she gave him her number when he asked.
The first date, Richard picked her up in his car. He took her to dinner at a restaurant in Outremont, ordering in his perfect French, complimenting Ana on her own efforts. Afterwards, she went back to his apartment in Old Montreal, a prewar loft now walled with glass, with views out to the skyline.
The sex was another foreign experience. She hadn’t slept with that many people, really. She was suddenly acutely aware of how her body had changed; only James knew what she really looked like, who she had been when she had been her physical best. As Richards pulled down her tights, Ana imagined the pale blue veins in her legs. He kissed her neck and shoulders and she saw the skin on her elbows thinning, puckered. But Richard murmured worship about her body: “You’re gorgeous,” he said, gripping and smoothing her hips and thighs, and she let herself fall into him. He was forceful, too, and the staged roughness turned her on. She came with stuttered breath, but then he glanced at her with a triumphant gaze that made her look away.
Ana went through the courtship with the fascination of an archaeologist at a dig. This was here, all this time, and I didn’t know! She thought of him as her first adult boyfriend.
Richard sent flowers, and took her to the opera, where the heels pinching her feet didn’t stop her from luxuriating in the music. He would vanish for days into his work, and that was fine. She could do the same, and he said nothing. Once he went away to Florida for a weekend of golf with old friends. There was no talk of fidelity, or future. A 53-year-old man without any children spoke to long ago decisions, not to be reopened. He never asked her why she had no children, and at first, this silence was emancipating.
And there was much silence between them, which Ana had thought she needed.
One night, Richard cooked her dinner, and they had sex, furiously, on his bed. It was only 10 o’clock, but Richard lay sleeping, shirtless with a chest of grey hair, arms like a starfish. He slept in this odd way, totally untroubled. She felt a pull of longing for James, an urge to share her strange new reality with him. She knew James would find Richard outrageous; corporate and trivial. This comforted Ana somehow, for part of her agreed.
She had awoken that morning feeling that she had left a piece of herself somewhere, the way she imagined a heroin addict might feel joining the sober and straight life. This, she realized now, was how it felt to be bound to James. Their past, known only to them, could rear itself anywhere, even here, in the bedroom of another man.
Ana pulled on her underpants and went to the window. Below, on the cobblestone streets, snow lay shining, inviting in the streetlamps. She put on her skirt and her boots, washed her face in the bathroom. In a week, she would see her mother for Christmas. She had booked a hotel. She wouldn’t call James, not yet.
She left Richard sleeping.
The cold was still shocking to her. It had begun to snow, large, fat flakes that melted on Ana’s face.
She walked quickly, crunching in her boots past Christmas lights in trees. Illuminated wreaths hung from the streetlamps on Sherbrooke.
She heard the choir before she reached the church, which was modest, its stained glass clouded with dirt. They were having a rehearsal, starting and stopping, with laughter in between. Ana stood and listened until the singers fell into each other and the music rose, draping her body.
She stood for a long time in the snow that made equal the sidewalks and the shrubs, shrouding the skyscrapers. She listened to the strangers’ voices calling glory, glory through the trees of the city where she now lived.
Finn had a candy cane in one hand. A crowd of people waited outside Sarah’s door. Suspense bounced back and forth between all of them.
Finn stood on James’s feet, clutching James’ pant leg with his free hand, looking up at him.
“Let’s dance!” said Finn.
“Shh,” said James, reaching down to rub Finn’s head.
The young doctor with her hair tightly pulled back was speaking. The content of her speech mattered less than the way she was saying it, which was hot and breathless. She had not learned to mask that yet. She was thrilled.
“—MRI indicates complete brain function,” she said.
“Complete?” asked James.
“Extensive