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hall, and having a few hours to spare, we bundled up and walked across to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We did the French Impressionists, and I got her to talk, and emerged better informed than I had been. She knew her subject. At the concert I held her hand. It was the first overt move I had made toward her, and she did not draw back. I sat through most of the concert with her small warm hand in mine, telling myself: Ike, this is sort of insane. But since I was obligated to apologize or explain to no one, I decided to hell with apologies or explanations.
    The concert ended by seven, and we walked up Broadway to Romer’s. It was a brisk March evening, and the wind brought color into her cheeks. She had that almost translucent skin that one finds among some Irish women, and her wide gray eyes registered her every mood and reaction. By the time our dinner was over, I had learned a good deal more about Elizabeth Hopper. It was not confessional, but in the way of having no secrets. It was in the manner of having found a life buoy—and to cling to it, she had to divest herself of every mystery. She had beautiful teeth, and when I mentioned that, in what context I don’t remember, she remarked that they were implants. “It was after he discovered that I could not conceive. He went into a rage, and I lost my four front teeth.”
    â€œYou lost them?”
    â€œHe knocked them out, broke them. It was a single blow to the front of my face. He was very strong from all those years of training. For the next week or two, he was very repentant. He paid for the implants—a great deal of money, and they’re as good as real teeth. He was sorry. He didn’t know his own strength. The few times after that when he pushed me around, he never struck my face.”
    â€œWas he drunk when he hit you?”
    â€œNo. That’s the strange part of it, Ike. He never touched liquor. Bodybuilding was like a religion for him. He always said that alcohol was poison. He was crazy on the subject.”
    â€œMy God, why didn’t you leave him?”
    â€œDo you know what it is like to be educated in a convent school? Your husband is the master—and Ike, I was afraid of him. He told me he would have the marriage annulled. Until then, I was to keep my mouth shut. The nuns teach you to be obedient. I thought it would take a few weeks, but it wasn’t until after he joined the Wall Street firm and we moved to New York that the annulment came through. He was a strange kind of Catholic, and our parish priest had known me all my life. He had to find another priest, and that took time—and it’s a complicated thing. Meanwhile, he appeared to enjoy constantly humiliating me.”
    â€œSo he got the annulment, and you were divorced in the Islands?”
    â€œDon’t ask me to explain. Don’t ask me how he could be a sort of demented Catholic and not believe in anything but his own rules—and his father’s. His father’s will said that any divorce must be locked into an annulment.”
    I never pressed her for details of the journey that led her to the bridge. Each humiliation tore my heart open, and the less emotion, the matter-of-fact manner that she put into the telling, made it all the worse. When they moved to New York, he bought an apartment on Park Avenue, and she moved into the apartment on the West Side. She had neither friends nor family in New York, only a few acquaintances who worked in her department at Interdale’s.
    When we finished dinner, it was too late for a film, and we were both tired. We had walked a great deal. When I asked her whether I should take her home, she hesitated for a long time before answering. As her assent began, I interrupted it and suggested that she come to my place, where I would start a fire in the fireplace.
    â€œBut you live in an apartment.”
    â€œAn old one. And it has a fireplace. Many of the older buildings have them.