I began feeling a great loss in my life. I had spent any spare moment during my entire adulthood tending to my gardens, but since the evening at the lake with Jeff, I found myself listless and bored. I no longer had any desire to arrange flowers or even open a flower shop. I grew tired of tending to the cutting gardens or pruning the trees. I had almost 50 acres of land and I had spent most of my five years there with Jeff caretaking the grounds. More than that I had designed all the garden spaces and oversaw workers who landscaped and hardscaped to my specifications. Anyone who visited found it absolutely enchanting and I had taken great pride in my creation. But, after the night at the lake, I simply walked through the grounds, my mind couldn't keep attention on any of it. On the days I ventured out and worked the soil, trying to revive my passion, I'd stop and retreat to the guest cottage on the far end of our property. I'd make a cup of tea and sit looking out the window half attending to the bucolic surroundings. My mind was elsewhere. For the first time, my thoughts landed on nothing: not all of the losses I'd experienced, not the traumas, not Jeff, or even the children. My mind was absent of thought. This happened day after day. After a while I no longer even pretended to take care of the gardens, I would pass them as I walked straight to the guesthouse. I noticed how the weeds were invading, I noticed the rotten fruit on the ground below the orchards. Everything, was falling out of order. What I thought was, it's not falling out of order, it is not in need of governance and order; it is simply returning to what it naturally had been. The acres of land surrounding our home was simply returning to how it had always been meant to be. I'd walk the distance to the cottage and then repeat the same ritual. Make tea, sit on the sofa facing the fields and pond and find comfort in sipping the warm, sweet liquid. I began to find comfort in my quieted mind. Perhaps there had been times like that before, but I didn't ever remember that feeling.

Then, one day I was in the same place on the couch and I noticed it. It was as real as a person sitting right there in the room. In fact, for some time I thought of it that way. A person sitting there all along. It frightened me at first. It was words. If you asked me at any point in my life before that exact moment, sitting and looking out on to the grounds, I would have told you I had no idea what it felt like to be a writer. At first it felt shameful. It was such an overwhelming personal drive that it felt wrong. The first words came to me and ran through my mind

Orchards of kisses and terrible desire

I didn't move. Instead, I let it sit there in the forefront of my consciousness. I had never been an artist, certainly not a writer. I had only gone to high school and although I enjoyed English. I was never an avid reader. Nick, my first husband, he was the writer. Then, Jeff. He was the artist. Even in my affair with Ed, he was the creative master. I was always a muse or a spectator. I'd never had any inherent value of the same caliber. Honestly, I wasn't looking for it. And then, on that day, it came again. The words kept insisting I write them down.

Orchards of kisses and terrible desire.

I didn't write it down at first. I was cautious about it. I even wondered if it –this new way of thinking-- was mine. The sentence kept repeating itself and for a moment, I was filled with a kind of excitement as if I'd been out in the garden digging and I'd found something valuable buried beneath the abundant plants. I let this elation take form and then just as suddenly a deep shame descended. I felt stupid as if I'd somehow fallen into the sin of pride. I'd never been affected by something this way before. When it came to me again and again, I woke up from my thoughts. I realized I did, in fact, have to write it down. It wasn't a conscious determination, it was suddenly as if it were a commandment. I walked into the small bedroom. The same room where I'd had my one extramarital affair. It seemed that room held only that memory. There was no other purpose for that room except to be the place where I'd slept with my husband's friend. Still a secret, buried under the heavy burden of lies I've told. There was a small desk by the door. Inside I kept stationary and pens. The writing paper was not an ideal writing tablet, as it had my name and address on the top of each page "Mrs. Jeff Lambert." I picked up the paper and pen and carried it back to the sofa. I picked up one of Jeff's heavy art books and used it as a lap desk to write on. Edouard Manet. I was about to put the pen to paper, to capture these words, this new way of seeing things and then I stopped. Mrs. Jeff Lambert. The inscription on the stationary stopped me. At that time I couldn't say exactly why but I came to realize later that I had no name. I looked out the window and it was still there lingering, hovering over the flowerbeds. The thought. I wrote it down:

Orchards of kisses and terrible desire

Once it was on paper I read it and re-read it, it didn't recognize the words as my own. I read the words aloud. Then, I waited. I wondered if anything would follow. Would this little cryptic sentence be all there was? More followed.

Orchards of kisses and terrible desire

The earth and sky crosses your soul

in drunken senses, thirst and hunger

in a shadow of words, I shout your name

hunting your poison lips

I wrote and re-wrote the poem, changing it slightly each time so that by the time I'd finished I'd gone through ten sheets of stationary. Once I was finished I stared at it. Not the words but the shape of the poem on the paper. I felt the most unfamiliar elation and satisfaction. Certainly these were not words I would have ever spoken, but they had arranged themselves in my mind, asked me to write them down. I looked out the window again and saw my oldest child Clara, walking out towards the orchards with a sketchpad. I studied her as she walked. She was ten, almost eleven. I loved her dearly. I put my poem in the desk drawer and threw the earlier drafts in the waste pail. I was going to go out to see Clara and sit with her a moment. I started out of the house, but turned back. I retrieved the crumbled drafts and put them in my apron pocket. Then I went to the desk drawer and folded the poem and put that in my pocket too. It seemed I had a protective feeling over all of it. I thought it would be safest to keep the poem with me should the cottage burn down and the words be lost forever.

I was so happy that afternoon and evening. It was different elation than elation I'd felt before, it wasn't infatuation or being the object of a man's desire. It was as if I'd discovered gold. When Jeff came home from teaching, he was cordial as usual. He and I had found a way to navigate the time we'd agreed to spend together. Our marriage was over, but we would stay together until the children were older. What was older? I didn't have any idea. Things weren't terrible; in fact without the deadly jealousy and passion, I thought they were sufferable. No, not sufferable, they were comfortable. I even had found it sometimes pleasant.

He smiled at me when he entered the house. I was talking with Charlie about his math homework. At that time, we were still living in the large house on the acres of land. However, while in the past Marian, our housekeeper greeted Jeff at the door and hung his coat, acting more like a servant than a human being, since the event at the lake, I had stopped all that. Marian was still our housekeeper and continued to live with us but she wasn't our servant. She was becoming more like family and I did as much housework as she did. Our nanny Elise had left just after the incident. She got married and no longer worked for us. I took over most of the caretaking of the children, which wasn't difficult. They were in school and I enjoyed them every other moment I was with them. I knew some women didn't feel that way about their children, but I did. I knew maybe it was because I had Marian always there to help me.

Jeff entered the house and hung up his coat. He walked over to the table where Charlie and I were working on division. I looked up at him and smiled. We were more friends than husband and wife. We had to bury what had happened. Regardless of whether we separated right away or waited as we'd decided, that night and the events leading up to it were too egregious to acknowledge.

He kissed Charlie on the top of the head, "what are you working on?"

Charlie was focused on his work and half answered "Math."

Jeff raised his eyebrows and gave me a wry smile.

"Jeffery is watching television." Charlie complained. Charlie looked up and glared at me. He's watching Kukla, Fran and Ollie. Momma knows I want to too. That's my favorite show."

I looked at Jeff and shook my head while Charlie was focused on a math problem. I mouthed, "he hates that show."

Jeff smiled at me.

I returned to Charlie. "When you're homework's finished. Besides you know you don't like that program. You're too old for it."

"What is it?" Jeff inquired.

"It's a television program."

"I do so like it." He looked at Jeff for some reason. Jeff smiled at him. This entire scene was so unusual for our house. It felt more like Father Knows Best than the Lambert Family. I didn't comment, instead I scolded Charlie.

"If you don't finish this, you won't get to see Lone Ranger either." Charlie returned to the math problems. He was having no trouble with them. Still I stayed beside him.

"Where's Clara?"

"She's outside," I said. "You should go see her. I think you'd be proud of her. She's in the apple orchard sketching. She's been out there since she returned from school."

"She is?" he looked pleased.

"She's been out there a lot lately."

He turned towards the kitchen to exit the house that way. He was still so put together, as always but the change in our marriage also altered his demeanor and appearance. There was no detectable arrogance or manipulation. He'd lost his stern manner, ready to correct me and undermine my decisions. I had never known him to be any other way. The one exception was the intimate moments we shared together. Otherwise, he was either doting on me like I was a child, seducing me. Or he was hurting me or trying to make up for his violence toward me. No longer the same endless carousel of emotions. I think I would have stopped responding in kind anyway. I wouldn't have followed him into jealousy, rage, adoration, love, hurt, elation. Despite his respectful behavior he also seemed to have an expectant emptiness when he was around me. We were two strangers in most ways. He stopped at the doorway. I was looking back down again at the math book.

"Eve?" he waited a moment and I looked up. "How was your day today?
I smiled and nodded. He smiled back at me.

Some time after Charlie was done with his homework and ran off to the television, I walked to the French doors and looked out. It must have been over an hour that Jeff was outside with Clara. He sat next to her, just a little behind her as she drew. I saw her looking at him now and then and him pointing to her drawing and talking to her. I couldn't see what he was saying. I was sad that that was the first time since I'd been with him that I'd seen him spend time getting to know his daughter. She looked serious, she had his manner; something I'd been noticing for the past couple of years. She shared her father's talent, confidence and authority over her decisions. I knew she'd become an artist. Her drawings were already so mature and they were very good. She had a natural talent and she lost time doing her art. Even at 10 years old she was becoming serious about her artwork.

Later that night Jeff asked me if I wanted to walk through the gardens with him. It was something we'd rarely done before the incident at the Lake. Ordinarily, he would return home from the studio much later at night. Back then our evenings were spent drinking scotch, fighting or many nights Jeff stayed overnight somewhere else. In the end, just before things changed, after he'd hurt me so badly, my evening routine had consisted of taking a bath and retiring to my room early. Holding ice packs on my swollen face and crying silent tears.

We were standing in the kitchen. It was spacious and like everything else in our enormous house, it seemed too much for me. It had never seemed that way before. I supposed back when we officially had a house staff along with our family of five, we filled it up. Although things hadn't changed so much, but still I felt it was all too much. I didn't want to live there anymore. I also didn't want to start a new life with Jeff. He stood next to me as I removed my apron. When I did, I felt the poems in my pocket. The crumbled drafts and the one folded neatly. I looked at him.

"What do you have?"

I suddenly felt exposed. At the same time, I didn't want to act as if I had a big secret that I was keeping from him. It was a big secret but it had nothing to do with Jeff. It was all mine and it was evidence of something that I had yet to realize or accept. It was just a poem.

"It's something I wrote." I said and transferred the crumbled papers to my coat. I took the folded poem and put it in the inside pocket.

"A letter?"

I shook my head. "No. Should we go for our walk?"

"It's not a letter, what is it?"

"It's nothing," I said. I opened the door and Jeff followed me out. The night was so beautiful. It was late spring and the day had been very warm, there was a cool breeze and everything smelled glorious. The plants took on gray hues but as we walked passed I could see that the vibrant reds, blues and yellows were not absorbed by the darkness.

We walked through the orchards and we hadn't said anything else. "Why are we out walking together?" I asked him.

"Isn't it nice?" he responded. "Should we sit on the bench by the pond?"

We walked over and sat down. "It's a little strange isn't it?" I asked him.

He nodded his head, "It's as if we don't know what to do."

I hadn't realized it until that moment. "That's exactly how I feel."

"It is like that." He said, "We don't know each other any more after what happened."

"Should we talk about the lake?" I asked, "Should we talk about what happened? It was so terrible and only the two of us know, it's just us. Our terrible night."

He shook his head slightly, "I don't think we should. Do you?"

"No. I suppose we know all there is to know."

"Only the two of us ever will."

I let out a deep breath and pulled my coat tighter.

"Are you cold? Do you want to go in?" he asked.

"No. Are you?"

"No." He smiled, "We're making small talk aren't we?"

I laughed and nodded. I looked out over the flowerbeds, at the orchards. The fruit trees had matured in the time we'd lived there. Had we been at that house, that long? I looked back at him. "I don't mind. Do you?"

"Small talk?" He shrugged his shoulders. "It's always been a certain way with you. It's not any more. I don't know how I feel." He looked at me for a long moment. In the past he would have smiled and his eyes would have taken on a kind of amusement. He would have looked at me as if he was both amused and excited by me. He would have said something full of seduction and desire would have welled up in me. It was always that way in a moment like that. But sitting there together on that evening, we were different. "You had a good day?" he asked.

I nodded.

"What did you do?" He lit a cigarette and held the pack out for me. Another change. He'd always tell me not to smoke that he didn't like me smoking. He held the pack out and I took a cigarette from it. I waited while he lit the match, as I touched the cigarette to the flame, my eyes met his and once it was lit he pulled the match away and shook it out.

"I didn't do anything really. Nothing out of the ordinary." The truth was that I had done something. I'd done one of the most important things in my life. It was going to alter everything, but I hadn't an inkling other than an intuition. Still, I didn't want the vulnerability that would come with telling him about the magical experience. I didn't want to start things up again, moving at first slowly with intimidation, then picking up momentum until I stood, helpless in front of him. His face full of rage. That's what my vulnerability did to our relationship. It was a dance, exposing my feelings, him taking them and ruining them. Knocking me down and raising himself up.

"What did you write?" he seemed sincerely interested. "The paper in your pocket?"

I didn't want to blush or make myself vulnerable. I honestly knew that the only way to be safe with him was to remain within a small circumference of closeness but not to trust him any more than that. It wasn't just that. I knew that although he could never prove that I'd poisoned him or that I would admit it even if he did know, it was there. I knew that. It marked a threshold. I'd crossed into a place where I could hurt him too. It wasn't safe for him to let himself get so angry either. There were other, practical things, that protected me. He and I both willingly set up our finances so I had independence. I think the incidents at the lake frightened us both. We'd agreed that our marriage was over and if at any point we felt we wanted out, we would both amicably oblige.

"it's a poem." I said and took a drag of my cigarette. For a moment, I felt that child rise up in me. Ready to say something coy to dismiss any serious attention on myself. To disguise any real feelings about who I was.

"A poem? Did you write it?" I waited for it, for the arrogance. I waited for him to assert that he was the real artist. That he was the intellectual. I waited for him to quiz me on famous poetry or recite a verse. I anticipated his squashing even the idea that there was something inside of me.

"I did. Today."

"I didn't know you wrote poetry."

"It was the first time." I felt myself drop on the inside. Honestly, in all the years we'd been together—it was jut that moment that I realized it—in all those years we had not had one conversation about me if it didn't have to do with how pretty he thought I was, how much he wanted to make love to me, or his regret for all of the sorrows I've endured. Sometimes we'd talk about my interests in gardening and he certainly supported it, but that always came off—to me—as a wife's hobby on the side. Our conversations about me were never long and never went very far. In all the years we'd been together. I never had an opinion in politics, art or any other adult topic.

"It was the first time." I said again. I took another drag. "It just came to me today. I don't know how."

He looked at me for a moment. Then he looked around, over the pond and back at me. "Will you read it to me?"

It wasn't just avoiding closeness, I felt a searing fear and self consciousness. I didn't want to read it to him. "I don't want to...Jeff I don't want to try to be close to you in that way. I don't want to let my guard down or really have anything more than this."

"No. I know. I was just wondering. I'd like to hear a poem you wrote."

I looked back up at the house. It was pretty with the windows, yellow rectangles of light. Three stories up. It looked absolutely enchanting but I could see it wasn't mine any more. None of this was. It was all in limbo, life was waiting for me to enter it as a new person.

"Eve," he said and I turned to him. "You want us to be like this from now on, isn't that right?"

I nodded.

"And we have a sort of arrangement until our children are older? Our marriage is over?"

I nodded again. He again examined me seriously as if my opinions were valid.

"We're doing this because things get dangerous if we aren't completely neutral in our feelings and behavior towards each other. Isn't that right? If we were completely honest, one of us should be dead right now."

"Yes," I said, "I think that's about right."

He dropped his cigarette and let it extinguish in the wet dirt. I did the same.

"Should we go back?" I asked starting to stand up.

"Can we talk for another minute?" That was another difference. In the past he would have taken me by the hands, guided me back down to sitting. He wouldn't have asked; he would have said "Eve. Look at me." He would have waited for me to look at him' he'd wait until I looked into his eyes and tell me what's next. He would have said something to draw me back in. I would have let myself swim out, start to drown. Then with just a gentle touch he would have saved me and I'd have ended up back in his arms. That wasn't happening any more.

I sat back down.
"Eve, I really do understand all of it. I understand being kind and cordial. I don't honestly know how long I will last like this, it's not in my nature, but I'm willing to do it until we know what we want to do. I know that it can never be the same with us."

"OK." I whispered and kept my eyes on him.

"But, Eve. If you don't want to tell me about your poem, and you want to keep me out of your experiences like this, that's all right. But if everything I just said is true, why do you let me make love to you? Why do you sleep next to me every night?"

"I don't know."

He nodded.

"I don't know," I said again, "but I want to."

He looked worried and looked down. "I want to too."

That night, after our conversation, it seemed conspicuous, getting into bed next to Jeff. I would have preferred it if he hadn't driven it to the surface. It was a contradiction, but somehow it didn't seem like it to me. I couldn't put it into words at that time, but I realized later that I needed that closeness to him. He was the only person I had. I'd always known that when we were intimate, he loved me. There was no other time I could trust it. I'd always been so lonely and alone. I felt that whenever Jeff and I made love, I belonged to someone.

I had a long silk nightgown on and I slid into bed. Jeff was already under the covers and was sitting up, reading. It was late. He turned and smiled at me. "Are you going to sleep?"

"Yes." I started to lay down but didn't. I sat up against the headboard. "I don't know why I stay here in bed with you every night. I don't know why I continue to make love to you. I don't."

He kept his eyes on me and offered a kind smile.

I continued, "You know how alone I am. I don't feel so alone when we make love."

He took a deep breath and let it out. "I'm alone too, Eve." He touched my hair. "I've always been alone, just like you." He kept his gaze fixed on me. "But, then I found you."

I moved closer to him and looked into his eyes before I kissed him. I could feel him grow warm and he moved nearer to me. I took off my nightgown and slid under the covers. He moved on top of me and stared into my eyes. "I love you," he whispered and kissed my neck. "You do this because you love me too, isn't that why?" He kissed me again and then stopped and stared at me, "Isn't that why? Because you love me too?"

I pulled him closer and kissed him.