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Sometimes, without his say-so, the most specific memories of Eunice would suddenly swim up. Her refusal to drive on major highways, for instance, because she feared what she called the “peer pressure” of the drivers behind her on entrance ramps. Her tendency to talk about any subject that was on her mind, regardless of her audience, so that she was perfectly capable of asking the mailman what gift she should bring to a baby shower. And the way she had of biting her lower lip when she was concentrating on something-her two small, pearly front teeth recalling the teeth of an old-fashioned bisque doll that one of his daughters had owned.

Or the harder memories, from after he’d learned she was married. “But what about our only life?” he heard her say, and it was almost a melody, a plaintive little clear-voiced song hanging in the air of the room.

Why was it that he had known so many sad women?

His mother, to begin with-abandoned by her husband, perennially in poor health, no solace remaining to her but her children, as she was forever pointing out to them. “If you two left me, I don’t know how I’d bear it,” she said. And then what did Liam do? He left her. He accepted a partial scholarship to a college in the Midwest, although the University of Maryland had offered a scholarship too, and a full one at that. How could he? all her church friends asked. Thank the good Lord for Julia; daughters were always a comfort; but wouldn’t you think Liam could stay in the same geographical area, at least? When his mother was so alone, so unfortunate, such a victim of circumstance! A saint, in fact. (As she said so often: “I just seem to put myself last, even though everyone tells me I shouldn’t. I know they must be right, but I’m just made that way, I guess.”)

Liam offered no defense. There really wasn’t any defense. He reminded himself, very sensibly, that somebody would always be saying something disapproving. No point letting it get to him.

Funny, it used to be so simple to sum his mother up, but now that he looked back he seemed to be ambushed by complexities. He saw again the frightened look in her eyes when she was going through her last illness, and her tiny, curled hands. It struck him that life in general was heartbreaking-a word he didn’t toss off lightly.

His girlfriends had been sad types as well, not that he had consciously chosen them for their sadness. Sooner or later, it seemed, every girl he dated ended up revealing some secret sorrow-an alcoholic father or a mentally ill mother or, at the very least, an outcast childhood.

Well, who knows. It could be that the whole world was that way.

Millie, though: Millie was his golden girl. She was tall and slender, with a veil of straight blond hair and a beautiful pale face. Her eyes were deep-set and startlingly light in color, the lids luminous as eggshells, and she had a floating, sashaying style of walking.

Millie, he thought now, forgive me. I’d forgotten how much I loved you.

His first glimpse of her had been at a friend’s apartment. She was playing the cello in an impromptu, very inept and cobbled-together string quartet, which was making her laugh. She laughed with her hair tossed back, her body loose and relaxed, her knees spread open to accommodate her instrument. This was misleading, as it turned out. Millie was not an open-kneed kind of person. She wasn’t even a cellist; she was a harpist. Liam learned later that she’d gone a few months earlier to pick up a skirt from the cleaner’s, but the cleaner had closed for lunch hour and so she’d stepped into the music store next door and bought herself a cello instead. That was Millie for you: whimsical. Fey. A sort of water maiden. Liam had fallen head over heels. He had pursued her single-mindedly until she agreed to marry him, less than six months after they met.

Had he been too insistent? Had she harbored some misgivings? He hadn’t thought so at the time, but now he was less sure. At the start of their marriage, he had believed she was content. (Though always, now that he looked back, rather muted, a bit remote.) It was true she was not an enjoyer. She seemed to find sex something of a trial, and she deplored the excessive notice that other people-even Liam, back then-paid to food and drink. In fact she soon became a strict vegetarian, which made her even more pallid and translucent-looking.

But the major change dated from her pregnancy. This was an unplanned pregnancy, admittedly, but not the end of the world. They were both in agreement on that. When she started sleeping too much and grew even more disconnected from everyday life, well, it was only to be expected, wasn’t that so? But then she didn’t change back again after the baby was born.

Or maybe she’d been that way all along, and Liam had just lacked the wisdom to perceive it.

Like being dragged down by the ankles into a swamp, that was how his life began to feel. Millie was already submerged and he was struggling to support the weight of her.

Of course the university psychologist was consulted, but Millie said he didn’t know what he was talking about and so that had come to nothing. And then for a brief time, her doctor had conjectured that she might be suffering from a silent form of appendicitis-some chronic, low-grade infection that would explain her constant tiredness and lack of zest. Both of them (Millie too, it saddened Liam now to recall) had been almost giddy with relief. Oh, then! Just something medical! Something curable with surgery!

But that theory had been discounted, by and by, and she had returned to dreary hopelessness, barely slogging through the days. Often Liam would come home in the evening to find her still in her bathrobe, the baby straggly-haired and fretful, the apartment smelling of soiled diapers, the sink piled high with unwashed dishes. Oh, Lord, just go ahead and die! he’d thought more than once. Not meaning it, of course.

Could it be that underneath, he had guessed ahead of time that she might take those pills? And had done nothing to prevent it?

No, he didn’t think so.

But he had to admit he had blamed her for her unhappiness. He had felt a kind of superiority; he had wondered why she didn’t just pull herself together, for God’s sake.

The old woman from the apartment next door stepped out into the hall as he came home one evening. She said, “Mr. Pennywell, that baby has been crying since morning. Every now and then it gets quiet but then it starts crying again. Since eight o’clock in the morning and its voice has gone all croaky. Twice I rang your bell but nobody answered, and your wife has got the door locked.”

“Well, thanks,” he said, not feeling thankful in the least. Interfering old biddy. He couldn’t be expected to do everything! He let himself into the apartment and then he thought, Since eight o’clock in the morning?

He had left for his carrel in the library shortly after seven. Millie had been a humped shape beneath the afghan on the living-room couch. She often got out of bed at night when she couldn’t sleep and watched old movies on TV. He had switched the TV off and left without trying to wake her.

Eight o’clock in the morning, he thought, and he stood frozen, not even breathing, hearing the great, hollow, echoing silence beneath the baby’s hoarse sobs.

People said, trying to be helpful, “It’s only natural to feel angry.” But Liam shrugged them off.

“I’m not in the least angry,” he said. “Why would you think I was angry?”

Instead he was very brisk and efficient. He devoted the first few weeks to finding childcare, juggling work and a baby. He did love his daughter; or he felt attached to her, at least; or at least he felt deeply concerned for her welfare. Still, his favorite daydream from that time was the vision of himself sitting alone in an empty room for hours and hours and hours, uninterrupted, undisturbed, unneeded by a single human being.