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that she’d planned to tell him this. It was the way he looked at her when she came in. She couldn’t explain it; but just then she’d felt some likeness be- tween them, some “affinity,” a word he liked to use.
Except for the fact that you were raised by two parents who adored you, Peter always replied.
“I’m sorry,” he says again. “I’m not quite sure why you’re telling me this.”
True, Helen would say, hugging him close.
“But Peter, this is crazy,” Marianne says, once the
She looks down at the exam, and all at once the reason is there. “‘The art that doth mend nature,’” she says, pointing to one of the questions. “The couple whose baby I’m carrying, well, the woman hasn’t been able to carry a pregnancy to term.
waiter has brought their sushi. “Is it?”
I feel as if those words speak to what I’m going through now, you see?”
“It’s been more than a year,” Peter says, poking at an eel roll. “You’re the one who’s always telling me to get on with my life.”
He doesn’t answer, and she takes in the perspira- tion prickling his brow, reminded of the newspa- per article, the way he lost his wife. “Dr. Fricke?”
She lays down her chopsticks, fixes him with her blue-gray eyes. “I’ve encouraged you to date, to travel—you’ve talked for ages about going back to England; but I never said you should have a baby. What are you thinking anyway? That you can somehow replace Helen? Clone her?” She laughs bitterly. “A sort of mini-me like in that ab- surd movie you dragged me to see?”
“Take two hours. Then bring the essay back to me. And yes,” he adds, “you can use your laptop if you like and print out a copy in the library, okay?”
“Thank you, I will.”
The couple at the next table, both of them dressed all in black, look their way.
She stands in the hallway, just outside his office door for a while after that, wishing there was some way she could make him understand. I’m his student, she reminds himself. He probably thinks I’m crazy to have confided in him like that. An- other professor walks by, and the woman’s eyes linger on Agnes, so that she knows she must wear all that she is feeling in her face. Hurriedly, she turns and makes her way towards the stairwell.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Peter says quietly. “And that movie was funny. You laughed as hard as I did. You just won’t admit it.”
~
“You’re changing the subject,” Marianne says, the lawyer in her coming through despite her recent move into real estate.
“You aren’t serious,” Helen’s older sister, Mari- anne, says when Peter meets her for dinner at the Japanese restaurant down the street from her apartment the following Saturday.
“That baby would be a part of Helen,” Peter says, his voice firmer now. “It would be her child, the child we should have had.”
“Perfectly.” Peter wishes that Marianne, who was
hard-nosed even before her divorce, could muster
some enthusiasm just this once. These weekly
dinners aren’t the same without Helen. Always, “No.” Marianne props her elbows on the table. she was the glue that held Marianne and Peter “Think about it. A pregnant student comes into together. Not that Marianne and I have a whole lot your office and tells you that she’s a surrogate for in common, Helen used to say.
Peter holds her gaze. “Stop saying that.” 13
She tucks her silvery hair, recently cropped to chin-length, behind her ears. “You’re still grieving.”
“If Helen were still alive.” She sighs, swishes the wine around in her glass, drinks. “I’m sorry, but the whole idea’s just too much. It’s crazy, totally crazy.”