She had also always been interested in cooking. Her mother had been an excellent cook, and she had learned a great deal working for professional cooks and bakers on her summer vacations. As the kids demanded less of her time she began to harbor vaguely commercial ideas. There was, she knew, a sense of inadequacy fermenting inside her, although she consciously resisted seeing herself as the traditional woman, which, she thought, was a cruel label hung on some females by their more zealous sisters.

She had designed the kitchen with a commercial idea in mind. Oliver was enormously supportive, although she was never quite sure whether he was merely patronizing her or really believed in her ability to make it as a caterer. Nevertheless, he threw himself into the idea with vigor, devoting his weekends to every aspect of the kitchen's construction. With his knowledge of electric circuitry and craftsmanship, he gave the contractors a fit. She, in self-defense, learned to decipher much of the background mysteries about how things worked and had even become quite proficient in changing washers, tightening faucets, cleaning grease traps, and repairing the garbage disposal. One Christmas he had even given her her own tool chest. For years he had taught her how to use them in his own bas.e.m.e.nt workshop and she had helped him build the sauna and the adjoining shower, done without the help of a contractor. They had also restripped and finished some of their antique furniture together.

As an upwardly mobile lawyer building his law practice, he traveled frequently, but managed to keep his weekends reasonably sacrosanct. The house, they both knew, enclosed the real limits of their world and they sought out things connected with the house that they could do together. Like indoor gardening, although their interests splintered eventually as he began to cultivate orchids and she continued with her Boston ferns and African violets.

The pro side was, indeed, considerable. They had tried to get the children to share their interests but their lives, it seemed, were on another tack, although both parents believed that the exposure would stand them in good stead as adults.

There were other pros as well. He was intelligent, attractive, articulate, humorous, with a wide variety of intellectual, as well as material, interests. And she did bask in the joy of his colleagues' and clients' approval, despite the occasional jealous b.i.t.c.hiness of their wives.

So, then, she asked herself - or was the question directed to the chicken whose skin she now rolled away from the carca.s.s as if it were a sweater? - why did I not come?

She detached the lower part of the main wing bone with shears so that the lower end of the bone would slide along with the skin. Then, carefully, she began to detach the fibers from the carca.s.s. When the skin reached the middle part of the drumstick, she severed the bone and detached the skin, repeating the operation on the other drumstick. The tail came off with the whole skin and she snipped it free with the shears.

Satisfied with her handiwork, she flattened the skin on the cutting board and began to mend what had inadvertently become torn, then she banged it flat with the side of a cleaver.

'Because I didn't give a d.a.m.n,' she cried out to the chicken's denuded carca.s.s. She felt a ball of anger growing inside her, swirling about for definition, detesting its* inarticulateness. She searched her mind for reasons.

'I must have reasons,' she whispered as the anger burst into the reality of the kitchen and she banged the pointy edge of the cleaver into the wooden cutting surface, scarring it irrevocably.

What she really wanted after she had received the first call from the hospital was for him to die. That was the absolute truth of it. She wanted him to expire, to be eliminated from her life as painlessly as possible, extracted like a rotten tooth.

Oliver dead? The idea frightened her and she shuddered. Surely the thought was an aberration. To wish him dead implied hatred. Hatred? Such a response seemed inhuman. She swallowed hard and her body shook. But she could not suppress the urgent clarity. She had, indeed, hoped he would die.

6.

Oliver barely remembered the cab journey over Memorial Bridge, the swing around Lincoln Memorial, past the State department, around Washington Circle. All these landmarks pa.s.sed in front of him like indistinct photographs. Ann had apparently been watching from a front window and had opened the door before he inserted his key. The mahogany clock in the hallway read two minutes to six, he noted as he dropped his briefcase on the marble floor. Even in his semiconscious drugged state in the hospital, he remembered he had heard the chimes in his mind like ancient echoes.

'Josh is at basketball practice. Eve is at her ballet cla.s.s. Barbara is delivering an order of pate. pate.' There was a note of apology in her tone and her face searched his, betraying anxiety. There was a note of apology in her tone and her face searched his, betraying anxiety.

'I'm fine,' he said. 'Perhaps I look a little pale.''A little.'

He walked back to the sun-room to see his orchids, which, like him, had miraculously survived. He felt the soil around the root, which was still damp.

'Not to worry. Daddy's home,' he whispered to the flowers.

He went up to his bedroom, undressed, debated whether or not to use the sauna, then opted for a long hot shower instead. For some reason he felt the need to shock himself, hoping it might chase the depression. He turned off the hot water and turned on the cold. His skin tingled and for a moment he had to catch his breath, but the pain did not return, and he wondered if he missed it, like an old friend.

Barbara burst into the bathroom as he toweled himself, and kissed him on the lips. He drew her to him and enclosed her against his damp body.

'It scared the s.h.i.t out of me,' he whispered into her chestnut hair, stifling a sob. The warmth of her was rea.s.suring.

'It must have been awful,' she said, insinuating herself out of his embrace. His body was damp and it had wet her blouse, which she unb.u.t.toned now. Watching her, he noted that she studied her face in the bathroom mirror, throwing back an errant strand of hair.

'I'm fine now,' he said to her image in the mirror. Running the gold-plated taps, she dipped her face into scoops of lukewarm water. He studied the ridgeline of her spine, wanting to trace his fingers over its peaks and loops. Slipping into his velour robe, he moved back into the bedroom and sank into a bergere chaise, lifting his bare feet to caress the curled wood. From there he could not see her, but he could hear her moving about, then came the rush of water and the cascaded flush. She walked out, wrapped in a terry-cloth robe.

He wasn't he realized, simply observing her as he did frequently. He was inspecting her, noting that the years had been kind to her willowy body. Her legs and thighs were still tight and youthful, and her large b.r.e.a.s.t.s still high, although their weight had begun to bring them lower then when he had first seen them. He felt the urge to touch her, and there was a brief hardening in his crotch, but she seemed self-absorbed, her mind elsewhere.

'You'd be proud of me, Oliver. I sold the Ecuadorans a weekly package. Next week my chicken galantine galantine. After that my After that my ca.s.soulet. ca.s.soulet. And, of course, my And, of course, my pate de campagne. pate de campagne.'

He was always supportive, and he was surprised that he could not concentrate on what she was telling him.

She had moved to her Queen Anne dressing table and began brushing her hair. Still, she seemed elusive, like a stranger.

'I thought I was checking out,' he said, turning his eyes to their lacy bedspread with its battery of high pillows against the carved headboard. Dominating one wall was a high chest of drawers with an elaborately carved bonnet in the rococo manner, which they had both stripped and finished. The drapes were not drawn and through the floor-to-ceiling sixteen-light windows, he could see the moving lights of the rush-hour cars crossing the Calvert Street Bridge. Between the windows was a Capucius secretaire, with its top open. Barbara used it as a working desk. On its surface was a picture of the four of them at the Grand Canyon, a color print with a blaze of orange painting the rear clifls. On the walls were prints of slender Art Deco ladies, languorous and sensual. He looked at them, but they gave him no pleasure. Watching them, he felt the sense of emptiness begin again.

'I can't understand why you didn't come,' he said, swallowing hard, talking to the pictures. So this was the elusive chess move, he discovered suddenly. He had cut to the heart of the matter. Although he did not see her, he knew she had turned toward him.

'I was in constant telephone touch,' she said testily, with a hard edge to her voice.

They had no definite diagnosis until this morning.' He spat the words at her, still not looking at her face.

They said your condition was stable.''I was in pain. I thought I was dying.''But you weren't.''You could not have known that.''Don't get prosecutorial, Oliver.'

He allowed himself a long pause, surprised that his chest was free of pain, although his stomach seemed to have tightened. He burped and his breath tasted sour.

He looked at her now. This time it was she who turned away.

'If the situation were reversed, I'd be there as quick as I could.' The display of his own vulnerability galled him.

'But it wasn't reversed,' she said, getting up and going to their dressing room. She emerged quickly in a long robe. 'I've got to see about dinner. The kids should be home soon.'

'It's your att.i.tude,' he said. 'I don't understand it.' He deliberately moved so that he could see her face. It was composed. Her hazel eyes scrutinized him calmly. He detected no outward signs of insecurity or lack of self-confidence. There was no tension or anxiety. To him now, her persona seemed reconstructed, different.

'Maybe I'm suffering from the escape-in-the-nick-of-time blues.' He sighed, acknowledging to himself this gesture of surrender, certain that it was a lie. 'It's just that...' He began to grope for words, uncommon for him. 'When you're on the edge of the abyss, you think everyone is writing you off. It's a nasty feeling.'

'I think you're overreacting, Oliver.' She started to move, but his voice recalled her.

'I guess I just wanted rea.s.surance.' He sighed, deliberately posturing. He was surprised that he knew this. What he needed now was to be held, caressed. Perhaps like a baby at his mother's breast. G.o.d d.a.m.n it, he screamed within himself. I need you to love me, Barbara.

'Believe me, Oliver,' she began. 'If I'd thought it was something awful, I would have come. You know that.' What disturbed him now was he felt she was trying to convince herself. He forced himself to obliterate the suggestion, stood up, and draw her toward him again. She didn't glide, hesitating before she moved.

'You're fine,' she whispered, embracing him without conviction. 'That's the bottom line.'

It was an expression she had picked up from somewhere. Perhaps from him. It signaled an unrecognizable inner voice, warning him. Something in his world was awry, misplaced, out of focus. He wasn't sure.'I'm sorry, Barbara. I don't understand.'

She watched him, shrugged, then smiled. That, too, seemed hollow. Perhaps, he thought, the drugs had interfered with his receiving apparatus and were working h.e.l.l on the emotions as well. He was picking up indifference. Indifference. Indifference. An invisible antenna seemed to crackle in his head, confirming reception. An invisible antenna seemed to crackle in his head, confirming reception.

'You'll feel better after dinner, Oliver. I'm sure of that.'

'Why should you feel so sure? And me, so unsure?'

She shook her head and turned away, and he could hear her padding down the steps, going away. Was it for long? he wondered.

7.

She was alone in the kitchen. Ann and the children were studying in their rooms. In the distance she heard Benny's persistent, grating bark. It was sure to prompt a neighbor's complaint. Mercedes lay asleep on one of the top kitchen shelves. Forcing her concentration, Barbara put the chicken flesh, neck, gizzard, hearts, livers, and bones into the large enamel stock pot already in place on the gas burner. She added water and salt and lit the burner, hearing the pop as the flame from the pilot light ignited the hissing gas from the burner ring.

Wiping her hands on her ap.r.o.n, she wandered into the dining room, touching the cool marble of the serving credenza. She saw her image in the silver punch bowl, studying its distortion, considering whether the reflection were really her. Perhaps, she wondered, she was merely an ornament, as static as the silver candelabrum beside her with nothing behind the facade but history. She remembered her mother's words suddenly, their tone of disappointment and rebuke when she had announced that she was quitting college to devote herself to Oliver. Ancient history, she thought with contempt.

'Loving someone doesn't mean you have to give up everything,' her mother had warned.

'It's just until he gets out of law school,' she had a.s.sured her.

'But you need something for yourself.'

She had been surprised at that, since she believed that her mother had worked out of financial necessity.

'You have to understand what it means to love someone as much as I love Oliver,' she had responded, as if that were all that needed to be said. Why hadn't they warned her of the transience of such emotions? Nothing lasts except things. Her fingers traced the curled design of the elaborate candelabrum.

Yet she was less angry with her mother for not pressing the point harder than she was with herself, deriding her stupid, utterly ignorant nineteen-year-old self.

Love, she thought, remembering it now only as something that had tricked her. Love lies.

Her earlier emotion returned, stronger than before. It was not as if she had wished that a healthy Oliver would die. Certainly not. That would be cruel, immoral, and unthinkable. But since, as the first call from the doctor had indicated, he was gravely ill anyway, the unthinkable became .. . well, thinkable.

With a thought like that, she asked, how could one live with oneself? And how could one live with Oliver?

It was not the first time she had contemplated a life without her husband. The idea had been smouldering inside her for a long time. Perhaps from the beginning. She could not, of course, pinpoint the moment, since they were always so busy planning ahead, building, growing children or plants, collecting antiques. Their life together seemed divided into projects. Supporting him through law school. Playing good wife to upwardly mobile public servant. Being especially nice to his senior law partners - the quintessential traditional spouse. Chunks of time devoted to being ingratiating. Making him a cozy oasis of a home, a place to restoke the fires. They had gone from tiny apartment to split level in the far-out suburbs. Then came car pools and dancing cla.s.ses and more car pools and orthodontists. All that culminating in this . . . this giant, all-consuming, magnificent house project in which they had jointly poured every drop of their energy and fantasy. So what happens now that is finished? she asked herself, walking into the library, where he was reading the paper. It was a question that demanded an answer. And she had it ready.

'I didn't come rushing to New York to visit you in the hospital, Oliver, because I didn't care.' It was not precisely the answer to the question as posed. Yet it said it all. He looked up from The Washington Star The Washington Star, squinting over his half lenses. squinting over his half lenses.

'Didn't care?'

He removed his gla.s.ses and balanced them on the Chesterfield's leather arm.

'I just didn't care,' she said clearly.

'You mean it didn't matter if I lived or died?' His fingers tapped a crossed thigh and his eyes had narrowed.

'No, Oliver.'

'Are you serious?' He seemed genuinely confused, and she thought of the millions of other women somewhere who had suddenly imparted this same truth.

'Dead serious. Without doubt. I don't care. I haven't cared for a long time.' She calmed herself, having determined that she must be both calm and cautious.

'Just like that.' He snapped his fingers. 'You dismiss a life. A relationship. A family.' He snapped his fingers again. 'Just like that.'

'Just like that.' She too, snapped her fingers. No, she thought. It wasn't at all just like thgit.

She watched him grope for control. He stood up, opened the doors to the armoire, and poured himself a heavy scotch. He swallowed deep and hard.

'I can't believe this,' he said after a long pause.'Believe it.'

She was sitting in the matching Chesterfield chair, her back stiff, her fingers digging into the hollows just behind her knees. The Staffordshire figures seemed a live audience. He rubbed his chin and shook his head.

'Is there someone else?'

His voice cracked and he cleared his throat. Apparently he had deliberately choked off a sob. 'No.'

'Do you want someone else?' he asked quickly, and she sensed the trained lawyer's mind emerging. 'Maybe.'

'Always be vague under cross-examination,' he had told her once.

'Is it something I've done?' he asked gently, obviously grasping at some shred of hope.

'Not really.''Then is it something I haven't done?'

She formed her reply carefully. 'It has nothing to do with your conscious self,' she said sofdy. She watched his face as it mirrored his growing anger.

'What the h.e.l.l is that supposed to mean?' he exploded. His anger was, she knew, unavoidable. She hoped he wouldn't cry. She did not want to show him how unmoved she would be.

'It means,' she responded calmly, 'that you have no control over the situation and probably no blame. It's me,' she paused, shrugged, and tightened the grip behind her knees. 'I don't believe I can stand the idea of living with you for another moment. As I said, it's not your fault...' He started to speak but she held up her hand. 'And any injuries you might have inflicted on me were not done consciously.'

'Injuries?' His voice shook. 'I don't know what you're talking about.'

*I know. I wish I was more articulate. But you see I've never had the training .. .'

'So that's it,' he said, finding sarcasm. 'You gave up your life for me.'

'A part of it.''I made you quit school. Made you a slave.' 'In a way.''And you're - what is the cliche? - unfulfilled.''That, too.'

She sensed his rising contempt, steeling herself for what she knew was coming, had to come.

'And the kids? Don't they have a say?'

'The kids will be fine. I have no desire to abdicate my responsibilities in that quarter. And, no, they don't have a say.'

'Jesus.' He squinted into her eyes. 'Is this you?' 'Yes. It's me.''Not Barbara. Not the girl I married.'

'Not her. I'm sorry, Oliver. Really sorry. I wish I could do it so it wouldn't hurt.'

There was a long pause as he paced the room. Stopping, he turned away and looked blankly at the tides of the leather-bound books, then circled the rent table and finally went back to the armoire and poured himself another drink. He gestured with the botde, offering a drink. Obviously he had no idea of what was supposed to come next.

'No. Thank you,' she said politely.

He shrugged and gulped down another drink, suddenly jabbing a finger below his breastbone.