“The kids wouldn't even like the idea by now. Benjamin's seven, and Melissa's five. A baby would seem like an intrusion to them. You have to think of that. We owe something to them too.” She sounded so definite, so sure, and he smiled and took her hand as they walked back to where they had parked the ear. He had just bought his first Mercedes. And she didn't know it yet, but he was going to give her a fur coat for Christmas. He had just picked it out at Bergdorf Goodman, and it was being monogrammed with her initials.

“You certainly sound sure.” As always, he sounded disappointed.

“I am sure.” And she was. There was no way he was going to talk her into having another baby. She was thirty-one years old, and she liked her life just fine the way it was. She was swamped with committee work all day long, she spent half her life running car pools, and the rest of it going to Cub Scouts and Melissa's ballet class. Enough was enough. He had tamed her as far as she was willing to be tamed. They had the picket fence, and the two kids, and the house in the country, and they had even bought an Irish setter the year before. More than that she could not give, even for Ollie.

“What do you say we take the kids skiing after Christmas?” he asked as they got in the car. He liked to stay close to home for the actual holidays, because he thought it was more fun to be at home, and he thought it was nicer for his parents. Sarah's parents had her sister and her kids, and they went to Chicago every Christmas from Grosse Pointe, but his parents had only him. And Sarah had no burning desire to go home for the holidays anyway. They had done it once, and she had complained about it for three years. Her sister annoyed her, and Sarah and her mother had never gotten along either, so the arrangement they had was perfect.

“That would be fun. Where? Vermont?”

“What about something a little racier this year? What about Aspen?”

“Are you serious? That must have been one hell of a bonus you got last week.” He had brought in the agency's biggest client ever. He still hadn't told her how big the bonus was, and they had both been so busy in the last week, she hadn't pressed him.

“Big enough to splurge a little if you'd like to. Or we could stay around here, and then go away just the two of us after the kids are back in school, if you want to. My mom would come and stay with them.” She had before, and now that they were a little older, it worked better, “What do you think?”

“I think it sounds terrific!” She gave him a hug, and they ended up necking in the new car, which smelled of men's cologne and new leather.

And in the end, they did both. They went to Aspen with the kids for the week between Christmas and New Year, and a month later, he took Sarah away for a romantic week in Jamaica at Round Hill, in their own villa, overlooking Montego Bay. They laughed about their honeymoon in Bermuda, about how they had never left their room, and barely managed to stay in the dining room long enough to have dinner. This vacation was no different. They played tennis and swam and lay on the beach every morning, but by late afternoon, they were making passionate love in the privacy of the villa. And four nights out of six they made special arrangements for room service. It was the most romantic trip they had ever taken, and they both felt reborn when they left Jamaica. Sarah was always amazed to realize how passionately she still loved him. She had known him for twelve years, been married to him for eight, and yet she felt as though their romance was still fresh, and it was obvious that Oliver felt the same about Sarah. He devoured her with the energy of an eighteen-year-old, and more than that, he loved to talk to her for hours. The sex they shared had always been great, but with the years came new vistas, new ideas, new horizons, and their ideas were no longer as diverse or as sharply polarized as they once had been. With the years, they had grown slowly together, and he teased her about becoming more conservative, while he had slowly become a little more liberal. But he felt as though they had slowly become one person, with one mind, one heart, and one direction.

They returned from Jamaica in a kind of haze, mellowed, slowed down from their usual pace, and the morning after they returned, Oliver sat at breakfast and admitted that he hated to leave her and go to the office. They exchanged a secret look over the children's heads at breakfast. She had burned the toast, left lumps the size of eggs in the Cream of Wheat, and the bacon was almost raw when she served it.

“Great breakfast, Mom!” Benjamin teased. “You must have had a terrific time on vacation, you forgot how to cook!” He guffawed at his own joke, and Melissa giggled. She was still much shyer than Benjamin, and at five she worshiped him as her first and only hero, after her father.

The children left for school in their car pools, and Oliver to catch his train, and Sarah found it impossible to get going. She was disorganized all day, and she felt as though she couldn't get anything done. By dinnertime, she still hadn't left the house, and had puttered around all day, getting nothing accomplished. She assumed it was the price of having had too good a time on vacation.

But the condition persisted for weeks. She barely managed to crawl through the days, and just doing car pools and chauffeuring the kids from here to there seemed to sap all the energy she had, and by ten o'clock at night she was in bed, gently snoring.

“It must be old age,” she groaned to Oliver one Saturday morning as she attempted to sort through a stack of bills, and unable to do even that without feeling exhausted and distracted.

“Maybe you're anemic.” She had been once or twice before, and it seemed a simple explanation of what was becoming an annoying problem. She hadn't accomplished anything in a month, and she had two spring benefits to put on, and all of it seemed like too much trouble.

On Monday morning, she went into the doctor's office for a blood test and a checkup, and for no reason she could think of, when she picked up the children that afternoon she already felt better.

“I think it's all in my head,” she reported to Oliver when he called to say he had to work late and wouldn't be home for dinner. “I went in for a checkup today, and I already feel better.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing much.” She didn't tell him that the doctor had asked if she was depressed, or unhappy, or if she and Ollie were having trouble. Apparently one of the early signs of depression was chronic exhaustion. Whatever it was, it was nothing serious, she was sure of that. Even the doctor said she seemed to be in good health, she had even gained five pounds in three weeks since their trip to Jamaica. It was no wonder, all she did was sit around and sleep. Even her diligent reading had been neglected, and she hadn't gotten back to her weekly tennis game again. She had promised to the next day, and was on her way out the door, feeling tired, but with racket in hand, when the doctor called her.

“Everything's fine, Sarah.” He had called her himself, which worried her at first, but then she decided it was just a kindness after all the years she'd known him. “You're in good health, no anemia, no major problems.” She could almost hear him smiling, and she was so tired, it annoyed her.

“Then why am I so goddamn tired all the time? I can hardly put one foot after another.”

“Your memory is failing you, my dear.”

“Terrific. You're telling me I'm getting senile? Great. That's just what I wanted to hear at nine-fifteen in the morning.”

“How about some good news then?”

“Like what?”

“Like a new baby.” He sounded as though he had just announced a million-dollar gift and she felt as though she was going to faint dead away in her kitchen, tennis racket in hand, as she listened.

“Are you kidding? In this house, that's no joke. My children are practically grown … I … I can't … shit!” She sat down heavily in a convenient chair, fighting back tears. He couldn't mean it. But she knew he did. And suddenly she knew what she had been unwilling to face. Denial had kept her from knowing the truth. She hadn't missed a period because she was anemic or overworked or overage. She was pregnant. She hadn't even told Ollie. She had told herself it was nothing. Some nothing. But this time there was no doubt what she would do. This was 1979. Her children were a reasonable age. She was thirty-one years old. And abortions were legal. This time Oliver was not going to talk her out of it. She was not going to have a baby. “How pregnant am I?” But she knew … it had to be … it had happened in Jamaica … just like it had happened in Bermuda when she conceived Benjamin on their honeymoon … goddamn vacation.

“When was your last period?” She calculated rapidly backward and told him. In medical parlance, she was six weeks pregnant. In “people talk,” it was only about a month, which meant she had plenty of time to get an abortion. For a moment, she even wondered about getting one without saying anything to Ollie. But she wasn't going to mention it to their doctor. She would call her gynecologist and get an appointment. “Congratulations, Sarah. You're a lucky girl. I hope Oliver will be happy.”

“I'm sure he will be.” Her voice felt like lead in her throat as she thanked him and hung up, and with shaking fingers dialed her gynecologist and made an appointment for the following morning. And then, in a panic, she remembered her tennis partners waiting for her on the court at the Westchester Country Club. She would have liked not to go, but it wouldn't have been fair to them, and she hurried out the door and turned the key in the ignition of her station wagon. And as she did, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. This couldn't be happening to her … it couldn't be … it wasn't fair … when she grew up she was going to be a writer … when … if … or maybe not. Maybe all she'd ever be was a housewife. The ultimate condemnation when she was in college. The thing she had never wanted to be, and now was. That was all she was, wasn't it? A housewife. She said it out loud in the car as though it were a dirty word … a baby … Jesus Christ … a baby … and what did it matter if it would be different this time, if they could afford help, if the house was big enough to accommodate all of them. The baby would still scream all night, still need to be bathed and dressed and fed and taken care of, and nurtured, and driven around and taken to the orthodontist one day. She would never get a chance to do what she wanted now. Never. She felt as though the unborn child, the mere knowledge of it, were threatening her very existence. And she wouldn't let it.

She forced the car into reverse and shot out of the driveway, and ten minutes later she was at the tennis courts, looking pale, and feeling sick, knowing what she did now.

She managed to keep the patter of conversation somehow, and that night she was grateful that Ollie had to stay late at the office, working on a presentation for a new client. A very big one. But what did it matter now how big his clients were? In Sarah's mind, her life was over.

She was asleep when he got home that night, and managed somehow to get through breakfast the next morning. He asked her what was bothering her, and she told him she had a splitting headache.

“Did you find out about those tests yet? Ill bet you really are anemic.” He looked suddenly worried, and instead of loving him for it, she hated him as she thought of what he had planted inside her.

“Not yet. They haven't called.” She turned away to put the plates in the dishwasher so he wouldn't see the lie in her eyes, and a few minutes later he was gone, and the children had been picked up by their car pools. And an hour later she was at the gynecologist's office, planning for her abortion, but the doctor threw her a curve, and asked her how Ollie felt about what she was doing. “I … he … uh …” She couldn't lie to the man. He knew her too well, and in addition to that, she liked him. She looked directly at him with a strange light in her eye, and silently dared him to defy her. “I haven't told him.”

“About the abortion or the baby?” He looked startled. He had always thought that they had a very happy marriage, the kind in which two people confide easily and openly in each other.

“Neither one. And I'm not going to.” His face set as he listened to her and he slowly shook his head in disapproval.

“I think you're making a mistake, Sarah. He has a right to know. It's his child too.” And then he had an uncomfortable thought. Perhaps there were things about them he didn't know. Anything was possible. “It is … isn't it?”