drawn them together.
She lay very still and felt her husband holding her. Obviously in sleep her body had tolerated or perhaps enjoyed his intimate proximity, but now that she was awake it chafed her. She tried to lie still and fall back into the comfort and warmth of his embrace, but something had changed, and she unclasped his hands from the girdle they had formed around her waist and shifted slightly away from him. He woke, and quickly sat up, as if there were some sort of emergency—a fire, a sick child, a call to arms. He sat there for a moment and then reached out and found the lamp switch in the darkness and turned it on. He looked back over his shoulder at her and said, I was holding you.
What?
Just now—while we were sleeping—I was holding you.
She looked at him curiously and stood up. She went into the bathroom and shut the door.
He heard the pipes squeal as she opened the faucets and then the water crashing into the bathtub. She must have filled the tub completely, because the sound of the water went on for quite some time. Then it stopped. He waited a moment, until he was sure she had lowered herself into the tub, and then knocked on the bathroom door.
Yes? she called.
May I come in?
Of course, she said.
He pushed open the door and entered the steamy bathroom. She was lying in the huge tub, the water covering everything but her head, which she chin-lifted out of the water, like a child in a swimming class.
He sat down on the closed toilet. Sitting there, behind her, he felt like a shrink. Some of his best time—his most intensely alive moments—had been spent lying on his analyst’s couch, revealing to the unseen presence behind him the secret truths about himself. This was a good setup for analysis, he thought, for surely lying naked in a tub of warm water could only foster a greater feeling of safety, and a subsequent ability to uncover and speak the truth. For a moment he wished, or wanted, his wife to start talking, putting words to all the things that were either misunderstood or unsaid. But she said nothing. The only sound was the water gently moving to accommodate her slight body.
Neither of them said anything for a few minutes and then she slightly raised herself out of the water and turned her head around to see him. She looked at him for a moment and then turned away as her body sank back into the tub.
You don’t need to use the toilet?
No, he said.
Oh, she said. Then why . . .
Why what?
Why did you come in?
To be with you, he said. To talk to you.
Oh, she said. About something in particular?
Yes, he said. About the baby. About Simon.
Simon? You’ve decided?
Yes, he said.
Oh, she said. And then, after a moment, I don’t think he’s a Simon.
Then who is he?
An abandoned, unwanted baby.
I want him. You don’t want him?
No. To be honest. That’s why I was how I was—I realized right away I didn’t want him.
But you did want him. And he’s ours. So why don’t you want him now?
I’ve changed. When I thought I was going to die I wanted him for you. But something . . . amazing has happened.
You’re still going to die, he thought. He had his eyes closed but he heard the disturbance of the water and knew that she must have moved her body or touched it.
My whole body feels different, she said. It is at peace with itself. And if this miracle happened, why can’t another?
What do you mean?
I mean perhaps I can get pregnant. Perhaps we don’t have to adopt a baby. Perhaps we can have our own baby.
Simon is our own baby.
He may be your own baby, but he is not my own baby.
You know that you cannot have a baby. You’ve had a hysterectomy.
I said a miracle. I said it would be a miracle.
Oh, so you want two miracles now? We’re getting greedy.
But don’t you see? Every time a miracle happens, the chances for another miracle to happen increase exponentially.
The man said nothing. He watched as she took a bar of soap from the grotto in the tiled wall, dunked it into the bathwater, and began to vigorously suds her arms and legs. This was unusual, for since her illness she always handled her body with extreme tenderness, often wincing when she touched herself.
Do you really think you’ve been cured?
I do.
It