Inside, the moonlight cut a low angle across a plain of blanket. Inside, it shone white. As I noticed this, she called from the hall: "Are you all set in there, then? Anything you need?" A smile in her voice. Her silhouette appeared at the bedroom door.
I wanted to be out in her meadow, under the Lughnasad moon. "I might go for a walk."
That silenced her. I was bold enough to add, "Would you want to join me?"
She was an American, the first I really got to know, the first friend outside the small circle of ex-Irish mates who gathered at my uncle's pub.
I met her when I cut the heel of my thumb on a broken glass in the sink. "You'll want a couple of stitches in that," said my uncle, squinting at it under the light, and sent me off to Swedish Hospital down Market Street with a dishtowel around my hand. After I waited about a half hour in the empty emergency room, they showed me into a fluorescent-lit little office with a shiny metal table and she came in.
"Not too bad," she said, holding my hand stretched on the table. She smelled of flowers, and maybe faintly of horses, which didn't seem right in a hospital. She took out a hypodermic and filled it briskly. She looked at me. "You don't mind a shot, do you?"
"No." I grinned at her: "But you can sew me up without if you like."
She regarded me with interest. "Irish?"
"Yes. From County Kerry." As an afterthought, "In the West."
"I know. Hold on now." She stuck the hypodermic into my hand. I was glad she'd ignored my telling her to sew me up without.
She took out a little curved needle, and in a couple of minutes I had three neat stitches. She cut the ends off with small shiny scissors. "Come back in a week, and we'll take those out. Or - " half a smile - "you can do it yourself."
"If I come back will I see you again?"
She gazed at me, almost blankly. I thought she might be put off. Finally she said, "No, probably not."
I smiled, to take the edge off it. "Well, drop down to my uncle's pub sometime and I'll give you a beer. McAuley's on Ballard Avenue. We've music most nights."
She smiled back. "I will." I never believed her, though.
Until she did come by, not once but several times, till she was almost a regular. She came in nights we had the music, usually either alone or with women friends, very occasionally with a man and always a different one. Doctors, I thought, from the hospital, and none of them of her caliber. I was surprised she didn't have a husband to bring, or a coterie of steady lovers, whichever she wanted. It's true she wasn't the current taste, thin as a rail, but instead statuesque, with the body of a goddess and strawberry blonde hair. I suppose I was partial from the start. But for a long time most of our talk was tossed-off comments as I set down pints. How was the hospital, and how was the pub, and once about the Dingle Peninsula, where she'd visited.
Then the night of the big storm, when in the heat of Fiddler's Green playing no one noticed the snow, even the first inch too much for her Honda, she came up to the bar. "I'm stuck out there, Mickey. Could I use the phone to call Triple A?"
It was closing time, and the snow through the fogged windows showed no sign of letting up. "It's none of my business, but wouldn't you be better off leaving it overnight and taking a cab?" Even Triple A costs money, and why waste it. Though even as I said it, I thought, the cabs will be full up too.
"Oh," she looked embarrassed. "You're right, it's just… it's a long ride."
I had a better idea. "I'll give you a lift. I've got my truck. If you could wait for a bit."
The space of a breath; her blue eyes were shadowy, hard to read in pub light. Then half a smile. "I live a long way off."
I rubbed my forehead with the back of my arm. "I don't mind."
My truck, creeping through swirling snow down empty streets toward the highway, became a world of its own. I felt wildly happy, like a kid on an adventure. She must have felt it, the way she smiled at me.
That was the first time I drove up to her grand house, stately with white columns, about which she was so shy. I liked that in her, though I didn't really understand it, even when she said it was her husband's money that had bought it. All the lights were blazing through the driving snow, and we barely made it up the long drive. In her foyer, snow from my boots melting on her marble, I couldn't help saying, "But it's beautiful, Maggie!"
She shrugged. "I'm thinking of moving into town."
"What a grand place this would be for a party."
She laughed. "Maybe I should throw one."
"Surely you do. In a place like this." Her face went blank again, and I felt her wanting me to go. "Well, good night then, Maggie."
"Wait a minute," she said, "You're cold. I should make you something warm before you go." And I looked into her pale blue eyes, and I found them lonely, if anything, and I was chilled to the bone; the truck had a draft on the driver's side. So I said yes.
She took me down the big hall into the living room, all mahogany wooden paneling, a room meant for shadows and rumination, where all the lights were on. "Aaron," she said. A tall man stood up from a deep leather chair. There was a book in his hand, but I think he had been asleep.
"Margaret."
"Aaron, this is Mickey, from the pub in Ballard. The Honda's stuck in the snow, and he was kind enough to give me a lift in his truck. Mickey, this is my husband, Aaron."
I went over to shake hands. He was dressed in business clothes, the pants of a fine suit, a tie loosened in a starched white dress shirt, expensive shoes. His eyes were knowing but a little unfocused.
"I'm going to make Mickey a cup of tea before he goes back. It's bad out there." She went out the other side of the room.
"It's still snowing?" he said. "I appreciate your helping Margaret." He went unsteadily to the tall French doors. "Looks like more than a foot."
I nodded, though it was probably half that.
"You got four wheel drive? Better spend the night, you'll get stuck yourself. Want a drink?"
"No thank you, just tea will be fine."
He poured himself a tumbler of something from a decanter, neat, and sat down again. We were silent as the snow. I stared at the Persian carpet. The room smelled faintly of bayberry from a candle, and under that something human, indefinable and queasy: vomit?
"Give me a hand while you're here," he said suddenly, getting to his feet. "If you don't mind."
I hesitated. "Okay."
"I'm still putting up Christmas decorations," he said as he led me back into the front hall. "Late as usual." His footsteps were unsteady, like those of a man much older.
He opened a closet and dragged out a mass of greenery. It was a huge wreath, maybe five feet across, brushy pine and cedar boughs ringing an inner circle of holly, its berries like droplets of blood. I moved to help him, but he slid the thing on the smooth marble to the wall across from the front door.
He stopped, glanced at me and pointed to a hook high on the wall, about eight feet up.
"Do you have a ladder?" I asked.
"Don't need one," he said. "We do this every year, just the same, we heave it up, catch the wire on the hook." He gestured. "You take that side."
Following his lead, I lifted one side of the wreath. It wasn't very heavy, but the hook looked awfully high. It was hard to find a place to grip that wouldn't crush the cedar.
"On three," he said. "One, two, three." We started to swing the wreath up the wall toward the hook, but Aaron lost his grip and it tilted outward abruptly. I threw my hand up to steady it and caught its full weight on holly leaves.
"Shite."
I lowered the wreath to the floor and wrung my hand, stuck and bleeding in four or five places. My left hand, where she'd sewed me.
"What's up?" he said vaguely. "Oh. Hurt yourself?"
"Pricked my hand on your fucking holly," I said, instantly regretting my peevish tone.
"Sorry, my fault," he said, pulling the wreath up off the floor. "Let's try it again."
I stared at him, but he seemed perfectly serious, leaning over slightly, his hands on the wreath. I grabbed my side, and we slid it up the wall again. I couldn't see any way it was going to catch the hook, but it did. He stepped back to look, then reached up and tugged it to adjust the way it hung.
"Thanks," he said, looking at me blearily. "Appreciate the help. Want something for the hand?"
I examined the little punctures, the drops of blood smeared sideways. "No thanks. It'll do."
Maggie came into the hall.
"I'm sorry to put you out," I said, "but I''ve got to go or I won't make it home."
"Boy helped me with the wreath," said Aaron. "Poked his hand on the holly, though."
Maggie stood there inert, her thoughts a pale mist across her face. Foreign as I was feeling, I still wished there was something I could do for her.
"Thanks," I said, not knowing what I was thanking her for. "Will you be in to hear the Bally Brigands next week? No, it's the week after. Well, anyway, good night."
"If you'll wait a second, I'll have a cup of tea for you to take with you. And I need to look at your hand." She sounded almost angry.
I hesitated. I noticed Aaron's face looked like a child's as he watched her. He turned to me and said, eyebrows raised wistfully, in a breathy small voice, "Does she do you with her mouth?"
We both stared at him.
"Sorry," he said with a little smile, cruel and knowing and pained. "None of my business." He left the room.
I turned to Maggie. "That's all right, don't mind the tea or my hand. I've caused enough trouble." She opened her mouth, and closed it again. Her silence weighed behind me as I let myself out the front door.
I thought I'd never see her again, but two days later as I was beginning my shift, I heard her voice behind me as I unstacked tables.
"Mickey."
I turned around. My uncle was behind the bar, and a couple of the boys that'd be playing that night sat having a beer. They eyed us curiously, but they were out of earshot.
"Hi, Maggie. You're here early." I didn't stop my work.
"Can I talk to you a minute?"
It was a bad time. I had a lot of setting up to do before the evening got started, some deliveries to check and stow, and I didn't want her scattering my thoughts again. She must have seen it in my face.
"I want to apologize. I looked for you Sunday and yesterday."
"Those are my days off. There's nothing to be sorry for." Try as I might, I couldn't keep working, but stood and looked at her, even in the rags of wan pub light a goddess and a flame.
Her mouth twisted in a wry smile. "There's Aaron to be sorry for."
"He had a bit too much to drink is all."
"I shouldn't have asked you in." I just stared at her. "Aaron and I have been coming apart a long time. There's no need for you to be caught in the crossfire, though. I'm sorry."
I shrugged one shoulder. What was there to say? But I could see the pain, the more so because you knew she'd never be one to cry much. You're a fool, I told myself. You'll never help her, and she'll break your heart.
"What do I know of these things?" I said. "You're a beautiful woman, and he's a fool to be losing you."
"I lost him a while back," she said. I saw her twisting her wedding ring on her finger; her gaze followed mine, and she stopped. She looked at the floor. "Between his demons and his scotch, he hasn't had room for me in years."
"He still doesn't want you giving blow jobs to some boy in a pub, though."
I didn't know why I'd said it, but she knew. "So you've been thinking about that?" I shrugged, kicking myself, probably blushing. "I can't help it either," she went on. "It pushes us apart. Makes it harder to be friends. He knows that. But I don't want to give him that."
"What do you mean?"
I expected her to be angry, but she looked sad. On the far wall, the Harp Lager sign flickered and buzzed; her gaze went to it. "Now we're trapped with that image between us, your cock in my mouth. We can't even see each other without thinking about it."
I didn't know what to say. I stood there like a fool, my hand of itself slowly polishing the table with the dishcloth. I looked to see if anyone was watching. No one was.
"You're a beautiful woman," I said slowly. "But as for thinking about just the one thing every time I see you, my imagination is not so thin, I can tell you."
She laughed, and the lager sign brightened, and I smiled at her. I thought we were done. But she went back to it: "I don't want any of that at the moment. And I don't want to stop being friends. I don't even want to stop feeling romantic about you, from time to time, without having to act on it. Why should Aaron take that away? It does him no good." She looked at me. "Can we do that, Mickey?"
"Of course we can." But my blood was churning and I didn't know if what I was feeling was desire or fear or confusion.
In the end, thinking it over, I respected her bravery, to say all that. But her wish was hopeless; you can't go backward, however much you try.
I didn't see her again for nearly a month, till one late January night she came in with some women friends. She hardly looked at me all evening. Then, just as she was going, she came up to the bar and asked me out to ride horseback at her place the following Sunday. I almost said no out of pride, but I didn't.
We rode in the rain, which sometimes I find depressing, but it wasn't. I rode Aaron's horse, Rex, a lovely big bay gelding with a delicate gait. She rode hers, Aurora, an Arabian mare who probably cost more money than I've made in all my life. The trails, through woods and meadow, with their constant dark-green background of Douglas fir, went up into the hills forever. You could easily forget you were in the States at all.
I'd told her about home a bit, about how I'd worked as a lad at the racing stables, which I suppose is why she'd asked me to go riding. She talked to me now about her childhood, growing up in New Mexico, about her younger brother who was killed when they were teenagers, about wanting to be a painter and settling for being a doctor.
I asked her how she met Aaron, and she took her horse for a gallop. But after that she said they'd met when she was an intern, before he'd sold his family business, before he spent his time just being wealthy. He'd taken her sailing in his small sailboat on Puget Sound, and held her head when she was sick as a dog.
We rode in silence for a while, single-file under big old trees that dripped intermittently. "I don't know what I should be doing, Mickey," she said. "I've been working as a doctor now for more than ten years. I haven't needed the money, but I've needed the balance of the work. Now I want to move on to something else. But if I leave Aaron, I'll need that money."
There was nothing I had to say to that.
"I won't take his money. I suppose I could, but I've saved most of what I've made these years, and it amounts to plenty by now. Not enough to live on, though, not if I buy a place of my own."
"So what do you want to do? Paint?"
She shook her head slowly, without looking at me. "No, I've given up on that. I think I'd like to get involved in research. But it's hard."
"My uncle likes to say everyone lives the life of a fisherman. He has it all worked out. You sail a fragile boat of dreams on the sea of life, and you need the deep water of change, but you can't let it sink your boat. You live on the stability of land, but you can never sail on it."
After a bit, she looked back. "And?"
"Oh, nothing. I suppose it makes me think that no one has the answers."
She smiled to herself. "My recurring image is that I'm a fire, but the wood's too wet to burn."
When we got back and had taken care of the horses, I thanked her for having me. She hesitated, thinking maybe of asking me in. I had no intention of saying yes.
"It's cold," she said. "Would you like a sauna?"
I opened my mouth to say no, I had to get back, but I found my mouth saying yes instead. The sauna was out past the swimming pool, in a little outbuilding. She switched it on and then turned to me. "The dressing rooms are over there. I'll get some towels."
"I don't have a bathing suit." I felt stupid as soon as I said it.
She smiled. "You have this way of keeping me honest. I don't usually wear anything."
"I haven't done that."
"Do you want to?"
It was too much like a challenge. "Okay."
But I didn't know what to do. She went off and came back couple of minutes later with a handful of towels. I was just standing there. She didn't say anything, just put the towels down on a bench, turned, and unbuttoned her shirt. That off, in her bra, she pulled off her boots. She glanced at me then, to see if I was taking off my shoes.
I was quicker than she was. I pulled down my drawers in the chilly air.
"Not using the dressing rooms, then?" I turned; it was Aaron, standing at the end of the walkway, wrapped in an elegant trench coat.
She looked up, bare-breasted, and pulled down her knickers. "No." She tossed them casually on top of the rest of her clothes and went into the sauna. I looked at Aaron, speechless.
"Well, go on in," he said after a moment. "You'll freeze like that."
I nodded and went in after her. The air was barely warm. She didn't turn, or say anything. She was sitting on a raised bench, leaning back into the corner of the room, her near leg up, a cold look on her face. I went and sat in the opposite corner. There was silence except for clicking noises from the heater.
"We should have waited till it was ready," she said after a while. I didn't answer. "I thought he was asleep. He usually drinks so much in the morning, he sleeps all afternoon." I sat there staring at the floor, vowing not to get myself into this position again.
She didn't apologize, and she didn't speak, and the small room made all of sweet-smelling cedar was nearly completely dark. Outside I heard sibilance, and the small window of the door showed it had begun to rain in earnest.
The shadowed light laid a blue tinge along her leg, smooth as marble and obviously strong. The globe of her breast lay slightly flattened on her chest; she'd lain down on her back. The room grew warmer. She'd laid her leg down, and her pubic hair showed as a shadow, the subtle cleft of her labia dark.
Even so, alone with her, naked, I felt like a stranger. I'd wanted her since I first laid eyes on her, and her body was as lovely as a man could ask, but what moved in my blood was confusion, more than the desire I expected and wanted.
"Maggie," I said, "I feel strange."
She pushed herself up to sitting, without haste. "Why?"
"Do you do this with all your friends? Or do you want something more?" She stared at me till I felt like a fool, which made me rash. "You know the sight of you is a tease if I can't kiss you. But what is your husband thinking, alone in his big house? What is it that you want?"
She swung her feet over the side of the bench, her breasts hanging sweetly between her braced arms. "I think I want the same as you, Mickey," she said in a soft voice, anger thundering in the distance behind it. "But I'm a fool to act like I can have it easily. I can't. And that makes me feel trapped. But of course that's not your problem."
Something about her anger and vulnerability and pain released my desire, like the rush of a drug. I stood up. "Maggie, you're not trapped. Fuck it. I don't care." I moved in front of her. I could feel myself getting hard. She looked up at my face, almost afraid. Her lips looked soft, and I knew she half-wanted to be kissed.
But the pain in her eyes stopped me. She was right. She wanted me, but she'd be sorry afterward.
Her gaze drew far away, thinking. Then she stood and slipped past me. I turned to face her standing at the door. She reached out her hand and touched my cheek with her fingers, and laughed. "See how strong I am? I touched you, Mickey, without fucking you." Her fingertips dropped away. Our gazes linked, and her mouth, held softly, trembled, and I almost kissed her. But she held up her hand; I glanced pale even fingernails, cut close, a doctor's. "Please, no."
A moment passed. I moved back a step. "Whatever you like."
"Let's just go riding sometimes. Please? I'm no good for anything else right now."
I just stood and stared. She pushed her hands into hair and rubbed quickly, a gesture of being frazzled, strawberry curls everywhere. "I'm going in now. Don't follow me, just go around, will you?" I nodded.
She turned and left, striding into the night naked and beautiful, down the lighted walkway with the cold rain sleeting dotted lit threads around her, to the corner of the big house and out of sight.
I got dressed and went home.
The next day, as I was waking up, she called me. "I got your number from your uncle at the pub. I just wanted to let you know I'm going out of town for ten days." Her voice was tender, as if we were lovers. She hesitated. "I wondered if you'd be willing to come riding again Sunday after next. I'll behave better this time."
The way she said it, ready for me to refuse, I spoke to reassure her, without thinking. "Of course. Same time?"
"Yes. Thanks, Mickey."
I thought seriously about not going, but too much of me protested. And I missed riding. So a little unwillingly I went, and she was as good as her word, she behaved. I can't say I was entirely pleased. But a friend, a riding companion and the use of a good horse aren't negligible things.
Aaron reappeared at the end of the afternoon. I was holding his horse's hoof in my hands.
"Something wrong?"
I stood up, letting Rex's hoof go free. "Hello, Aaron. Just a stone; I've got it out. But I'd say he needs to be reshod."
His face pinched with irritation. "Sidney Baines looks after all that. I'm sure he has it in hand."
"Not by the look of things. You might say a word to him."
A look of hauteur. I stared him out. Light rain misted down, gray. Maggie said, looking at Aaron, "I'll speak to Sidney."
Without a word, he stalked off.
For the next few months, we went riding every now and again. No saunas. Once, when I was leaving, I put my arms around her, but she drew back, and we went on as before. I began to think nothing would happen between us, though I thought about her too much for my peace. Meanwhile I went on the occasional date, girls I met through the pub mostly, very sleek and shiny some of them. Nothing came of that. It's not often you meet someone who moves you.
I got a few letters from Maíre in London, full of good will and guarded sympathy. She'd moved up from apprentice; one of her dress designs had gone down the catwalk. I could read warmth between the lines, and I remembered our fights, and it was true I couldn't imagine her waiting for a fishing boat. Nor could I imagine owning that boat now.
All that spring I was casting and recasting, but what I caught I had to throw back. My uncle said, "Stick with me, Mickey," but if I'd wanted to run a pub I could've done it in County Kerry. I was marking time, I knew it, waiting - for what? An omen?
Slowly, riding in her green hills in overcast and rain, Maggie and I got easier; we kidded each other. She talked about her steps toward divorce. I privately thought she should soak him for lots of money, but I respected that she wanted to be fair. We traded bad jokes, talked about Ireland and Paris, which I'd visited with Maíre, and about the States. We argued about music.
Summer came on full force in July, hot days and the grass gone tan as straw. Riding, we were drenched in the smell of horse sweat; after a gallop, tethering Rex and Aurora, we threw ourselves in the grass. I tickled Maggie's upper lip with a long stem; her blue eyes looked past me, reflecting the sky. My hands ached, my groin ached that I should pull off the half-wet oxford-cloth shirt and satin bra and grab her beautiful breasts, goblets in golden freckled skin. But it seemed we had a compact not to do that.
"Come over next Sunday."
"All right, I will."
I can remember no day more perfect than that last late-summer Sunday. Goldenrod strewn rich, fireweed sweet red-violet or blowing gauze, and a sky rising up forever. We stayed out hours; too long, said the back of my mind, but I ignored it. Toward evening, with the zenith a fair even blue and the horizon yellow as a peach, fir trees black standing ward against it, we came in, air around us smelling like wine. We put away the horses; I helped her give them oats and hay.
I brushed a bit of chaff from her hair, and she smiled at me. "Come in for a bit, will you? I'll give you a beer, and dinner if you want."
I stared. She shrugged one shoulder, smiling. "Aaron went to visit his sister in Connecticut."
I watched her face, and the smile played on her lips, and among the din of the band tuning its instruments I heard one long, sweet chord.
Her kitchen shone all white and stainless steel under the first fluorescent lights, but she snuffed them and brought out candles. While I drank my red ale, brisk as a chef she made me wild-green salad, then swordfish and a sort of corn salsa, warmed French bread beside. We finished with whiskey. "Is this Aaron's?" I asked as she handed me the thick tumbler, the liquid honey-blonde against the flame of a candle.
"No. He drinks scotch. This is Irish." We smiled at each other, and the smile went on too long.
For all of that, she set me up in the guest bedroom, and though my stomach fell out when she told me her plan, I let her. She stood in my bedroom doorway, near enough to touch, but I held back my hand.
The moon hung outside yellow as straw.
"I might go for a walk," I said. "Would you want to join me?"
The moonlight didn't reach her face.
"Sure," she said.
There is something wild and unworldly about the light of a full moon. Quiet, made alien, far from people, the horses asleep, we walked out a narrow path into her grass. Not far along, she took off her sandals, and it looked like a good idea so I took off my shoes. The light sifted down silver gray, and all the colors drifted, ghosts of themselves. And I felt a cut of archaic fear, from some race memory, because what might hide in the firs?
Maggie took my hand.
Further on, we came to a deer-hollow, pushed into the grass perhaps by some doe. Maggie stopped here, and I stopped also. A light wind carried to us the sweet smell of hay.
Maggie pushed the hair back from my forehead, and her palm came to rest against my cheek.
She drew me forward.
We moved as if to music. Her fingers unbuttoned my shirt, and my jeans, and I stepped out of them, and I took off her clothes likewise, and we stood naked as children in the night wind, almost chilly. She drew me into her arms.
The feel of her. I kissed every inch of her body, and I found her secret places. The tendon of her neck, and the soles of her feet; she cried out when I sucked her toes. I spread her labia with my fingers and explored her folds by moonlight, camellias dipped in slightly bitter-smelling honey. She murmured and whimpered and around us the tall grass rustled in the wind.
Though the thought of safety was in the back of my mind, when her firm hand grabbed my cock, pressing out a deep groin-pull of lust, I let her slide me in. We came together, which I'd always thought an old wives' tale.
We lay in the grass, and I stroked her and whispered love words. I loved her.
She let me sleep in her bed that night.
In the morning, I woke alone. The yard I looked out on was full of mist. I went down her long, curving marble stairs, through her foyer that looked good to host a diplomatic reception. Before I came into the kitchen, I heard her crying.
I pulled up a stool to the counter, where she sat, where last night she'd given me supper. Glancingly I saw she'd washed up everything, leaving nothing for me. She hid her face in her hands and kept crying.
"Maggie," I said finally.
She held up one palm, keeping me away.
"Maggie, talk to me."
She turned toward me, her face red and drenched, like the face of a miserable little girl. I wanted to take her in my arms, but she didn't want that. "I can't do this. I'm not that strong. It'll only hurt all of us."
"I can face Aaron."
"It's not that. I'm stretched too thin. There's just no room for you in my life."
"But I'm already in your life, Maggie."
"Then get out of it! Get out." She dropped two clenched fists on the countertop, and began to sob again.
I slid off my stool and took her shoulders in my hands. But she wriggled out of my grip, tears pouring across her face in a sheet. "I mean it, Mickey. This won't work. Aaron's and my divorce - it might take a couple of years to go through. In the meantime - I thought I could do this part way, and I can't. There's just not enough of me to give you."
"I don't want to take anything from you. I love you."
She shook her head violently. "You think you love me. What do you want to do, wait? That won't work. I can't promise you anything. I just can't." She sighed, pressed her hands flat against the counter. "Go away, Mickey. I mean it."
I'll never forget her red-rimmed blue eyes staring me out.
I went.
There passed a long time when I was just breathing, eating and sleeping, working, and drinking. I took no joy in it. On the outside, it seemed little different from when I'd first come to Seattle, but the simple pleasures I'd had then, the new city, my little neighborhood, the camaraderie of the Irish at the pub, all that seemed to fall away. She didn't come back to the pub again.
I went home in late fall to visit. I almost didn't return to the States, but my uncle pushed and pushed, and I didn't have luck finding a fishing job. So I flew back again.
I felt like a soul in the underworld. I felt like a ghost. It came on toward Christmas, and I wished myself back at home. My mood contrasted sharply with all those happy or at least frantic people carrying packages, and the sparkling lights in the air. I would drive by Swedish Hospital and stop where I could see the emergency room entrance, idling my truck. I knew I was stupidly obsessed. Leave her alone, I told myself. She wants you to.
Still I would drive over and watch the door, the lights sheening onto the pavement.
It was Christmas week when I finally worked up the courage, or the foolishness, to go in. At the desk, I could barely speak. "I'm looking for Dr. Margaret Atkins." I had to say it twice.
"She's right there," said the woman, and gestured off-handedly. I turned around.
There she stood, my goddess. I registered that under her white lab coat rounded a denim-jumper-clad belly, carried high, proudly pregnant.
I don't know what I felt, elation or terror.
"Maggie," I said, not much above a whisper. "Maggie."
She looked up and met my eyes, her face an ocean of calm, like the face of the moon.
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