"You"re trying to make me a puppet," she said. "You"re making a mockery of me before I even speak."

"I"m sorry," he said. He got up and put his coat on, and she heard his keys jingle as he lifted them from the table. She was humiliated to be sent home, like a child being sent from the room after it has cutely performed for all the guests. She continued to stand by the fire, but he continued to stand in the hallway.

"I didn"t know you were dating me for s.e.x," she heard herself say.

"I wasn"t," he said.

That was in August, and she had not seen him since. Sometimes when she was depressed she would think of Peter and wonder whether she shouldn"t have tried harder so that she and Margaret wouldn"t end up together forever. They seemed to Elena to be old people already, the way they carried on about the cat: how clever it was, how much personality it had.

Tom came at eight o"clock, as Elena and Margaret were finishing dinner. Tom"s hair had grown long. He wore a black coat and black boots. He had a friend with him, a fellow named Max, who stood by shyly. Max was taller than Tom, and nowhere near as good-looking. He had on a denim jacket with layers of sweaters underneath, and his face was mottled pink from the cold. Tom brought him forward and introduced him. Tom presented his usual a.s.sortment of odd gifts: a basil plant, ajar of macadamia nuts, a book of poetry called Gathering the Bones Together, a poster of Donald O"Connor and Debbie Reynolds and Gene Kelly from Singin" in the Rain. After the admiring, and the laughing, and Margaret adopting Debbie Reynold"s posture and expression, no one seemed to know what to say. Margaret offered to show Max the house. Elena told Tom how much he had changed. She didn"t think that she would have recognized him on the street. When they lived together he had been thin, with a beard and short hair. Now, she saw, as he took off the coat, he had put on weight. His hair was as long as hers.

"Would you like a drink or a cup of coffee?" Elena said.

"Where have Margaret and Max gone?" Tom said.

They were silent, and could hear talking in the far room, the room where Margaret grew plants under lights in the winter.

"I might have a beer," he said. "There are some in that bag Max carried in."

They bent together to pick up the bag. Their heads b.u.mped. She thought, again, that this was going to be an impossible visit.

"Have one?" he said.

"No thank you."

"Okay if I get a fire going? You"re the only person I know who"s got a fireplace."

He went to the fireplace and crumpled newspaper and stuffed it in and began building a pile of kindling and logs. Elena sat on the floor, holding the box of matches. She thought back to the night in August when she had last seen Peter.

"You said you were writing about Rousseau," Tom said. "How"s it coming?"

"Not very well. I think I might have chosen the wrong topic."

"What"s your topic?" he said, striking a match and putting it to the newspaper. She had told him in the letter what it was.

"Ah, beautiful," Tom said. "Look at it go." He sat beside her and smiled at the flames. "Are you going to take a walk with me later? I want to talk to you."

"What about?"

"Max has talked me into going to the West Coast. I want to talk you into going with us."

"You come to visit once a year, and this time you want me to move to the West Coast with you."

"I don"t have the nerve to visit you more than once a year. I treated you like h.e.l.l."

"That just occurred to you."

"It didn"t just occur to me. My shrink said to tell you."

"Your shrink said to tell me."

"You sound like my shrink," Tom said. "I say something, and he repeats it."

By the time they went for a walk, several records had been played and they had all eaten cheese and crackers, and then Margaret and Max had wandered out of the room again, back to the plant room to get stoned. Elena and Tom sat drinking the last two cans of beer. She admitted defeat-she told him all the problems she had with writing, the problem she had concentrating. He confessed that he had no intention of going away with Max, but that he thought if he told her that, she might come back.

"I"m nuts. I admit I"m nuts," Tom said.

He was beginning to seem more familiar to her. Underneath the black coat had been a plaid shirt she remembered. The shoes were the same black motorcycle boots, polished.

Tom stood and pulled her up with one hand. Then, weaving, he headed for the chair to get his coat. Elena went to the closet for hers. The temperature gauge outside the door read thirty-four degrees. There was a full moon.

"Rousseau," Tom said, looking at the moon. "I think that gypsy"s sleeping just to flip out the wolf."

He buried their clasped hands in the pocket of his coat. He didn"t let go as he unb.u.t.toned his coat and turned sideways to urinate on the leaves. Elena stared at him with amazement. When he finished, he b.u.t.toned his coat with one hand.

"Hang on!" Max called, running with Margaret down the field to the edge of the woods. Elena saw that Margaret had put on the white poncho their grandmother had sent her as an early Christmas present. Max and Margaret were laughing, close enough now to see their breath, running so fast that they pa.s.sed Tom and Elena and stumbled toward the woods.

"I"ve got the tape!" Max called back, holding a ca.s.sette.

"He has a tape he borrowed from a hunter friend," Tom said.

"Recording of-a dying rabbit!" Max called to Elena. "Once I get this thing going, we can hide and see if a fox comes."

Max put the machine down and clicked the ca.s.sette into place, and was hurrying them into the woods and whispering for them to be quiet, although his loud whisper was the only noise. Max crouched next to Margaret, with his arm around her. Tom took Elena"s hand and plunged it into his pocket again. Elena was spellbound by the noise from the ca.s.sette player: it was a rabbit in pain, shrieking louder and louder.

"You see a fox?" Max whispered.

Soon an owl landed in a small peach tree in the middle of the field. It sat there, silhouetted by the moon, making no noise. Max pointed excitedly, cupped his hands over his eyes (though there was no reason for it) to look at the owl, which sat, not moving. The screeching on the ca.s.sette player reached a crescendo and stopped abruptly. The owl stayed in the tree.

"Well," Max said. "We got an owl. Don"t anybody move. Maybe there"s something else out there."

They sat in silence. Elena"s hand was sweaty in Tom"s pocket. She got up and said, "I"m going to finish my walk." Tom rose with her and followed her out of the woods. When they had gone about a hundred feet they heard, again, the sounds of the dying rabbit.

"Is he serious?" Elena said.

"I guess so," Tom said.

They were walking toward the moon, and toward the end of the field. There was a road to the left that went to the pump house. She was thinking about going there, sitting on one of the crates inside, and telling him she would come back to him. Imagining it, Elena felt suddenly elated. Just as quickly, her mood changed. He was the one who had broken off their relationship. Then he had begun to date her sister.

"Let"s go to the pump house," Tom said.

"No," Elena said. "Let"s go back to the house and get warm."

Their indecision had been a joke between them when they lived together; it got so bad that they could not decide which movie to see, which restaurant to eat at, whom to invite over for an evening. Tom"s solution had been to flip a coin, but even after the flip, he"d say, "Of course, we could still do the other. Would you rather do that?"

They talked for hours that night before they went to bed. They were squeezed into a chair he had hauled in front of the fireplace, both sitting on one hip to fit in.

"How could you think you"re not on my mind when I write you a letter a week?" Tom said, kissing her hair.

"You only come once a year."

"When have you invited me?"

"I don"t know."

"You never have. I"ve asked you to visit me."

"You asked Margaret, too."

"I did when I thought that you wouldn"t come under any other circ.u.mstances."

"Does Max like Margaret?"

"I guess so. Max is a real charmer. Max likes women. I don"t know many of his women friends. I just know he likes them, period." Tom lit a cigarette. He threw the match in the fireplace. "And anyway, you"re not Margaret"s keeper."

"The lease on the house goes until June," Elena said.

"They can find somebody. And if they don"t, we can pay for it until then."

"You"re being so matter-of-fact. It"s a little strange, don"t you agree? I don"t know. Let me think about it."

"We"ll flip a coin."

"Be serious," Elena said.

Tom stood and got a nickel out of his pocket. He tossed it, turned the coin upside down on the back of his hand. "Heads. You come back," he said.

"How do I know it was heads?"

"Okay, I"ll flip again. If it"s heads, you agree to believe that I was honest about the flip."

He flipped the coin again. "Heads," he said. "You believe me."

He came back to the chair.

Elena laughed. "What have you been doing the last three years?"

"I put it all in my letters."

"You never told me about the women you were seeing."

"I was seeing women. Tall women. Short women. What do you want to know?"

He took out his pocket watch and opened it. Two o"clock. Margaret and Max had been asleep for about an hour. The front of the gold watch was embossed with a hunting scene: a hunter taking aim on a deer leaping toward the woods. He pushed the watch back into his pants pocket.

"I think you want to stay here out of some crazy responsibility to Margaret," he said, "and there"s no reason for it. Margaret wrote me."

"What did she write you?"

"That things weren"t going well out here, and neither of you would admit it. And, as a matter of fact, I wasn"t lying about the coin, either. It came up heads both times."

"Does Max like her?"

"We just discussed that."

"But does he?"

"Max charms, and screws, every woman who has a pretty face. Look: I asked her in a letter what she"d do if you went back with me, and she said she"d stay on with her job at the hospital until the lease ran out."

The fire was dying out. The side of Elena"s body that was not turned toward Tom was cold.

"Come on," he said and pulled her out of the chair. Walking down the hallway to the bedroom, he stopped and turned her toward the mirror. "You know what you"re looking at?" he said.

"A sheep in wolf"s clothing. In the morning you just say, *Goodbye, Margaret," and drive away with me."

She said it, but a bit more elaborately. Max and Tom took a walk while Margaret and Elena had coffee. She told Margaret that she was going to spend the week with Tom, that after the week was up, she would be back, to decide what to do.

Margaret nodded, as if she hadn"t really heard. Just as Elena was about to repeat herself, Margaret looked up and said, "I always thought that Daddy liked me best. Although maybe he didn"t, Elena. Maybe he teased you so much because you were his favorite."

Max came into the kitchen, followed by Tom.

"We ought to get moving," Tom said. "Thank you, Margaret, for your hospitality." He held out his hand.

Margaret shook his hand.

"Snow forecast," Max said. "I heard it on the radio when I was warming up the car."

The car was running. Elena could hear it. This departure was too abrupt. Earlier Tom had carried out two boxes of books and her papers. Max was swinging her suitcase.

Max kissed Margaret"s cheek. Perhaps earlier he had said he would call her. Perhaps Margaret already understood that, and it wasn"t as bad as it looked. After all, Margaret had been pretty silent about other things. Hadn"t Tom made that clear?

Max held open the back door. Elena hugged Margaret and told her again that she"d be back.

"Stay put if you"re happy," Margaret said. It was hard to tell with what tone she said it.

They walked single file to the car. Elena sat between them. The radio was on, and Max turned up the volume. Margaret disappeared from the door, then reappeared, waving, wind blowing the white poncho away from her body. Elena could not tell who was singing on the radio because she never listened to country music. When the song ended, she changed stations. There was a weather forecast for snow before evening. She looked up through the tinted gla.s.s of the windshield and saw that the snow would start any minute; it wasn"t only the gray gla.s.s that made the sky look that ominous.

"G.o.d, I"m happy," Tom said and hugged her. Max moved the dial back to the country-music station and began to sing along with the song. She looked at him to see if that was deliberate, but he was looking out the window. As he sang she looked at him again, to make sure that he wasn"t teasing her. Her father had loved to tease her. When she was small, her father used to toss her in the air, to the count of three. Usually he gave one toss for each count. Sometimes, though, he would throw her high and run the words together "onetwothree." That frightened her. She told him that it did, and one time she cried. Her mother yelled at her father then for going too far. "How is she going to be an acrobat if she"s afraid of height?" her father said. He always tried to turn things into a joke. She could still close her eyes and see him clearly, in his silk bathrobe with his black velvet slippers monogrammed in silver, coming for her to toss her in the air.

They stopped at a restaurant for lunch. Max put a quarter in the jukebox and played country songs. Elena was beginning to dislike him. She already regretted leaving her sister so abruptly. But everything Tom said had been the truth. Margaret probably wanted her to go.

"Your shrink would be happy to see that smile on your face," Max said to Tom. "He"d know that he was worth the money."

"How long have you been seeing a shrink?" she asked.

"I don"t know," Tom said. "Six months, maybe. Is that about right, Max?"

"His ladylove left him," Max said, "almost six months to the day."