cigarettes or for the curator’s wardrobe, in tones of prunenand raisin, that she had bought to convince. She put on hernnew position like a costume, affecting a scholar’s stoop. Shenwould do anything to erase the housewife and dabbler, thenwoman she had been.nLeaving the Manuscripts Library promptly at five, Tadnoften looked at her with the assurance of a born careerist:n”That doesn’t need doing now.” He might guess at thenempty house, but he could not imagine the anxiety that keptnher at her desk.n”You don’t understand,” she would tell him, “you’venalways worked. It’s going to take me the rest of my life toncatch up.” If she fell short they would seize her liver; if shenfailed at this she deserved to have it eaten, down to the lastndelicious shred. It was Tad’s fault that she had expanded hernarea of vulnerability. There were so many more things innher life now than there used to be, that she might do wrong.nGoing back to school she had imagined, rather, that she wasncovering the exits — the number of places where she putnherself on the line.nThis was best: this moment before the women came; thenlight falling on the polished table in her silent house.nWhen she felt ready she would bring the parts of her lifentogether; she was going to dazzle her colleagues and thenGarden Club with medieval illumination, wrought in flowers:nan illustrated capital, she thought, but at the momentnshe could not decide which letter she would choose. Oncenagain, she would win the international competition, andnAlfred—what would Alfred do?nHer most beautiful arrangement would always be ThenMoon Walk, conceived when her children were still youngnand opening faces like flowers at the dinner table, in thenuncomplicated days when she was primarily a homemaker,nwell before she enlarged the area of risk. This was before shenbecame a competitor outside her local club, and she wouldnalways like it best because it didn’t matter at all and thereforenshe had accomplished it with the careless grace of a Zennarcher: a perfect iris curving from the perfect silver tube.nAccepting the trophy, she had never imagined that shenwould want anything more.nBut they were here: the committee — Clarita and Janice,nMaud and Elise, the friends—all right, the friends of hernyouth. She had drunk and giggled with these dear girls onnthe way to and from sorority meetings and college mixersnand, in adulthood, in the car on the way to dozens of flowernshows. They had cooked and dressed up for each other fromnthe early days around tiny kitchen tables in first apartmentsncluttered by small children’s toys, through the years they hadnspent decorating gracious houses appropriate to their station,nmaking festivities in spite of everything that happenednto them, or perhaps because of it.nThey had soldiered through cocktail parties at the YachtnClub and dinner parties without number, giggling on thensidelines at their children’s weddings. They’d even managednto make a party of the luncheon after Clarita, the Castiliannbeauty, won her divorce.nIt made Alicia proud to see them filing into her carefullynkept house today: pretty and gratifyingly ageless in theirnautumn costumes, serene in the context of orderly households,nsuccessful grown children, exercise classes and clubsnDenial, Dreamnby Gloria Glickstein BramenClimbing out of vivid scenes,ncoughing an incoherent wordnin the pillow, I woke, thinking I heardnyou move. It was a dream.nThis bed is wide empty earth,na landscape devoid of intimacy.nAre you leaving me?nI’ve been waiting for that.nAre you leaving? I knownit from signs in the waynpeople charge through the street, derangednby heat, the narrowness of the road,nand the search for consolation.nYour sleep is transparentnand deep, without feeling.nOutside, faces belie a preoccupationnwith death. Hurried, magnetized,nthey drag the pavement into their lives.nYour sleeping hand avoids mine.nYou’re already planning lies.nsuch as this one. It gave her a sense of well-being, of thenorder and fitness of life. She was rich beyond money: shenhad her place in the university library and yet she stillnbelonged here. She loved the cashmeres and tweeds hernoldest friends wore to her house, the muted lipsticks and nailngloss with which they honored her, the touches of antiquengold.n”Lissy, darling.”n”. . . so glad to see you.”n”So happy you came.”n”Everything is just lovely.”nIt was; Ardena had cleaned yesterday, while she was atnwork, and as they did so often now, she and Alfred had eatennout. So few things happened in the house on Friday nightsnnnOCTOBER 1989/23n