danced the polka. We fox-trotted out East or waltzed.â
âI could show you but Iâm sure that Tucson is not a polka town. Anyway, we had a lot of fun camping in the summers in our twenties and thirties. Itâs wonderful to make love in a tent. In the winter weâd do a lot of cross-country skiing. When we got into our forties we stopped doing both. In the summer weâd rent a cabin, which wasnât the same as a tent, and in the winter weâd vegetate.â
He had made himself nervous and finished his ample whiskey in a single gulp. He could no longer bear her nominal resemblance to Diane and imagined her living in a colonial house with daffodils in the yard in the New York City suburb of Bedford. He got up to leave.
âPlease donât go just yet.â Her eyes seemed to be misting and her voice was less strong. âWhen you spoke about your new hobby of investigating the crime of religion, I found myself agreeing intellectually but emotionally I have to protect my own religion. We lost our baby girl, our first child, Lucy, when she was five months to a defective heart. My husband insisted she be called after me because he loved the name Lucy. Probably because of dreams I had the irrational belief that my little daughter became a bird and that her soul passes through generations of birds. I even became a bird-watcher though I had never much noticed them before Lucyâs death. We raised a son and a daughter but with them my feelings were never as intense as they were with Lucy. We knew that we were going to lose her for three months but I never accepted it.â
âWe never got beyond a couple of miscarriages,â Sunderson said lamely. He began to finally feel the extreme fatigue of having awakened at three a.m. and also a niggling twinge of desire for her. It seemed crazed that he could hear this terrifying loss and it made him want to make love to the mother. He remembered that Diane, who knew so many nurses in her work as a hospital administrator, had said that they tended to be very sexually active because theyâre around death so much. âAt least fucking stands for life,â she had said, shocking him because it was the only time in their marriage she had used the word.
âI canât believe it.â She suddenly burst into laughter.
âBelieve what?â he asked timidly, already sensing that she had read his thoughts about her similarity to Diane.
âItâs outrageous. And funny. Maybe flattering.â She paused, and then added with mock seriousness, âYou better go now.â
He took her seriously and headed for the door. She followed and put an arm around his neck.
âIâm so sorry,â he said.
âJust teasing. I have a bottle of wine thatâs perfect for a Sunday night.â
He slumped down in a chair by the door, looked at his scuffed shoes, and then watched her expertly opening the wine. Since Diane had left he had been strictly screw top. He made his way back to the table. The wine was a soft burgundy called Clos de la Roche and she said it was hard to get but her family knew the family that owned the vineyard. It was gradually occurring to him that she was rich, which had a dampening effect since he was an old-line left-winger and laborite, his sympathies deeply enmeshed in the fortunes of the union movement. He was honest enough, however, to admit that he had never really known a rich woman and the few he had met in Marquette were civil enough.
âHow much would a bottle of this set you back?â It was certainly the most delicious liquid he had ever drunk.
âOh God I could only estimate. My dad has it sent to me. Several hundred dollars a bottle I suspect. My dadâs from an old New England family though heâs a democrat. He says his family made a lot of money in the spice and slave trade and whaling so itâs his duty to try to correct certain ancient injustices. Heâs always