Mary leaned forward. “I’m sorry?”

The doctor settled back into her chair. “A glass of wine can ease the tension.”

“I am not tense,” said Mary.

“Aren’t there tests?” O’Neil asked. “Shouldn’t you be examining my sperm?”

The doctor yawned and glanced at her watch. “Pardon me. But no. It’s not something we do at this point. Have you ever looked at sperm under a microscope? It’s like the hordes at Mecca.”

That night they did as the doctor suggested and split a bottle of Chardonnay. It cost eleven dollars, was as sugary as a candy bar, and by the time they were finished they were both tipsy and babbling like toddlers. Struggling out of his jeans, O’Neil stumbled on the corner of the bedroom rug and watched as one of the finial posts on the bed frame rose toward his face, slowly and then quickly, like the bow of an ocean liner bursting from a bank of fog. In her robe Mary led him to the bathroom, sat him down on the toilet, and held a Ziploc bag of ice cubes to his nose.

“There’s always adoption,” O’Neil said through his thickening nose.

“We’re too old,” Mary said hopelessly, and began to cry. “Who would adopt us?”

In early January they returned to the doctor, who once again did nothing even remotely medical, apart from taking Mary’s temperature. Her questions seemed arbitrary. Did they sleep with the windows open or closed? Did they bathe, or take showers? Was O’Neil still jogging in the cold? The doctor listened to their answers, nodding and clicking her pen. Perhaps, she concluded, they might take a trip together, to take their minds off getting pregnant.

“I’ve found there’s something about a hotel that can be helpful for couples with this problem,” she said.

“This problem?” Mary repeated.

“Try one with movies in the rooms,” the doctor said.

It seemed silly; nevertheless, they decided to do it. All they had was the weekend, so they planned to drive north to see the town where O’Neil had grown up. In all their time together Mary had never actually been to Glenn’s Mills. The drive to upstate New York from Philadelphia took five hours, the last of these on country highways through scenes of such heartbreaking rural poverty that all they could do was marvel. But Glenn’s Mills itself had obviously been discovered. In winter twilight, fidgety from so many hours in the car, they drove down the town’s main street, past boutiques and antique shops, tearooms and craft studios. Though Christmas was long gone, pine boughs still hung from the streetlamps, which were ornately Victorian, like something from the set of a play. They half expected to see men out walking in capes and top hats, but most of the people on the street were wrapped in heavy parkas with scarves pulled up to their chins, hurrying somewhere, their heads tipped against the cold.

“None of this was here when I was a kid,” O’Neil explained. They glided past an herbal shop called the Witchery, then a corner Mobil station with a sign in the window that said: We Have Cappuccino!

O’Neil waved a sorry hand. “Who drinks all this espresso? This was always a boiled-coffee kind of town.”

At the Mobil station they bought turkey sandwiches, taco chips, and a six-pack of beer, and found their motel. It was clean and new, two stories tall, and bathed in a fluorescent glow. They ate their picnic on the bed, then put on their pajamas and climbed beneath the stiff covers. A folded card waited on the nightstand with the names of the movies they could order in their room. The usual fare, and then they came to the ones they were looking for: Up and Coming, Hot Housewives, and Pillow Talk II: Debutantes After Dark.

O’Neil voted for the third. “I liked the original. Is Doris Day in this one?”

Mary shook her head and continued to read. “‘The sexy adventures of a rich girl in Europe.’ It stars somebody named Chandra Loveman, though I don’t suppose that’s her real name.” She wrinkled her nose and peered at O’Neil with her head tipped to one side. “It doesn’t seem like enough to go on, really.”

“I’m not familiar with Ms. Loveman’s oeuvre,” O’Neil said, “but I would be willing to learn.”

They picked the first movie, because Mary, who had done graduate work in poststructuralism, liked the pun in the title. The movie was very dark, and there was a great deal of moaning in the shadows, and a soundtrack that pulsed tumescently whenever the sexy parts came along, which was nearly all the time. The plot was thin, but actually more than either of them had expected. A beautiful young man, orphaned by a tornado that destroys his family’s farm, moves from Iowa to California to find work in the movie industry. No sooner does he step off the bus than he is beset by unscrupulous female casting agents and producers, all seeking his favors. They are determined to corrupt him, but he outsmarts them; his past is gone, his gentle life in Iowa smashed by the four winds, and what is there for him now, but to give himself wholly to his gifts? It was all straight out of Balzac, and vaguely interesting, but the story would never last for very long, and then the music would resume, and the moaning. Sometimes the camera zoomed in so close that neither of them could tell what they were seeing.

“I’m not trying to be uncooperative,” Mary said after some time had passed, “but I have to say, this isn’t doing very much for me at all. What is that? Is that somebody’s leg?” She waved her beer at the screen. “Honestly, I haven’t a guess.”

“We could see what else is on.”

Mary traded her empty beer for a fresh one from the small ice-chest beside the bed. Under the blankets she was wearing a flannel nightgown and woolen socks. “It’s your six dollars,” she said.

They scanned through the other channels and selected a nature show about a family of bobcats. The mother had a pair of cubs; she taught them to hunt, and play in the dust. She brushed them clean with her long tongue.

Mary turned toward O’Neil in the dark room. The screen flickered blue across the small round lenses of his eyeglasses.

“You know, in this light there’s something about you. It’s very appealing somehow.”

“Is this the beer talking?” O’Neil asked.

Mary kissed his nose and settled down beside him. “I like this show much better.”

“Those are cute kittens,” O’Neil agreed.

For a while they watched without talking. The kittens grew; finally the day came when it was time for them to strike out on their own. Mary watched as the mother cat led them away from the den, on some pretense, then kept on walking. The show ended with the mother cat, on a rocky outcrop, looking over the arid valley where she had left her children behind.

“It must be hard for you to be here,” Mary said into O’Neil’s chest. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.”

“I’m all right,” O’Neil said, but in the dark, almost invisibly, she knew him to be weeping.

The next morning, cold and clear, they put on heavy coats and boots and walked around town while O’Neil pointed out the sights: the pharmacy where he had once shoplifted baseball cards, his father’s old law office on Main Street and the library where his mother had worked, the blue clapboard house where his sister, Kay, had taken piano lessons from a woman named “Mrs. Horsehead.” Whether this was her actual name, or a nickname made up by her students to be cruel, O’Neil could not recall. At a pottery gallery they looked at vases without buying any, and when the morning seemed over, they had lunch at a diner behind the town hall, called the Coffee Stop. The insides of the Coffee Stop were dim and smoky-it seemed to be an oasis of what the town once was-and the booths and counter stools were packed with large men in flannel work shirts whose dirty hands and nicotine-stained faces bespoke a life of ceaseless toil. Mary bought a copy of the local paper to read over her grilled cheese sandwich, and that was when she saw the article. She read it in its entirety, then passed O’Neil the paper, folded back to show the photo of the house-a large white four-square with black shutters that she recognized at once as O’Neil’s, from other photos she had seen. Even the paint job was the same.