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her house.
    And so, after Leona’s departure, Edith busies herself getting ready for him, taking off her dress and putting on her nightgown and robe. At a quarter past seven, there is a tap on her bedroom door and Nellie ushers Alan in. Edith gives him a little wave. “Well, well,” he says in his chirp-chirp of a voice, “how’re we today?”
    â€œAlan,” she says, “some day I wish you would stop addressing me in the first person plural. Despite appearances, there is only one of me.”
    â€œHmm,” he says, opening his bag. “Shall we assume the position?”
    Edith assumes the position on the bed, and he begins the ritual of poking and patting and prying at her with his little instruments, humming under his breath as he moves from one part of her to another. “This will be no more than reasonably uncomfortable,” he says, making a delicate invasion of her anatomy. And then, “No pain?”
    â€œNot much.”
    â€œHow are the pills holding out?”
    â€œI take one whenever I think of it.”
    He pokes and pats and pries some more. “Well,” he says finally, “I’d say we were holding our own.”
    â€œHolding our own?” she laughs. “What does that mean?” But then, suddenly, his exploring fingers touch her in a place where it does hurt, and she cries out.
    â€œA little tender there? Sorry, dear.”
    â€œYou pinched me,” she says, biting her lip.
    â€œIn a few days I want you to come down to the office,” he says. “I want to take some more pictures. I’ll have Susan set up an appointment for you. Meanwhile, please keep taking the capsules.”
    â€œYour pictures are so unflattering,” Edith says. She pushes herself up on her elbows in bed and arranges her nightclothes. It still hurts, and deeply, where he touched her and, sitting up, she loses her breath for a moment, and gasps. She says, “Dear Alan—I always feel when we sit here alone in my bedroom that we should be lovers.” Then a curious and unexplained thing happens because she suddenly reaches out to him and puts her hands on his shoulders, and begins to cry.
    â€œThere, there,” the little doctor says, patting the back of Edith’s neck. “It is a temptation, isn’t it? There, there.”
    â€œWhy didn’t we, Alan, when we had a chance?”
    â€œWe knew each other too well, my dear. We shared too many little secrets.”
    The tears are over as quickly as they began, and Edith puts her feet heavily over the side of the bed. “Sorry,” she says. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me. Come—let’s have our brandy.”
    They punctuate each visit this way. Edith gets up, goes to the decanter on the dresser, and fills two glasses. Handing him his, she says, “Here’s mud in your eye.”
    He smiles at her. “And here’s mud in yours, my love.”
    They sit on opposite corners of the big bed and Alan touches her hand.
    â€œAny more thoughts about your house?” he asks her after a minute.
    She shakes her head.
    â€œI’m sure you know about the tax advantages you’d have, or rather your estate would have, if you deeded the house to the hospital. You’d have lifetime tenancy, of course—”
    â€œWhich you’d all be praying would be a matter of months!”
    â€œIf the house itself had to go eventually, you know how valuable to us it would be to have the pool. For water therapy, polio patients—”
    â€œI’ve heard all those arguments before. That hospital’s got my skin, and now they want my guts! Tell them Leona’s come back for a while, and I can’t make any decisions now.” Thoughtfully, he twirls the brandy in his glass. “I’ve been thinking I might do over the east end of the house as an apartment for her,” Edith says. “For her to have permanently—or