Kate and Nance were lovers. It was so natural to me. It was like everything else open to question in my new life; it caused me to wonder what it would mean to completely reject my assigned place in society. I was just trying to move out of being defined as Jeff's wife, his confidant, the recipient of his erratic emotional overtures. I didn't even have my own name. That, more than anything, seemed to mean something to me; it nagged at me. Since the day that I'd noticed my name on his stationary 'Mrs. Jeff Lambert', I couldn't let go of the realization that I was his. Once I'd married him, I was of him. At the same time, I told myself that kind of submission was a part of marriage; , what married woman didn't see herself that way? I told myself that but I knew deep down that most marriages weren't like mine.

Nance told me told me about Rainer Maria Rilke. She said that he felt his poetry came from somewhere outside of himself. It was personal, yet he spoke of symbols that create a kind of yearning. She said his view was that we are on the cusp of transformation and it fills us with complete terror. I felt this concept matched my experience at that time in my own life. I was filled with terror and sought comfort through my sensual communication with Jeff. I wondered if Jeff even considered personal transformation. I knew he was restless with the family life we were living. It's ordinariness and calm. In a judgmental way I interpreted his discontent as moving backwards. Each day he was pulled a little closer back into his old ways. I knew I wasn't going to recede back with him into it. It would be with another woman. He would call it restoring the dialectic, man and woman. A part of me felt maybe he respected me for my imminent transformation; it was just that he wanted to be outside of its gravitational force. Not that I'd ever been the one with power to force change.

Nance was smoking and handed me a book. Rilke's Poems. "Only if you're interested," she said.

"Yes, of course."

"I know I feel that yearning." She admitted. "I have what I want, but still I think moving through life, overcoming obstacles causes the most uncomfortable equilibrium."

"Equilibrium?" I asked.

"Yeah."

Joan interrupted. " I guess I'm an old fashioned girl. I think his poems are romantic. It makes me long for love. Many of his poems are about desire and love. There's nothing wrong with that."

We'd had about five coffees each. At least. I was smoking a cigarette and was much more comfortable with the group than when I'd first joined. In fact, I felt like a real member after only several weeks of meeting. I'd begun to feel more comfortable sharing my writing too. This new world colored the experience of my days, my life now that I'd started exploring these new ideas.

We'd talked about Emily Dickenson, Henry had a class on 19th century poets and Emily Dickenson was the only woman they discussed and only a few of their poems. Of course, I was sure Henry knew more about Emily Dickenson than they did. To me Henry was a genius. Maybe it was because he had discovered me and changed my life. Or maybe he really was brilliant. His thin hands opened a book and read us Emily Dickenson's poem, I'm Wife—I've finished that. Afterwards, we all smoked and discussed the difference between married and unmarried women. It was interesting because half of the woman in our group—Joan and me—were married and the other half, Nance and Kate, weren't. We compared our lives and the unique struggle Joan and I found ourselves in.

Joan said, "I married late compared to most women. Twenty-eight. I had a life before. I was a secretary. It wasn't exactly the most well respected station, but I earned a paycheck and was able to go out and discover what I loved and who I was...back then."

"What about you, Eve?" Kate asked. Kate, the most masculine of all of us. What had that afforded her? What had that denied her?"

"I've been married twice." I told them. "I married at twenty one. My first husband was in the war and killed soon after." I paused. I knew I could tell them almost anything. "I had an affair with a married man and became pregnant with my son."

Nance lit a cigarette, and shook out the match. "Jesus," she said, "That's pretty Goddamned brave."

"The sum of it is that his first wife died and I ended up marrying him." I lit a cigarette too. I paused in that weighted moment.

"How did she die?" Joan asked.

I looked at her for a moment. "He said she died of an abortion."

Everyone was quiet for a moment. It felt like a lie, but I didn't know why. That was what Jeff had told me.

"I was living in Oregon and I--" I cut myself off. Instead, I asked the group, "Can I ask you all something? It may sound silly but have you ever loved a man who hurt very badly, maybe even almost killed you?"

They all stared at me without looking at each other. There was a long silence. I felt I had crossed a line. Of course they hadn't. Likely they had loving fathers, brothers. I knew that Joan's husband was the subject of her writing. She'd never presented him in a good light, but maybe that was more a commentary on marriage then him. No one answered for what felt like a long time. I grew flush and wanted to get up and run away. I realized that I sounded crazy, like I was paranoid to say that Jeff had almost killed me. Who would ever have believed that?

I was about to get up and leave when then they all started to laugh. I felt even more embarrassed. Kate was laughing the hardest. Tears came to her eyes. Even Henry was laughing. Finally, Nance caught her breath, "Darling," she said, "welcome to the God damned club!"

I smiled too. It was as though I'd released an enormous weight. I found I could even breathe easier. I smiled. They all smiled back at me and Joan touched my arm.

"I'm sorry Eve. But, you're not alone." She moved her chair closer and put an arm around me.

We stayed later than usual, our conversation turned back to Rilke

Henry said, "Can I see it Eve?" He pointed to the book Nance had given me when I first came in. I handed it to him. He thumbed to a page; he seemed to know exactly where to look for the poem that he wanted to recite. He held up one finger and shook it a little while looking at the book; while reading the words.

That is longing: To dwell in the flux of things,

To have no home in the present.

And these are wishes: gentle dialogues

Of the poor hours with eternity.

"Can you read it again?" I asked. He did and with the same inflections, the same intonations.

"That describes my experience perfectly. Exactly." I said, "To dwell in the flux of things' what a beautifully ordinary way to put it."

On the way home, a poem kept running through my head. I was inspired by Rilke. He wasn't saying anything about feminism. He was talking about choices. Change in one's life. How sitting in the limbo caused a yearning, but a fear. I wanted to walk away from the fear, have the courage to let my old self drift into the person that's been waiting for me there up ahead

My loneliness is threaded. Stitched, fastened tight. It's a garment.

In this profound aloneness, I am bound, proper.

Coarse cloth without patience

Imposing Into my lungs. Into my heart.

It wasn't long before Joan and I started talking on the phone every morning. Once the children were off to school and the housework was done, I'd pour a cup of coffee, pick up a pack of cigarettes and a lighter and sit down in the front room, ready for my conversation with Joan. She was unlike any other friend I'd ever had. The thing I respected most about her was that there wasn't an ounce of hypocrisy or judgment in her. She too was a housewife, had children, was a writer. She knew I had a great deal of money and help with the house and children. Still, we were always on equal footing.

One morning I was sitting on the couch in the front room. I had my feet stretched out on the ottoman. I was unconsciously moving my toes around under my nylons and listening to her tell me about her husband. He worked as an accountant. According to Joan he made pretty good money. They'd met when she was a secretary; when she was still single.

"You can imagine the seduction and courtship by an accountant." She laughed and I couldn't help but laugh too. "Really, I shouldn't be so hard on him. He's very sweet. You and Jeff will meet him soon. Then, you'll see Anyways, I love him. I do...."

I didn't realize that I'd stopped talking or listening. When she said 'you and Jeff' I froze for a moment.

"Are you there, Eve?" Joan's voice brought me back.

"I don't know if you'll meet Jeff." I admitted.

"Because you're getting separated?" I could hear her take a sip of coffee, "Tell me about this separation. From what you've told me it sounds like a better marriage than most." I could hear her lighting a cigarette.

I realized that I'd probably presented it that way to her, telling her about our recent walks in the garden. Making love. I'd told her the parts that helped me convince myself of what I'd wanted to believe. Even though, I hadn't been conscious of wanting anything, I was still hoping he'd changed. I realized it in that moment. I had started pretending again.

"It's very bad," was all I was able to muster.

There was a long silence. I lit a cigarette. Finally, Joan asked, "what do you mean?" Her voice was tender and serious. Gone was the sarcastic, irreverent Joan. I knew that she was my friend. That I could tell her.

"We've been together a long time." I said. "We met when I was twenty three. He's ten years older. We've been together almost nine years. I was widowed and he was married when we first started seeing each other. I had an affair with him." I stopped and tapped my cigarette on the ashtray. An ash fell. "Do you think I'm terrible?" I asked her.

"Of course I don't, Eve."

"Do you think he is? Do you think Jeff's terrible?"
"I don't know. I don't know the whole story."

A wave of relief washed over me. Even knowing he was cheating on his wife, Joan still hadn't formed an impression of Jeff or me. I continued. "There was always something with him that I couldn't escape from."

"You were in love with him."

"Yes. I guess that's part of it, but it's like in poetry or even in the bible. You give into a temptation and you are cursed."

"Not just passion? Blind passion? That'll do a number on anyone." She was being silly, but she corrected herself. "Sorry."

I laughed. Despite all of her feminist critiques she was a romantic.

"No." I sat there trying to explain how I could have gone from sleeping with someone else's husband, to becoming pregnant, to falling back into his trap. How could I have let him begin to hurt me physically, have me sent away. And then everything that happened recently? It was all too much. Too much to remember and to share and there was no explanation as to why my life was that way. No one else's was. People always say "we all have our stories. Everybody has problems." But really, not like mine.

"I don't know how to tell it all to you. I haven't told anyone and it's so horrible that I'm afraid you won't want to be my friend any more. I don't know where to start." I started to cry but held back.

"Well, start from the beginning. I don't have anywhere to go. But, I will put a little whiskey in my coffee. Why don't you do the same?"

I laughed. "All right. I will." I stood with the phone cradled between my chin and shoulder, I poured some whiskey into my coffee and took a sip. "Are you there?"

"I'm here. Let's keep the whiskey close. No need to get up until we absolutely have to. I'm still in my bathrobe."

I took another sip. Then I started from the beginning. I told her about the affair. I felt able to tell her, without guilt, about how romantic it was. How I'd never known anyone like Jeff that most of the boys I knew were football players, and grew up to live and work in Sellwood. I described Sellwood to her. Small Oregon town, everyone knew everyone. I told her how I'd risen to the ranks of Garden Club Chairwoman after I was married to Nick. I shared how my mother had died when I was young and then my father died after I was married. How I'd lived with Carmen's family until Nick and I were married. Then, Nick died too.

"It must have felt so good to fall in love after all that. Jeff sounds like he's very charming and handsome. Sometimes we need that. We don't want to admit it but we do."

I knew she was right. I had needed it. I'd been so depressed.

She continued. "Besides, when we're young—I guess what I'm saying is what woman wouldn't lose her head over something like that. Here's this rich, handsome man. He drives a nice car and takes you on trips to the beach. He has you pose for him at night—by candlelight no less—and sketches pictures of you. He listens to your secrets. It's like a Hollywood movie."

"Except he was married."

"All right. It didn't sound like he had such a happy marriage."

"No."

"I know it doesn't excuse it, but –" she let out a deep breath. "things happen."

I told her how I had to move out to the country in Bend Oregon after I found out I was pregnant. How he'd rejected me and said he wouldn't help me. I shared that being pregnant and having Charlie gave me a surge of independence. I was so headstrong. I was going to own my own house, live near these people I'd grown to love. I was going to have gardens and sell flowers and arrangements. After my baby was born I had thought I'd really have a chance to become someone else.

"Why did you leave?"

"Jeff wanted me back. He wanted me to be with him."

"How? Was he going to leave his wife?"

I felt myself start to cry for a moment. My voice began to tremble and Joan comforted me. She let me cry and then when I felt composed I told her. "He wanted me to move to another town and live there while he stayed with his wife in Portland." I waited for her reaction, for her to start tearing Jeff apart, tearing me apart.

"But you didn't want to?"

"No."

"So what happened?"

"He wouldn't leave me alone no matter how much I told him I wanted things to be over. He sent letters and I suppose you could say he blackmailed me into spending a weekend with him. He told me that if I didn't do what he wanted, he would tell everyone in Bend that I was lying and that Charlie was illegitimate. I met him and, of course, a part of me was still in love with him."

"Of course you were. And to make matters worse, you were the mother of his child."

"But, he couldn't promise me anything. He said I'd have to wait while he went away to Europe with his wife and child for three months. I didn't want that. I already knew I wanted to live on my own anyway. I didn't want what he had to offer."

"I don't blame you."

"But, of course he wouldn't accept that." I noticed my coffee cup was nearly empty. I swirled what was left in the bottom of the cup. "He came to the house one day and he forced himself on me. I didn't know but he had arranged it so I would be taken away to a hospital."

I was frozen in time. Just recalling the events caused a shift in my consciousness. I was never be able to fully hold on to reality when the memories of the hospital surfaced. After a few seconds I realized Joan hadn't said anything.

"Are you there?" I whispered.

"I am."

This was when I expected it, the judgment. My old friend Carmen's voice echoed, Ed's voice echoed "Why did you come back to him after what he did to you? It doesn't make sense. Something is wrong with you?"

"Was it horrible?"

'Yes. I can't really ever forget about it. I think about it every day. I was only there a month so I was lucky. I had people who helped me get released."

"Even a month. And you couldn't see Charlie?"

Tears filled my eyes. Instead of saying anything I just shook my head 'no.' "Do you think I'm crazy?" I asked her.

"Of course I don't. If anything I think you're saner than most people. Look at how strong you are. What a good mother. I look up to you."

My hands were shaking. Her tone took on its humorous quality "are you done with your coffee?"

I laughed. "yes."

"All right. Let's fix ourselves another. I have to get another pack of cigarettes out of the kitchen. Let's put the phones down while we refill. I'll be right back."

After refreshing my coffee I picked up the phone, "are you still there?"

"I'm back. It really is exhausting being a housewife isn't it?"

"Yes. I think I need a drink after all this."

She laughed. "So, did he come back for you after the hospital?"

"No. I moved back to Bend but that new person I'd become after Charlie was born, that person was dead. I was dead. I really do think that. I think that I'm a different person and I can't say that if that didn't happen I would have what I want now—but being forced by Jeff, left in a hospital and abused—that person died."

"Eve. I'm sorry."

"But, then the only person I had left, Mary. She and her husband had taken Charlie and me in when I was pregnant. She was like a mother to me. I received a letter from Jeff about a year after I was released from the hospital. He told me his wife had died and asked me to come to Chicago. Mary had become very ill. I didn't respond to Jeff at first but kept the possibility alive. After Mary died, I got in touch with him and that's when I came to Chicago."

"I would have done the same." She said, taking a drag from her cigarette. "You know I'm sure people tell you that they can't understand how you could marry him, but what in the hell else were you going to do?"

I felt an elation take over. No one had ever taken my side like that before. I had carried the shame of responsibility for being abused. I felt I was a bad person because I'd moved into this rich lifestyle and I feared people thought I was motivated by avarice.

"You certainly weren't going back to your home town with Charlie. Besides, coming from a small town myself, neither one of us would make it there. Jesus."

"So you don't think I made a bad choice?" Those words had become suffocating bad choice.

"Bad choice? Eve. Someone once told me—and I believe it—staying on a moving train is not a choice. People can dispense advice but really would going back to a small town and live in indignation so you can follow some broken rules of society—is that a choice? What did you ever do wrong? Fall in love and have a baby? Eve you jumped off the train. That's the good choice. Really it is."

The rest of the story came out and it flowed easily. I felt as though the deep wounds I'd kept secret were healing. Warmth enveloped me and I knew that a strength came from acknowledgement from Joan that my choices were reasonable. That I was legitimate and capable. Even after I told her about the abuse and the night at the lake—remarkably I was even able to confess I'd put some of the belladonna berries in his scotch to try and made him ill. So I could get away from the abuse. I asked Joan if she thought I was a criminal.

"Eve. Your life was really in danger." She stopped for a moment, "are you in danger now?"

"No. We've set it up so I have my own life. We've agreed that our marriage is over."

"I wish it could just stay the way it is now." She said.

It dawned on me. I wished that too. It may have been that was what was causing the hesitation in me. It was this new side of Jeff, the family man and considerate husband. I realized that if I could have had that Jeff, I would have forgiven everything else. I would have let him back into my heart.

After I hung up the phone I sat for a long time on the couch without doing anything. It was a physical experience, void of any thought or emotion. I was letting gravity pull me back into life. Fully into life. All of it was over. The past had lost its power.

Later that day the phone rang. I had a bit of a pounding headache from the whiskey on the phone earlier with Joan. I picked up the phone and was surprised to hear Carmen's voice. It had been so long and I felt we had nothing other than the past.

"Evie?" Still, hearing her voice, I remembered her with fondness.

"Carmen? How are you?"

"I'm all right. Eve. Listen. Frank was killed."

Frank was Mary's husband. Carmen had called me because at one time I felt as though he were a father to me. But unlike my feelings for Mary, I didn't hold on to any affection for him. He'd helped Jeff commit me to the asylum. After Mary died he'd moved back to Sellwood to live near Carmen.

"Oh, I'm sorry. What happened?"

"He was working and fell from the second floor of his barn."

"Did it just happen?"

"Yes, just two days ago. We're preparing for a funeral on Friday. I think you should come."

I wasn't completely sure why she felt it was my obligation to come to Sellwood for Frank's funeral.

"After everything he did for you and Charlie. And, Charlie loved him so much. He saw Frank as his grandfather."

I felt a keen objection to her comments. She knew as well as I did what he did was not for me but to me. Yes he'd taken me in; he'd also almost ruined my life. Sure, he apologized but it wasn't something I could forget. And, Charlie had loved him and I was thankful he had been there back then, but Charlie didn't remember him anymore.

"I don't know Carmen." I said.

"You have enough money. You can take an airplane now. It's not such a big trip."

'It's not that. Jeff and I are having problems and I feel like I need to be here right now."

"Eve. You and Jeff have always had problems. It's been one big problem."

"That's not very nice of you to say." I countered without anger, just as if it were a statement of fact.

"Evie. I've never understood your choices. Do you expect me to be surprised that you're having problems with that man? Honestly, you're marriage is one big problem."

I didn't say anything for a few moments. I thought about what Joan said about us never being able to make it as a small town housewife. I thought about my realization that although my life had been hard, these were my choices. I had gotten what I wanted out of my life and the person I'd become was was legitimate.

"Carmen. I haven't always understood your choices either."

'What's that supposed to mean?"

"Staying on a moving train isn't a choice."

"I don't know what you're talking about." She huffed.
"I live in a big city. I have wonderful children. I'm doing things I want to do with my life. I wouldn't want to have made the same choices you did. That's all I'm saying."

"Are you judging me? For being a respectable wife and mother?"

"I'm not judging you. I'm just saying I wouldn't want what you have. I have my own life and family."

The remainder of the conversation didn't go well. She ran through her list of criticisms and endless objections to my choices. She told me I was crazy and unstable. She said there was something wrong with someone who would have an affair with a married man in the first place and then call his children her own. In the end, she didn't stop at anything and the more her rant continued, the more I realized that what I'd said had hit a nerve. As much as she protested, I knew she didn't like the life she'd chosen for herself.