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And Sam, I know you feel awful now, but I think, in the end, you’ll be so much better off without him. You used to wear mascara to
bed
.”
    “Well.”
    “And when you had Travis, you were embarrassed that David saw the umbilical cord.”
    Oh God, I’d forgotten that. But it’s true. I’d felt bad about how ugly it was.
    I hear the clock chime three. “I’ve got to go, Rita. Travis will be home soon.”
    “Call me tonight.”
    “What for?”
    “I need support, okay?”
    Upstairs, I wash my face, reapply some eyeliner. Then I take off all my clothes and stare at my naked self in the bathroom mirror. I turn to the side. Good breasts. But the beginning of dimpling at the tops of my thighs. And there is my stupid, flabby stomach. I wonder at what age pubic hair turns gray. I don’t see how people who were married for a long time can ever take their clothes off in front of another person. Another lover. How can there ever be another lover? The hands would be wrong. The face. The smell. You’d open your eyes from a kiss and . . . what? No map.
    I put my clothes back on. Then I head downstairs to make some peanut-butter cookies for Travis. Also chocolate chip.
    It’s Friday, the weekend looming ahead. Tonight we’re going out to dinner, to an Italian place on Newbury Street that has no business charging what it does. We’ll valet park. We’ll get appetizers before our entrées and dessert after them. “To drink?” the waiter will say, and I will consult the wine list, pick by price.
    “I DON ’ T
WANT an appetizer,” Travis says. He is trying to keep his voice low, but he is agitated. We are seated at the restaurant after having been shown to our table with a certain restrained condescension. It is early, five-thirty; no other customers have the poor taste to be here. Most of the waiters sit in a small, white-coated group at a table in the back of the room, lazily gossiping, laughing, drinking what looks like ice water with lemon slices in it.
    “I just want spaghetti with butter and cheese.”
    “Yes, well, you can have that,” I tell him. “But wouldn’t you like to start with something else?”
    “Start what?”
    “Start your dinner, honey.”
    “
Spaghetti
is my dinner.”
    “Yes, but you can have an appetizer as well. You can have both. Come on, you know that.”
    “Fine.” He snaps his menu closed, slumps back in his chair. He yanks at his tie, loosening it.
    “So!” I say. “What will it be? You can have anything you want.”
    “I don’t care. You’re the one who wants it. You pick.”
    I straighten in my chair, smile at the approaching waiter. He is so elegantly gay I feel ashamed of myself, of my predictable domestic status. Breeder. Divorced. Knowledge of nightlife and art scene nil.
    The waiter stands before me, raises an eyebrow. “Have we decided?”
    Antipasto?
I’m thinking, a little panicked.
Shrimp in lime vinaigrette?
And then, because Travis is right, this is all only exhausting, I say, “Spaghetti with butter and grated cheese for my son, please. And for me, too. Don’t be stingy with that Parmesan, either. Two Cokes, no ice. Four cannoli. And the check.”
    “All right,” the waiter says, and accompanies the snappy motion of his pen sliding back into his breast pocket with a tight smile.
    “All
right
!” Travis yells, and sits up straighter.
    “Travis?”
    He looks up at me, fearful, I know, of being told he’s talking too loud.
    “Why don’t you take off that tie?” I slip my heels off, lean back in my chair.
    Travis removes his tie, coils it into a neat arrangement at the side of his plate. Beside it, I lay my belt.
    Hours later, after Travis and I watch
Star Wars
twice, he falls into bed. I wash up and go into my bedroom, intent on reading one of the new books I bought the other day. I turn back the bedclothes and then, just like that, all the good feeling I’ve built up today seems to drain out of the soles of my feet. I stand there for a while. And then I