me, so I took them off and put them in the glove compartment. I'd already changed into my Montgomery Ward bathing suit back at the house. When we strolled through the air-conditioned lobby in our ratty outfits, we got looks from the personnel, but I didn't care because I was with Mel. Somehow he inspired me to bend the rules. Out back, we took off our shoes and strolled along the water, digging our toes into the talcum white sand I remembered. Seagulls, smaller and scruffier and darker than their northern counterparts, stalked along the waves as we passed.

I could have walked all afternoon, but Mel had the sailing bug. We found a concession stand with boats for hire. He bargained with the guy. A Sunfish was too small, but it was late in the day, how about a Hobie Cat for half price? We would stay in sight, the guy didn't have to worry. The boat Mel picked was fancy with a striped saila"blue, red, yellowa"and as we dragged it over the sand to the water he explained to me that what looked like skis on it were pontoons, for speed.

"How fast are we going to go, anyway?"

"Live a little, Sal. This isn't the real ocean, anyway, no one's going to be racing."

We cast off on a little foamy wave, and there was so much to do, Mel yelling orders and me trying not to get creamed by the boom, that by the time I looked back to shore the red and white umbrellas in front of the resort were the size of mushrooms. I could barely make out the people sitting sipping their drinks. The sea sped by us on both sides with a rushing noise. Mel peeled off his T-shirt and tied it around his waist, and I did the same, since there was nowhere to put anything, no little hooks or holes. He was right, this was a boat built for speed and nothing else, like the greyhounds with their stylized proportions.

"Isn't this fun?" Mel yelled.

"Are you going to be able to steer us back to shore?"

"What do you think this is?" He had his hand on the rudder. "C'mon, take the helm for a while." He pointed out the telltale flag, showed me how to gauge wind direction. I steered watching the tip of the mainsail, and he said, "No, no, keep an eye on the coast. That's the only way to really tell how you're doing. Wanna see something cool?" He handed me his sunglasses and then clambered over to the prow. I watched him ease himself over the right pontoon and, leading with his chest, grip onto it with both arms and then both legs, making himself an extension of the boat. The catamaran listed violently and I instinctively leaned back hard, to correct it. The waves washed over Mel's head, drenching his hair, and he blinked saltwater at me, grinning. The drops made his lashes starry. "Now you try it," he called.

"Are you crazy?"

"C'mon, darling."

"No way."

"I saw those biceps, honey. I know you're strong enough. I dare you."

He wriggled back onto the body of the boat and made his way back to the tiller. I gulped a deep breath and went forward and tried to do exactly as he had done. Once I got my arms in the water I was nearly swept away by the force of it, and then and only then did I realize how fast we were actually going. I kept on, sliding inch by inch over the slick surface. I could see the headline in the St. Pete Times: "Ex-Crazy-House Inmate Drowns in Freak Gulf Accident." There was spray in my mouth, in my eyes. The muscles on the insides of my thighs, my forearms, had a life of their own, they were in a state of permanent contraction.

"You look like a figurehead."

"I don't give a shit what I look like." My Derby Lane cap spun off my head and was lost forever, and then I could feel the knot of hair at my nape loosening. I was damned if I'd let go to do anything about it. "Can you slow this thing down so I can get off?"

I heard him laughing, as if that were the funniest thing I had said so far. "Okay, now one arm and one leg."