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with an edge sharp as Mother’s cut crystal. Mother wouldn’t have said it if she’d asked to have Louise Barnes visit.
    As soon as Lorraine stepped in the front door, Jean could tell she was uneasy. “Two matching pianos! You didn’t tell me you had two,” Lorraine said, trailing close behind her through the house. “You have to walk a mile to get around anywhere in here. There could be lots of people in here and no one would know what anyone else was doing.”
    “Certainly not me,” Jean said. “I always have to ask.
    After Lorraine had gotten over her surprise and they had a snack, Lorraine played “Claire de Lune,” the new piece she was studying. Jean loved it, a new person playing in her home.
    On their way to the verandah and the pool, Jean smelled Father’s pipe in the library and stopped at the doorway to introduce her. “You play beautifully,” Father said.
    “Thank you.” Then she added in a breathy whisper, “Walls of books.” Two walls, floor-to-ceiling, held leather-bound volumes. Lorraine’s voice trailed off, reading. “Browning, Bronte, Cather, Dickens.” She took a few steps further. “Stevenson, Thackeray, Turgenev. Just like a real library. Has anybody ever read them all?” Father chuckled.
    “Mother reads aloud to me on Sunday afternoons and sometimes in the evenings,” Jean said.
    “That would take forever. I can’t believe it. A whole room just for books.”
    “Oh, we do other things here, too.” It pleased her that Lorraine liked the room, though she didn’t have to make such a big deal of it. She thought of the evening cocktail hours with Father talking from his great cushy leather chair and Mother doing needlepoint by the fire. “We just live in here,” she said. The chairs, lamps, Father’s giant desk nestled in the bay window, they seemed to have taken root, just as the family traditions had, within the library’s paneled walls. Because of that, the library was a holy place—the most private part, the core of the big house. She had grown up in its warming shelter. “It’s cozy,” she said simply, and shrugged. “Come on.”
    Jean walked ahead of Lorraine out to the verandah. The boxwood hedge surrounding the pool sent its fragrance across the water. It told her she was close to the edge. She took off her wrap, sat down on the coping and lowered herself in. It felt refreshing. Swimming was the ultimate in freedom, she thought, as she stretched and kicked and then began a lap. On the way back she asked, “Aren’t you going to swim?”
    “Oh, I don’t know how. I’ll just stand here in the water.”
    “You mean you never learned?”
    “No, I guess not. I like watching you, though. Go ahead.”
    Jean did vigorous laps, reaching out for the pool wall just in time again and again. It was good to move so fast and energetically. The pool was the only place she could. In the water she was equal. Camp Hanoum had taught her that.
    “How do you know when you’re at the end?” Lorraine asked after she stopped. “You never bump yourself.”
    “Oh, sometimes I do. It’s like the stairs. After a while, I just know.”
    In the evening they listened to music in Jean’s bedroom and talked of Lorraine’s two boyfriends.
    “Which one do you like better?”
    “Don, I guess.”
    “How come?”
    “Mm, I guess it’s because I talk to him more. It’s just easier to be with him.”
    “I can’t imagine what it would be like to have one boyfriend, much less two. I’d probably forget which one I’d said things to.”
    Lorraine let out a quick, two-note laugh. “That has happened. Sometimes I catch myself just in time.”
    Jean sighed. “That must be heavenly. Just so you don’t forget which one you’ve done certain things with. Don’t feel badly about this, but you sort of remind me of the maids. I mean, they really live, have men and adventures instead of, well, like me.”
    “But what about Andy?”
    “That’s nothing. I hardly know him.”
    “I heard