Saving Elijah

chest.
    "Go for it, Elijah." Alex, whose chest seemed to have filled out over the summer, actually flashed a smile.
    "I won't let you go, Elijah." Sam was still holding out his arms. He winked at me.
    This man and these children we had made together were the sum and substance and meaning of my life. Everything I was, everything I had done or become in all these years, was part Sam. In the wildest dreams of girlhood I could not have dreamed this, that the years of simply experiencing life together, with our own unique personalities, some might say opposite personalities, would meld us like two blended chunks of clay, apiece of art with no visible seams. Sam was a crucial piece of me, of my molecules, just like Alex and Kate and Elijah. And still we had come to this—I, not he, had come to this utter betrayal, this breach of faith and trust.
    What had I wanted from Peter? Had I thought pleasure might rid me of demons, might make me feel understood, might even take my fear and my pain away? But pleasure is so much lighter than pain, lighter than air. Pleasure is ephemeral, illusory as a sunlit slice of dust that bisects the room like solid matter but vanishes like the dust it is when you close the blind.
    "Come on, baby," Kate said.
    Now it had become a game. Elijah laughed, and wouldn't budge.
    "Look how much fun it is to splash Dad," Alex said. He splashed.
    "Hey, watch it," Kate said. "You got me, Alex."
    Elijah shook his head, vehemently. Poppy barked a few times.
    Sam took a big soft beach ball from where it was floating in the water, threw it toward Elijah. "Catch!"
    Elijah missed, then he and Poppy chased after it, and Elijah brought it back, threw it awkwardly to Sam. They played this game again and again while I stood there and watched. Elijah was happy to play but didn't move a millimeter closer to the water. After a few minutes Alex and Kate gave up, got out of the pool, wrapped themselves in towels, and stood next to me. "Forget it, Dad!" Alex said. But Sam kept throwing and throwing the ball.
    Oh, Sammy.
    "Let it rest, Sam," I said.
    "Rest, Daddy!" Elijah giggled.
    "Okay. I give." Sam hoisted himself out of the water with his arms and reached for the towel lying on a lounge chair. "Be a landlubber, Elijah. See if I care!"
    Elijah laughed, stretched out his arms, and ran straight into his father's.
    "Want a horsy ride?"
    "Horsy! Horsy!"
    Sam bent down and helped Elijah onto his shoulders. Then he stood up, lifting him high into the air. "Don't let go, now."
    Elijah linked his hands around his father's chin.
    "Giddy-yup, Daddy!" He squealed with laughter as Sam began making neighing noises and prancing around the yard.

    *    *    *

    I made love to my husband that night, even with the memory of another man so fresh in my mind. I felt so very awkward at first, embarrassed, but my body soon reacted reflexively. We pleasured each other with great care, and with the tenderness of new young lovers. When we were spent, lying in each other's arms, Sam propped himself on an elbow and looked down into my eyes. "Dinah, I couldn't be with you this way, if I were with someone else. Could I?"
    Well. Obviously I could. Sex is certainly a gift. But if sex isn't also God's private little joke on us, I don't know what is. Just a small joke, for such a very big God.
    "I love you, Dinah. You've got to know that. I'm just worried about you, that's all. First you're telling me you're seeing ghosts, then you're accusing me of having an affair."
    Looking into my husband's eyes at that moment, I believed in his faithfulness just as certainly as I'd been convinced of his lack of it only hours ago.
    "Please, Di," he said. "You've got to get some help."
    I began to cry. I told Sam I loved him, I was sorry I'd been scaring him and confusing him. We lay in each other's arms, and eventually Sam fell asleep. I stayed beside him for a long time, listening to the rhythm of his breathing, looking at the ceiling with eyes that wouldn't close.
    Finally I got up. I stood for a moment over our bed. Geometry is what I could see in the dim light, intersecting planes and shapes, an arrangement of form as familiar to me as my own breath, my husband's lean spine angled at the hip, a neck, a bent elbow, an arm resting on the sheet where I had lain with him until just a moment ago. His hand was cupped as if he were holding a small object loosely. Under his hand and arm, there was a gentle hollow in our mattress, formed of the weight and shape of