Blair thought about protesting, but her feet were starting to complain and the bridge was still a ways off and MIT ten to twelve blocks beyond that.

“Thank you,” she said and accepted the ride.

When Blair reached the astrophysics department, she was informed by the receptionist, a graduate student who introduced himself as Dobbins, that Angus was out.

“Out?” Blair said. “What does that mean?”

Dobbins was wearing a glen plaid suit with a matching bow tie and pocket square—Jaunty! Blair thought—but his expression was dour. The department secretary, Mrs. Himstedt, had retired in January, and Angus and his colleagues had been too busy to find a replacement, so they assigned graduate students the odious tasks that Mrs. Himstedt used to handle. Most of the graduate students felt put-upon, as young Dobbins clearly did. He also seemed to be offended by Blair’s pregnant state; he watched her warily, as though he thought she might burst. “Professor Whalen had an appointment at ten.”

Blair had started out the day with a strong sense of optimism, but it was rapidly dissolving. “Where is the appointment?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“I’m his wife.”

“I’m sorry,” Dobbins said.

“Please just tell me where he went. Is he somewhere on campus?”

“Actually,” Dobbins said, “it was a personal appointment.”

“Personal?”

“That’s what he said. Personal.”

Personal, Blair thought. Where could he be? He had his hair cut every other Saturday without deviation and he wasn’t scheduled to see the dentist until the following month.

She said, “I’ll wait for him to return.”

Dobbins pushed his glasses farther up the bridge of his nose and turned his attention to a textbook on the desk before him. Blair took a seat in a straight-backed chair and perched her handbag on what remained of her lap. She eyed Dobbins and caught him glancing up from his studying to inspect her with obvious distaste. He was probably made uncomfortable by her fecundity. So many men were.

She sat for more than thirty minutes and was about to get up and leave—she would take a taxi home, she decided, because the sitting was causing her lower back to ache—when Angus came rushing through the door.

“Angus!” Blair cried out, both relieved and joyful. She struggled to her feet.

The expression on Angus’s face wasn’t one she remembered seeing before. He looked…caught. He looked…guilty of something. And then Blair noticed he was in a state of disarray, his tie askew, his shirt misbuttoned, and his hair mussed. Blair blinked.

“Where were you?” she asked.

“What are you doing here?” he asked. Then an instant later, he added, “I was at a department meeting.”

Blair looked to Dobbins, who had wisely fixed his gaze on his textbook again. “This nice young gentleman told me you were at an appointment. A personal appointment. Who was it with?”

“Would you excuse us, please, Dobbins?” Angus said.

Dobbins didn’t need to be asked twice. If there was anything worse for Dobbins than being confronted with a pregnant woman, Blair supposed, it was being plopped in the middle of a marital squabble. He darted off down the hall.

“What are you doing here?” Angus asked again.

“I came to surprise you!” Blair said and then she dissolved in tears. She was fat, so fat, filled to bursting with child and fluids. She was an overripe fruit. She was…oozing, unctuous, moist, pungent. Blair had to urinate so badly and had lost so much control over her bladder that she feared she would piss a river right then and there.

“I need the ladies’ room,” she told Angus. “Right now.”

Angus seemed relieved by this distraction; however, finding a ladies’ room was a problem. The population of the building was so overwhelmingly male that there was only one ladies’ room, and it was on the first floor. This involved an elevator ride and a walk down a hushed hallway past closed doors behind which, Blair assumed, men were busy calculating. All the while, Blair was praying she didn’t leak. Also, she was wondering about the identity of Angus’s mistress. That Angus had a mistress, she had no doubt.

Most professors would have chosen a student, but all of Angus’s students were male, every single one, and his colleagues in his department were men. It could be one of the other wives; maybe the Joanne who wore all the turquoise eye shadow. Or it could be a stewardess from one of the flights Angus had taken the previous fall.

Blair finally reached the ladies’ room, and she was so relieved to release her bladder that nothing else mattered. And then when she emerged, Angus announced that her visit was a lovely surprise but that he had to get back to work. He would see her at home.

“But…” Blair said.

Angus kissed her and pressed two dollars into her hand for a taxi. Then he smiled, which was rare these days. She supposed he was saving his smiles for the other woman. “I love you,” he said, but the words rang hollow.

Blair moved toward the exit, then stopped. “Angus?” she said.

Angus, about to step into the elevator, held the door and turned around. “Yes, darling?”

She wanted to say something terrible like I’m sorry I married you instead of Joey or I’m attending Harvard the instant this baby is born, no matter what you say. She would not stand idly by while Angus lied to her!

But she couldn’t start a fight here, in a public building, his place of employment. She had been raised better than that.

“Fix your shirt,” she said. “You missed a button.”

Time of the Season

Her mother drives the Grand Wagoneer and her grandmother sits up front. Without Kirby or Tiger along, Jessie has the entire back seat to herself so she’s able to lie down, resting her head on one of the duffels. The Wagoneer is jam-packed with trunks and valises, boxes and bags, piled to within an inch of the roof. There is no way to see out the back; there never is on this trip, even though every year David implores Kate to bring less “paraphernalia,” and every year Kate promises to bring only the bare necessities. Much of the cargo is clothes, of course—for Exalta, for Kate, for Jessie, for David, and even for Tiger, just in case the war ends at some point over the summer and he is sent home. Their summer wardrobes are completely different from what they wear the rest of the year in Boston. Kate packs Lilly Pulitzer patio dresses, espadrilles, a different bathing suit for every day of the week, clam diggers, Bermuda shorts, boatneck tees, her tennis dresses, and Tretorns. Jessie brings basically the same thing, although on a younger, less sophisticated scale. She has terry-cloth playsuits, a pair of white bell-bottoms, two sundresses for dinners out at restaurants, a crocheted vest, and a Fair Isle sweater for the inevitable rainy days. There’s a small trunk filled with foul-weather gear—raincoats, hats, boots, umbrellas. There’s a box of cooking implements—Kate’s cast-iron pan and her chef’s knife and butcher block. There’s a cooler of steaks and French cheese from Savenor’s because Nantucket is okay for seafood but everything else is subpar compared to the city, according to both Kate and Exalta. Jessie brought her summer reading—Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl—and her new record album. There are tennis rackets and clam rakes, new life preservers for the boat, new wicker baskets for the bicycles.