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“Good catch!” she cried. “Now you. Show me how Reggie Jackson does it.”

“Watch out, Mom, this’ll burn a hole right through your glove!”

“But I’m not wearing a-“

Laurel was so struck by the look of manlike determination on his small, amber-skinned face that the words died on her lips. She watched Adam swing his wiry arm around and around in an exaggerated windup, and pitch the ball with such force that he lost his balance and toppled onto his knees on the grass. The ball flew upward, and seemed to hang in the air, defying gravity, a perfect white hole punched in the glowing autumn sky. Then it crashed down through the branches of the old apple tree under which she stood, shaking loose a few wizened Gravensteins and landing with a thwup several yards from her in the crusty dirt of last summer’s vegetable patch. She could see the ball, dirty white, half under a bug-eaten leaf near where a few stunted zucchinis clung to the vine. But the last of the squashes and cranberry beans and cukes had been harvested weeks ago, and now, with Indian summer turning to autumn, she was glad that, despite all the bother and heat she’d had to endure for canning, she’d put up enough pickles, preserves, and jams to fill two whole shelves in the kitchen’s old-fashioned walk-in pantry.

Bending to retrieve the ball, Laurel thought how much like his real father Adam had looked just a second ago, his small fist thrust up in triumph, his dark eyes glittering. All of a sudden, she was seeing Jess Gordon standing on the steps of Schine Student Center speaking to a small crowd of mesmerized students, his fist punching the

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air above him. Adam had his father’s crow-black hair and sharply angled features, and his egalitarian spirit too-at school, Adam’s teacher had told her Adam would share his sandwich and cookies with any kid who asked … even if it meant leaving himself without a lunch.

Laurel remembered the blue airmail letter that she’d gotten from Jess the year Adam turned three. He’d joined the Peace Corps and was living in Mexico, a funky Yucatan village where he was helping local farmers, who had been nearly wiped out by a terrible drought, dig irrigation canals. Having diarrhea most of the time was a bummer, he wrote, but he was happier than he’d ever been. He’d met a girl, a local girl named Rosa Torrentes, and they were going to be married …

The memory of her own hasty marriage at City Hall came flooding back. No white dress or veil, no bouquet, no rice even. But she’d been so over the moon she hadn’t cared one bit about missing out on any big wedding. She had everything she wanted, standing right next to her.

But Joe, had he felt such happiness? And would she, off floating on her own cloud of bliss, even have noticed if he had seemed less than ecstatic? Kneeling on the grass that bordered the vegetable patch, she froze, her fingers clenched about the ball, ignoring the dampness seeping into the knees of her Levi’s.

Don’t cry. You mustn’t. Not in front of Adam. But the tears were already starting, stinging her, and with them came the image her mind had been replaying, over and over since yesterday: Joe and that woman at the restaurant. She’d dropped off the finished drawings for Sally, the Silly Goose at Viking and then had stopped by the restaurant, thinking she’d pop in and surprise Joe. Coming up into the dining room, she’d spotted him with his back to her, in a booth with a pretty auburn-haired woman whom Laurel didn’t recognize. They were both bent forward, so absorbed in each other that neither one noticed her standing there, motionless at the top of the stairs. The woman, Laurel could see clearly, was holding Joe’s hand tightly between both of hers. Joe’s face was hidden so Laurel

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couldn’t see his expression, but she could tell he was upset. An apology? A lover’s quarrel? A farewell?

And now, all over again, she was feeling the shock and horror she’d felt then. In her mind, disconnected images overlapped in some bizarre collage-the woman’s square gold earrings catching the overhead light as she reached to stroke Joe’s cheek; the curve of Joe’s shoulder as he leaned toward her; a napkin beside him folded into a droopy peak that had made her think of an Easter lily. Gene Pitney’s “Town Without Pity” playing on the old Wurlitzer stocked with top-forty hits from the early sixties. And Laurel standing there like a ghost, invisible to both of them.

All last night, and all day today, she’d been trying hard not to imagine the two of them together, naked bodies entwined, telling each other little jokes, kissing, making love. What if there was some other, innocent explanation for what she’d seen?

Okay. Maybe there was. But it wasn’t just the woman in the restaurant. Lately, Joe had seemed so distant and preoccupied. He hadn’t made love to her in more than two weeks. And this distance of his wasn’t something that had just cropped up in the last month or so.

You knew. Even when he said the words, you knew when he married you that he didn’t love you, not passionately, totally, the way you love him … and you took him anyway. So if he’s having an affair, why should it be such a shock? At least it’s not An-

“Did you see that? Wow-ee, Mom, did you see how high it gotted? Right up to space prac’ly!”

Adam’s voice yanked her back to him. Raking her knuckles across her wet eyes, she stood and went over to her son.

“If I were a talent scout,” she said, hugging him, “I’d sign you up for the Yankees … or maybe NASA. The way you snagged that ball, I’ll bet you’d be good with rockets too.” Though the day was cool, Adam felt damp with perspiration.

Adam pulled away from her, scooping his silky black hair off his forehead, and saying soberly, “Kids can’t be

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scien-tises.” His big dark-blue eyes regarded her with cool intelligence.

Her heart caught. His world is so orderly-color inside the lines and you can’t go wrong …

Laurel wished life were that easy. She wished that love was like money in the bank-the more you put in, the more you got back. Joe’s love, all the years she’d struggled to win it, she’d been so sure it was only a matter of time. But now … well, she wasn’t at all certain.

There had been passion. Oh, yes. She remembered how it had been in the beginning, Joe’s hands on her body, so knowing, so gentle. But always, in the back of her mind, she had wondered if it was Annie he would rather be making love to, Annie’s body he imagined while he was stroking hers.

She’d told herself it was only natural for married couples to become less interested in one another after a while. Why, then, was she more in love with Joe now than she’d been on her wedding day? Why did she ache for him each night when he rolled onto his side, leaving her only the curved wall of his back?

“Mommy?”

Laurel, jerked from her thoughts, saw Adam’s worried face and felt a tug of guilt. She mustn’t let him know how scared she felt. She wanted her son to feel safe and secure-things she hadn’t known at his age.

She reached again for Adam, hugging him so fiercely that this time he wriggled in protest. She loved his littleboy smell, so different from the way girls smelled. Grass cuttings, and sweaty socks, and the faint vanilla fragrance of Play-Doh. She kissed him and let him go, feeling him shoot from her embrace like a pebble from a slingshot. Now he was running in crazed circles about the leaf-strewn lawn, flapping his arms against his sides.

“Brrrrrrrrrrrr … I’m a rocket! Watch me go!”

“Where are you going?” she asked him.

“Mars!”

“Oh, that’s too bad. I live on Jupiter. I was hoping you could drop me off on your way back.”

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Adam stopped running, and flopped down on the grass, giggling. “Mommy, you’re silly.”

“Look who’s talking.”

“What if you really lived on Joop-der? Who would tuck me in at night?”

“Daddy, of course.” A tight, hot band formed about her heart.

“Annie too!”

“Oh, I don’t know … your Aunt Annie is pretty busy.”

“But not too busy for me.” He spoke with the imperiousness of a seven-year-old who, since the day he was born, had been incessantly catered to by not only Annie, but Aunt Dolly and Rivka, too.

“Of course not.” Annie, though frantic with her chocolate business, always managed to find time to come visit Adam, or take him to a puppet show, or the zoo, or to miniature golf.

“She’s coming today, isn’t she? Isn’t she?” Adam demanded.

“Later,” Laurel told him. “After your nap.”

“Ahhhhh … only babies take naps.” He rose with a sigh of injured dignity, then added slyly, “I bet Annie wouldn’t make me take a nap.”

“You want to get over your cold, don’t you? And Annie isn’t here, so you’ll have to do what your mean old mommy says.” Laurel cupped a hand about the back of his neck, and steered him in the direction of the house. “Anyway, I have a surprise for you, but you won’t know until you get in bed.”

He tipped an excited face up at her. “You got them!”

“I’m not saying.”

“The Luke Skywalker sheets! You got them! You got them!” He launched into a frenzied little dance, then stopped, casting a doubtful look at her. “Did you get them?”

Laurel had wanted it to be a surprise, but, oh, that look-the look she also saw on Joe’s face when he got something wonderful that he hadn’t been expecting, like that time she’d done a sketch of him asleep on the couch,

r

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and had had it framed for his birthday. She nodded, the band around her heart growing tighter, hurting.

“Can I stay up and show Annie?”

“After your nap.”

When she had Adam settled upstairs in his room, which took a while-he was so excited about his new Star Wars sheets-Laurel made herself a cup of tea and carried it down the hall to the extra bedroom she’d turned into her studio. She loved this room, the smallest in the house. It had a window facing east, which gave her wonderful morning sun to paint by. And in the late afternoon, she sewed on the old Singer in the corner-right now, she was working on Annie’s fancy dress for next weekend’s chocolate fair. Her sister could afford to wear Halstons and Valentinos, but she’d spotted this particular dress in an Italian Vogue and had fallen in love with it. And naturally, big-mouth Laurel had to offer to make it for her… though finding the time had been a bigger challenge than the dress itself.

Laurel looked over to the wall on her right, which she’d covered from floor to ceiling with corkboard. Dozens of sketches were stuck up with pushpins, some curling in at the corners, giving the room a slightly off-kilter look. By the window stood her drawing board, with a clip holding several half-finished drawings. Next to it, her easel with a decrepit cocktail cart parked alongside that served as a stand for her paints and brushes. The rest of her stufflarge sheets of cardboard, drawing paper, canvases, paintbrushes, cans of gesso and turpentine and fixative spray, boxes of fabric scraps, big plastic jars of powdered paint, and a coffee can full of crayons for Adam-were fairly neatly arranged on the shelves she and Joe had hung on the south wall. The woodsy smell of linseed oil and turpentine hung in the air-a smell she seemed to carry with her everywhere, on her clothes, in her hair, like her own perfume.

Laurel slid onto the high stool that faced her drawing board, and stared at her drawing of a unicorn that shimmered ghostlike under its sheet of protective tissue.

She had several ideas for the next drawing in the

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story, and she wanted to sketch them while they were still fresh in her mind. She tore a fresh sheet from her sketch pad, looked at it, but then her mind went blank. After a few minutes, she folded her arms and leaned onto the table’s slanted surface. Gazing out the window at the backyard below, with its gnarled apple tree, and raspberry vines growing rusty with autumn, she felt a wave of tiredness sweep over her. Like all the times she’d been pregnant: drowsy, drugged almost.

Laurel felt her chest squeeze tight. Those babies … three of them. No bigger than the heads of pins, but they hadn’t seemed small and insignificant. Not to her. She’d imagined each one a rosy-cheeked child. And losing each one had been terrible, almost as terrible as if she had lost Adam.

Joe’s babies, his sons and daughters.

If she’d carried even one of them to term, would things be different now between her and Joe?

No, not fair, he loved Adam as much as he could love any child, even his own flesh and blood. She couldn’t blame this distance on her miscarriages.

Inside, Laurel felt herself spiraling downward, and took a deep breath, steadying herself. Was she maybe blowing this out of proportion? What about the good times?

The trip to Barbados, when it had rained the entire time and they hadn’t minded one bit. They’d stayed inside, drinking rum punches and making love, and eating tiny sweet bananas scarcely bigger than her thumb.

Another memory came to Laurel-the day a pipe had broken in the upstairs bathroom, and water had leaked down through the ceiling … all over her final drawings for Jabberwocky. Drawings she’d spent weeks and weeks slaving over. Every one, ruined beyond fixing. Even with Joe trying his hardest to make her feel better, she’d been inconsolable. Nothing could cheer her, she’d thought. Not even dinner at Rivka’s, which she’d been looking forward to. It was Friday night, Shabbat, a night for restfulness and rejoicing … and she didn’t feel at all like rejoicing. Even so, she’d put on a nice dress, and had gotten Adam

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suited up, and they had gone. She’d sat at Rivka’s table, surrounded by Rivka’s children and grandchildren, listening to Rivka’s husband joke that if their family didn’t stop growing, by this time next year, they’d have to rent Yankee Stadium for their Shabbat dinners.

And then, after the blessings, a wonderful thing had happened. Joe, beside her, had cleared his throat, and said, “There’s one prayer I’d like to read in English. May I?”

Mr. Gruberman, in his richly embroidered yarmulke and severe black suit, looked a bit surprised, but had nodded. “Sure, sure, go ahead.”