DENIAL by Deborah Batterman

"How long is your mother gone?" asks her father.

"Six years," she tells him.

He shakes his head. "I miss her."

"I can't do this," she says to her husband. It is late at night. They are whispering. Their eight-year-old daughter, Julie, is asleep in the room next to theirs, the room in which Michael cannot remember the last time they made love.

"It's only temporary," says Michael, squeezing Wendy's shoulder, trying to assuage her, thwart the tears he sees coming. "A little breather of sorts - " He finds himself breathing more rapidly. He doesn't really know what else to say. Except that he cannot remember the last time they made love, which he will not say. The quick, almost obligatory fuck (initiated by him) every few weeks did not qualify as lovemaking. Wendy never turned him down, and sometimes he wished she would. It would be a response.

Wendy sits on the edge of the bed, presses her hands into the mattress, tries to remember when - at what precise moment - did she notice the sagging, the rolled edge curling under itself. A good mattress lasts ten years, the salesman had said when they bought it. It'll take more wear and tear than your car. He knew they were newlyweds.

"Four weeks," Michael pleaded. "That's all I'm asking. "A one-month separation. It would be during the summer, when Julie visited Michael's parents in Orlando and could be spared the trial. And they would have no contact during that time. To Michael it was a breather. To Wendy it was stepping into a marital limbo that had the gravity of quicksand.

Wendy turns to Michael. "What happens after four weeks?" She is thinking of the dream she had last night, her face flush against the bosom of another woman. Michael would love it if she told him about the dream. He would see it as some unconscious longing. It would satisfy a fantasy of his own.

Michael gets up from the bed, walks over to the window. A car screeches to a short stop at the end of the street, makes a sharp turn, disappears, leaving the sound of a rumbling engine in its wake. For an instant, Michael sees himself in the car, eighteen years old, cruising with his best friend, Jeff. The more noise they made, the better they felt.

Wendy picks up a book on her night stand, flips through the pages, catches herself in this act of distraction. She drops the book into her lap, feels its full weight. It was a come-on to a three-books-for-a-dollar book club, and the title, Rediscover Your Soul, suddenly reeks with manipulation. She wants to tear up the book right now, or better yet, throw it across the room at Michael. That simple act, satisfying in its physicalness, would unscramble the letters, lay bare the subterfuge. It was all there, plain as day: the wounds, the sense of loss tucked into recover, the sense of never having been that was the heart of discover. Put the two together and you have a linguistic construct, nothing more. She looks down at the book, thinking, Wisdom does not come this cheaply. Nuance is everything.

Michael glances at the book resting in Wendy's lap. If he could just place his hand on that book, feel the heat rise from her crotch through the pages, he thinks he would get a message. If nothing else, he would have taken a risk, he would get a response. Which is really all he wants. He is nearly thirty-four years old, and for the first time in a very long time he wants to stop thinking about what happens. All he sees in his future is a series of insurance policies and a string of two-dollar chances. You bought health insurance hoping you were never sick enough to need it. You bought life insurance so your bills would be paid even when you were dead. You bought car insurance, house insurance, even medical insurance for pets, the latest in a series of policies his company was promoting. And when you weren't spending your money on insurance, you were counting on the lucky combination of numbers or the horse named Your Day to make you believe in the stars, the moon, the time of year, whatever it was that allowed you to trust fate and the future.

So now, almost thirty-four, Michael is ready to trade in the two-dollar chances for a bigger one. Maybe you had to stop banking on the future to make it work for you. Maybe too much insurance took the life from you. "I just need some time alone," Michael finally says. "How can that be bad?"

Jeff dangles the keys in front of Michael's face before relinquishing them.

"You're sure about this, Mikey? I mean you want to screw around, you screw around. You don't have to freeze your marriage in the meantime."

Michael takes the keys. They feel like gold.

"It's not the same. I did that once. A salesgirl at Bloomingdale's. Lingerie. Lower level. Taking anthropology courses at night. Wore these big blue glasses that made her look brainy and glamorous. She didn't like getting involved with married men, she said, but she liked me, so we got involved. For a short while, maybe a month or so. I'd meet her after her class at Hunter, we'd go to her apartment, and we'd fuck. But not before she told me about the puberty rites of various African tribes or how the Toltecs threw virgins into wells as a sacrifice to the gods."

"The kind of information every modern man should have at his fingertips, eh, Mikey?"

"You want to know something, Jeff, she fascinated me. She really did. And she put it to me straight. "It's one thing to fall into an affair," she said. "It's quite another to be married and constantly on the make."

"I still think you're making a mistake, Mikey. A big mistake."

Michael squeezes the keys in his palm, sweaty now. He looks around the kitchen - Jeff's kitchen - and suddenly understands, maybe for the first time in his life, the true nature of seduction. It begins with the bowl of grapes on the table, fed one-by-one (maybe even peeled) to the woman sitting across the candle-lit table. This is something Jeff has done. Many times. From the grapes they move on to the Brie and wine (a bottle pulled right from the temperature-controlled closet in the corner of the kitchen), while Jeff, chef extraordinaire, chops and preps for the sautéed veal, his specialty. The woman (and there have been many) is warm now, the wine breathing just right, and the grapes, plucked and fed to her, are a tease. There is a boyish charm to Jeff and he gets away with it, this lovemaking prelude to dinner, more than any one man should. Being a successful dentist with a vacation house in the Florida Keys does not hurt.

"You can't possibly know what it's like - to go tiptoeing into your own bedroom at night, reeking of sex with another woman. Or to feel like you're cheating on your wife when you go to peep shows," says Michael. "I want a break . . . I want a chance at feeling free."

Jeff smiles. "Cut the crap, Mikey. You want ass. Lots of it." He holds up one hand, the way he always does when he wants to make a point. "Unless there's a game plan here - a strategically imposed absence designed to make the heart grow a little fonder?"

"This is not about heart," Michael snickers, staring into the buttery blue eyes of his best friend. For the first time in his life, he thinks he understands the crisis of identity. "Maybe all those years of vicarious thrills have finally caught up with me. Maybe I just want to be you."

Jeff pulls a grape from the bowl, and winks. "Does that mean I get to be you?"

Michael settles himself on the couch (black leather, too soft) sipping a glass of Johnny Walker. It is four in the afternoon on a rainy Saturday and he never drinks Scotch at four in the afternoon, but this is no ordinary Saturday. This is the last Saturday of July, the first of the rest of his life. His thirty-fourth birthday, spending it alone, but who cares? Isn't that what he wanted? Wendy, always the thinker, always the organizer, forwarded Julie's birthday card to him with a note: I'll tell Julie you were out when she calls to wish you a happy birthday. Be sure to call her back. He calls his daughter, before the first sip of Scotch, tells her how much he loved the card, though the photo of Mickey M.'s arm around her did make him jealous. Promise me you won't run away with that rat, I mean mouse, he says, and she lets out a laugh, warm and breezy, that lingers after they hang up.

This is the first day of the rest of your life.

What does that mean? he'd said to Wendy when she hung the poster, bright and sunny and filled with daisies, in their kitchen. Just what does that sappy line mean? She just frowned, told him it was something he'd have to figure out by himself.

Michael reaches for the remote control, turns on the TV. Keith Hernandez is up at bat. Bottom of the ninth, two men on base, the Mets are behind by one run. Michael leans forward, elbows on knees, fists clenched in a telepathic act of will. He braces himself. Keith swings. The ball flies. Michael lets out an unrestrained Yes! that bounces off the walls, seems to tailspin from corner to corner before ricocheting back into his throat like a genie released too soon to grant meaningful wishes. He reaches for the glass of Scotch, empty now, walks over to the custom-built bar with the foldout shelf, black lacquer to match the wall unit that houses the TV along with Jeff's state-of-the-art sound system. He pours himself more Scotch, feeling oh-so-good, that Yes! - his Wendyless yes!, he thinks, with a smile - still reverberating. He makes a birthday toast, to himself, sprawls out on the couch, sinks into a reverie about how time spent alone seems to swell and slow down. One week has passed, though it seems much longer, and Michael has this uncanny sense (is it the genie again?) that everything from now on can only be right.

Upstairs he hears a sound, the dull, heavy sound of table legs scraping across the floor. A chair is moved. Two feet to the left. a few inches more. And she is ready to begin.

The music is loud. He could go knock on her door, make a joke about the loose plaster raining on his head, ask her to turn it down. Nah, thinks Michael. This is Jeff's apartment. And if Jeff can put up with music that sounds like a giant's heartbeat reverberating in an echo chamber, so could he.

He puts down his glass, listens to the shuffle of her feet. Did she have long legs? A dancer's marble thighs? Her hair was auburn and she was an actress, that much he knew. Gloria was her name. She'd been talking to a James Dean look-a-like at the elevator bank, and he'd been eavesdropping. Something about a showcase Off-Off Broadway. They continued talking in the elevator, but Michael lost the drift of their conversation. Somewhere between floors three and twenty-three Michael began daydreaming. About Gloria and him, stuck in the elevator, alone. He had just kissed the large beauty mark on her neck and was about to find out if she was mostly torso or mostly leg under her loose, gauzy dress, when he reached floor twenty-two. Have a nice night, he said, forcing a smile out of her.

Michael closes his eyes, slips his hand over his prick, begins stroking. He imagines Gloria, her auburn hair spread across his belly, her tongue like a feather. He is on a beach now, the sand is like silk between his toes. He strokes harder, imagining Gloria's tongue, feeling the sweet warmth of Wendy that time on the beach in Antigua when the world was theirs, only theirs. She wore a short skirt, no panties. The air was soft, the sand like silk, the waves whispered.

Michael shakes his head, opens his eyes, which fix on a large clay urn set in the corner of the dining alcove. Wendy had chosen it - she liked the sunset swirls of maroon and gold - as a thirty-fifth birthday present for Jeff. The surprise party was her idea as well. She'd made Michael track down old college buddies. Danny had become a lawyer, Steven a doctor, Evan a dentist, like Jeff. There were many joints and many beers, drunk in a haze of memories growing sharper with each hit, every sip. Danny light as a cat on the back court. Michael and Jeff jockeying for the jump shot. Evan in a face-off with a raccoon on a camping trip in the Adirondacks. Once Cindy, Steven's wife, lays out the medicinal quality cocaine, memories of boys swimming naked in a cold mountain lake and gourmet meals around the campfire (á la Jeff) take the shape of innuendo. It is a chemical reaction, pure and simple. Men. Women. Cocaine. A champagne bottle, empty, spinning around the circle, Jeff's idea. He sings - It's my party, and I'll do what I want to - he spins. The bottle points to Wendy. Jeff, on his knees, makes his way over to her, puts her face in his hands, ready for the prize kiss, which is thwarted by a sneeze from Wendy and a laughter that encircles them. Wendy, relieved, coked up, is laughing now, harder than she has recalled laughing in a long time. I would have thought 'Dentist' was more your style, she says. No one except Cindy knows what she is talking about and they explain the adolescent game - a girl (or a boy) sits in a chair, blindfolded. The boys (or girls) line up to kiss her. She (he) chooses the best kiss. That's a dangerous game, says Erica (Jeff's girlfriend at the time), a sparkly blonde who sings cabaret and immediately launches into a solo "Happy Birthday to You," Marilyn Monroe-style. The next day she and Jeff break up. This was something Michael could not understand. It's not about understanding, Jeff had said. It's about chemistry, pure and simple. Unless you get married, at which point the laws of chemistry are bent in the delusional pursuit of alchemy.

"I can't find my keys," says her father, scratching his head. There are no keys for residents here, the doors to rooms are never locked, and still he insists he needs his keys. "How am I going to get into my apartment?" he asks. Wendy tells him she'll take care of things, make sure to bring him keys the next time she comes. This is not satisfactory. He needs them now. "I have a set," she tells him. "I'll unlock the door, so you can get in."

"That's not safe," he insists, mildly reassured. "I need my keys. Bring me a set the next time you come."

Michael holds the letter in his hand, reads the name over and over again. Gloria Jansen. This must be what it feels like to win a lottery ticket, he thinks, getting ready to ring her bell, explain that the letter had mistakenly been placed in Jeff's mailbox.

"Would you like to come in?" she asks, very graciously, it seemed.

He follows her in. She is wearing red jogging shorts that cut into the crack of her behind and her legs are long. Very long and muscular.

They talk for about an hour. Mostly she talks, he listens. She talks about her nerves, the roles she'd played and the ones she wanted, Blanche DuBois above all. And she talks about the cities she'd waitressed in, what a bum job it was. "But I'll make it as an actress," she says with confidence. "I'll make it."

Michael listens intently, waiting for the right moment to ask her for a date. It almost passes him by. But at the very last minute, when he is half out the door, he asks her to have dinner with him the following night. Very graciously, it seems, she accepts.

Michael can think of nothing else all day. Phone calls to potential clients, paperwork, the midday staff meeting are reflexive acts, motion devoid of meaning. It is, Michael thinks, like being on a bicycle moving in slow motion against traffic. When he gets to Jeff's apartment he peels off his clothes, turns on the air conditioner, takes a shower. All through the shower he whistles Motown songs, continues whistling as he dresses, trying to recall the last time he felt so full of unguarded anticipation. He could have been fifteen, primping for his first date; eighteen and ready to screw anything that wore a skirt, twenty and falling in love Wendy.

At 7 p.m. he splashes on some cologne. He normally does not wear cologne but the varieties in Jeff's bathroom inspire him to try it. An hour, he figures, would give the scent some time to settle so that he does not feel like a walking bottle of Paco Rabane.

At 7:30 the phone rings. It is Gloria. "I hate to do this on such short notice," she says, "but I have to cancel tonight. Something came up."

"No problem," says Michael. "Maybe some night next week."

"Sure," says Gloria. "Maybe some night next week."

Michael holds the receiver against his ear. There is no longer a voice on the other end, but he keeps thinking maybe. Maybe that wasn't really Gloria. Maybe we never really had a date. Maybe she'll change her mind. Again. Maybe some family crisis or a friend in trouble. Two syllables - may be keep running through his head, creating mayhem. Making him think of a litany of maybes. Except one.

His stomach suddenly feels like a large, hollow pit. If he'd had any thoughts of sniffing wine in an elegant restaurant and savoring morsels of a dish whose name he cannot pronounce, he now wants greasy french fries and a thick, greasy burger smothered in onions.

He goes to Charlie's, a local burger joint Jeff had taken him to a few times, sits at the counter next to a woman eating a cheeseburger and reading a magazine. He reaches over her magazine for a bottle of ketchup. "You could have asked me for it," she says. "You didn't have to reach over me." She has a pudgy face and is wearing large, tortoise-shell glasses.

"I didn't want to disturb you - you were reading."

"You disturbed me more by not trying to disturb me."

"I'm sorry."

"Forget about it." She goes back to her reading, Michael goes back to his burger. He tries to ignore her, instead finds himself continually glancing at her. A little daffy looking, he thinks. Almost pretty. And she is alone.

"Fate's playing a dirty trick on me," she says, taking off her glasses. Michael isn't sure if she is talking to herself or to him. "All these single women getting themselves pregnant, bringing up babies by themselves, and I have to be married to a man who doesn't want kids." She sighs, turns to Michael. "Are you married?"

"Yes . . . I mean, no . . . I mean, technically, yes."

She smiles. "But not this week."

Michael nods.

"It's the same with me. One week I'm married. One week I'm not. Depends on my mood. His mood. Who he slept with. Who I slept with. Know what I mean?"

Michael nods, a little under the spell of this woman who he decides is an alien from another planet. Scenes from all the science fiction movies he's ever seen start flashing through his head. The aliens always ask the right questions and always know what you're thinking.

"Any children?" she asks. He tells her about Julie. And she listens, with interest.

And she laughs at his jokes.

And she wants to hear more. About Julie. About him. Even a little about Wendy.

Michael is tempted to ask if she's an alien - as a joke - when she gets up to leave. Instead he simply asks if she'd like to go for a walk. They head toward the river, where they sit on a bench. Michael learns that Emily works for an agency that represents musicians and her husband is a psychotherapist. They've been married seven years.

"It's all this therapy that's gotten to him," she says. "He's with patients from eight in the morning till nine at night. Then he spends the next two hours talking about the ones who drive him crazy. "When do I have time for children?" he argues. Emily frowns. "Isn't that a lot of crap? You want children, you make time for them. It's as simple as that. He's just a selfish son-of-a-bitch. Doesn't want to change his life for anything."

"Why don't you leave him?"

Emily sighs. "It would be easy if he were just my husband. But he's also my therapist. Besides, when I weigh him against some of the goons I've spent time with, there's no contest. Ken's got heart. And he helps me understand things."

Emily let's out a yawn. "Talking makes me tired." She crosses her arms under her bosom, leans her head against the back of the bench. Michael can see the faint outline of her nipples through her lavender silk blouse. One of her large silver hoop earrings gets stuck on a piece of splintered wood. As Michael pulls the earring free, his fingers brush against Emily's neck, soft and warm. The top button of her blouse is so tempting, so within reach. It would be so easy to slip his hand down, no groping, or simply bend forward, plant a perfect kiss. When Emily, his alien, his lover, offers no resistance, he opens the button, and her breasts spill from her blouse like champagne.

"Your place, or yours?" Emily jokes. Michael buttons her up, takes her to Jeff's apartment, where they make love once on the couch, again in bed. Looking in the mirror across from the bed, Michael sees the dimples in her behind as she goes down on him. Then, closing his eyes, he lets his fingers trace the dimples, squeeze the marshmallow softness of her ass.

They lay together after making love, touching, not talking, until Emily gets up to go to the bathroom. "Did your friend grow up in the Amazon?" she asks, admiring the plants that fill the room.

Michael pulls her on top of him. He cannot recall the last time he had this kind of longing. He knows he could make love to this woman, this alien, all night. "Nah," he says, kissing her. "He developed his green thumb in dental school. Practiced root canal on plants."

Emily laughs. "You're very funny." She slips him inside of her. Again. Michael loves her hunger. When she gets up to leave, Michael is disappointed. He wants to hold her. All night.

"Ken and I have an understanding," she explains. "It's okay to have lovers, but we always come home to each other."

"Can I call you at the office?"

"No," says Emily, looking at herself in the mirror as she dresses. "I'll call you. Some time next week."

She kisses his forehead, tells him what a good lover he is, then disappears with the promise of a genie who'd been assigned to his dreams.

Wendy's father pulls at the tube leading to the incision in his side. "What is this?" he asks. He is about to rip it off. This is something he keeps doing, says the social worker. She thinks that if Wendy catches him in the act, reminds him why it's there, maybe even reprimand him, he'll stop doing it. When he does it, he wreaks havoc in his room. The nurses are tired of cleaning up his shit. They are tired of his not listening to them.

Wendy touches his hand, makes him look her squarely in the eyes. "Dad," she says, pausing just long enough to wrap her thoughts around the drop in her voice. There is something wrong with the way I'm addressing him, my father, she thinks. There is something in my tone that reminds me of the way I talk to Julie. "Listen, Dad," she begins again. "You had surgery, don't you remember? They closed up your colon. This tube is temporary until they can reverse the process when you're healed. Then you can go to the bathroom normally again."

He shakes his head. "When did I have surgery?"

"Three months ago. In another few months they'll take out the tube. But until then you have to stop pulling at it. Promise me you'll leave it alone."

He nods, turns to look at Kitty, who is wheeling herself over to them. Kitty has silky white hair and eyes pressed with pain. "Your father's always cursing," she whispers to Wendy. "The nurses yell at him. They think he pulls that tube just to get even with them. You should see the mess."

Wendy shakes her head.

"They clean him up before you get here." Kitty clicks her tongue. "What do they want from the guy? He doesn't know what he's doing." She clasps her gnarly fingers together. It is the only way she can contain the pain. "Denial is a terrible thing."

"Denial - isn't that a river in Egypt?" Wendy's father winks at her. She smiles. He taps his fingers on the wheelchair. "How long is your mother gone?" he asks.

"Six years," she tells him.

"I miss her," he says.

What did we talk about?

She was brunette, she looked a little like Emily, only she liked fucking hard. Without kissing.

Harder, harder, she hollered, and I couldn't go any harder. Faster, faster, she pumped. Only I couldn't pump faster.

What did we talk about?

Her name was Paula. She said I talk too much, I kiss too much. It was cock she wanted. Good hard fast cock.

I wanted to talk, I wanted Emily.

Did I miss her phone call? Did I give her the wrong number?

Why hasn't she called, it's been a week?

You're taking this too seriously, Jeff would say. Either you want sex - short, sweet, hot - or you want a love affair. Or maybe you don't know what you want.

I . . . love to love you baby

I . . . love to love you baby

She let me watch her dance. I went upstairs when I heard her getting started, knocked on the door. I was holding a bottle of cold champagne, said it was my birthday (I lied). Help me drink it, Gloria. Please. No strings, no sex. I just want to watch you dance. She smiled. I popped the cork. She danced. Happy birthday, she cooed. Her ass, gorgeous, firm, round, was an inch from my face. Undulating. I was a model of restraint. That (obviously) turned her on. What the hell, she said, slowly slipping out of her tank top, then her jogging shorts, in a slow strip-tease down to a g-string. My restraint (obviously and to my surprise) turned her on. She leaped onto the couch where I sat, stood over me. It was an invitation I could not refuse. I ate her, every inch of her. Time seemed to suspend itself. Until she said she it was time for me to go.

I wanted to talk.

The phone, did I hear it ring?

Did I give her the wrong number?

Or did I, with Emily, talk myself into oblivion?

Her name was Adrienne, and something about the way the light hit her face at the bar made me think of Wendy.

What did we talk about? I remember a fifth floor walk-up and a shelf of blue plates on her eat-in kitchen wall and old movie posters in her bedroom. But what did we talk about? And why did she throw a shoe at me when I left?

Wendy, she made me think of Wendy, who, if I were to be brutally honest, I have never stopped thinking about. Should I call, just listen to her say hello, and hang up? I would know, just by her hello, that she's okay. And I would not have to break our agreement.

I dial the number, slowly and with hesitation. The phone rings ten times. There is no answer.

Somewhere a phone is ringing. Is it the next room? Or next door?

Does it matter?

The ringing finally stops.

Who was it?

Does it matter?

My father plays with his feces like it's clay. My daughter is romping with dolphins. And my husband is playing out his fantasy.

I reach for the wine, take a sip.

I think of luxury, and what it really means. Can a sip of wine, ruby red Bordeaux, be luxurious? Can a glass of wine, sipped in the glow of a candle-lit bathroom, be luxurious? This bathtub, spilling over with bubbles like champagne, how can this small white tub have the mark of luxury? I slip down, close my eyes, let the hot water spread itself across my shoulders.

A woman's body surfaces. Her breasts, beaded with pearl drops of sweat, nuzzle my face. She lures me out of the bathtub, dripping wet, onto my bed. I lay back, lick my finger, move it down my body. My bed, so large, so luxurious, becomes a parachute lifting me.

The phone rings.

Should I answer it? Does it matter?

I reach for the phone, hold it a minute before talking. If I put it against my crotch, will the person on the other end understand the deep, sweet luxury of a certain kind of orgasm? If I hold it against my heart, will this person hear the bittersweet joy wrought of self-love?

"Is everything okay?" asks the voice. "I was just about to hang up."

"Hi, Jeff."

"Did I catch you at a bad time - you sound like you've been running?" I laugh. "I was taking a bath."

There is a silence, almost awkward, and I know Jeff is picturing me naked. Should I tell him about the woman who visits me in my dreams? Would he, like Michael, be turned on in his misinterpretation?

"I was just thinking about you," he says. "Figured I'd check up, see how you are." He reminds me I have an open invitation to visit. His voice is like a light, tempting brook. We talk about the heat wave in New York and the drought in Florida, his new BMW convertible, my aging Ford station wagon. When he mentions his mother - beginning stages of Alzheimer's - the tempting brook becomes riddled with slippery stones. I stumble.

"Things fall apart," I say. I am talking - tripping over stones, stumbling - about my father. Not since the day I found him sprawled on the floor of his apartment three months ago have I spoken about him like this. "The body falls apart, bit by bit, the mind tries, in the only way it knows how, to make sense of pieces rearranged in the name of survival." I am fighting tears, and Jeff knows it. The day I found my father, sprawled on the floor of his apartment, I had been having lunch with my husband's best friend. We touched, we kissed, we danced around the fire of flirtatious looks and hugs never met head-on. I left. Just in time. One more kiss, lingering, one more hug, met head-on, and I would have found my father dead, not dying. I am tripping now, badly, talking about that day three months ago. "Would my father have been better off - dead, that is?"

"Guilt is no replacement for denial," says Jeff.

"Denial," I say. "Isn't that a river in Egypt?"

"She broke my heart," says Wendy's father. He is talking about her mother, something he does not normally do, except to ask how long she's been gone and say how much he misses her. They are sitting on the sun roof of the nursing home, which he thinks is the deck of a ship. You can see the ocean from here.

"She called me, couple of months after breaking it off with me to date some schmuck her mother liked better." He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. Wendy has brought him some fried chicken, his favorite, which he eats greedily. "Said she wanted to go out with me." "Okay," I said, "but you have to go to bed with me."

Wendy lets out a laugh.

"This is no joke," her father goes on. He hands Wendy the plate. He has finished eating. "I think I impregnated her - she got rid of it." Wendy looks down at the plate, the tiny bones chewed clean. Her father moves his wheelchair toward the door, his legs dangling. Walking, after weeks of being bedridden, was not worth the effort, and rather than go through with his daily therapy, he told the physical therapist to go to hell. If the patient refuses to walk, we cannot force him, said the social worker. She suggested that Wendy try to get him to walk.

"Help me," he calls to Wendy. He wants to go back inside. Wendy wants to keep him outside, in the fresh air. She wants to know more about the aborted brother or sister she has never heard about.

"You're telling me you went to bed with my mother before you were married and she got pregnant?"

"You don't believe me - ask your aunt." He continues moving away from Wendy, reaches for a button near the door, which now opens automatically.

Wendy follows him. Her voice is loud, quivering. "Aunt Harriet is dead - you know that!" They pass a line of residents in wheelchairs, half of them asleep, heads drooping like thirsty sunflowers. Her father swivels his chair, positioned now in a corner of the recreation room near the TV. He looks up at Wendy, his eyes moist, demanding, "Why are you yelling at me?"

This is how seduction begins, thinks Wendy. With a hand rubbing lotion into the heat of the sun's rays on your back. Jeff unhooks her bikini top, continues to spread the lotion on her back. His fingers are strong, there is nothing he does that is predictable. Nothing that feels like motion without meaning. Was it ever like this with Michael? she asks herself. Was it always pleasure with effort - he pleasing her/she pleasing him, satisfaction guaranteed?

Jeff kisses the small of her back.

"Are you putting the lotion on, or taking it off?" she asks. He recognizes this as a cue, pulls off her bikini bottom, continues making a line, with his tongue, down her back, through the cheeks of her behind. She stops him, gets up, jumps into the pool, warm as a bathtub. Desire, even more than its satisfaction, is what brought her here. It is a desire bred on familiarity, simmering with restraint. Jeff dives in after her, catches up to her, pulls her close. Kisses her. Neither of them, if they were to be perfectly honest, has ever known such unrestrained desire. Talking about it, they know, will kill it.

"What are you going to tell him?" It is their last night together. Jeff places candlesticks on the patio table, lights them. The shrimp, grilled to perfection, glistens on the plate. He feeds one to Wendy. He wants to do this forever, hand-feed pieces of food to this woman who has brought him closer than any other woman to what he thinks love must be.

Wendy shrugs her shoulders, bites into the shrimp. "What are you going to tell him?"

"I'll say I was just being a good friend." He feeds her another shrimp, this time tracing her lips with his finger. She pulls his finger into her mouth, savoring the residue of fresh mint. "No - I have a better idea. We battle it out on the basketball court. One-on-one. I was always a better player than Mikey."

Then what? Wendy thinks, starts to say. Stops herself. She shifts onto Jeff's lap, kisses him. Somewhere in the distance she hears a basketball hitting the ground. She closes her eyes, savoring the smell of Jeff, and his taste, released into her like a warm bubbling brook. Somewhere in the distance two men are shooting for a prize. One of them, the better player, knows the graceful maneuvers and fancy shots. The other knows what it takes to win.

"Did you bring my keys?" asks her father. This key thing was Michael's idea. What's the cost of a key? Michael had said. A couple of dollars? Wendy hands her father two keys on a ring, which she knows he will misplace and forget about. Until some time, a few weeks or a few months down the road, when he'll ask for his keys. Again. It is a small price to pay for reassurance.

The door to the sun roof opens. Michael walks over with Julie, who hands her grandfather a cup of vanilla ice cream. He gobbles it up, asks if she brought some for his girlfriend Kitty.

"Kitty died, Dad - last week." Wendy had last seen her a few weeks earlier when she reported on her father's latest misbehavior. He pinches the nurses, said Kitty, laughing. In the behind. Michael said it was better than finger painting with shit, which he no longer did since the colostomy had been reversed.

Michael sits down next to his father-in-law, pulls Julie onto his lap. Wendy doesn't like bringing Julie here. Michael thinks it's a good idea, once in a while. This is life, he says. There's no hiding from it. Besides, it's got to be good for your father. Wendy looks at her father, who is staring out into space, thinking, she hopes, about the woman he made a bargain with before Wendy was even an idea. For an instant she sees herself years from now, staring into space, Julie at her side. Will she, like her father, blurt out a story about a passion once lived and a bargain made? Will her daughter believe her? Will there be anyone around to verify the truth, or deny it?

"How long is your mother gone?" asks her father.

"Seven years," she tells him.

He shakes his head. "I miss her."

© Deborah Batterman

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