Saving Elijah

churning cold, the motion of the wasps. I stagger backward.

    *    *    *

    On a street in New York City, I stood very still.
    "Dinah?" Sam's eyes were riveted on me. "What just happened? Your eyes rolled back, and you looked like you were going to collapse."
    "All the dead people were there, Daddy," Elijah said.
    "What are you talking about, Elijah?" Sam said. "What dead people?"
    "In the field. An airplane."
    I looked at my son. I hadn't seen him, but I realized I didn't have to see him for him to be with me.
    "Where?" Sam looked at him. "What?"
    "The airplane fell. The people aren't dead now. They're in heaven. But the white wasp man isn't in heaven."
    Sam looked at me for a long moment, then gently took hold of our son's shoulders.
    "Wasp man?"
    "He's not really a wasp man, Daddy. He's just a silly ghost."

    *    *    *

    "I told you they'd get back together," Kate said that night, holding the pink rose Sam had brought her to her cheek.
    Alex looked at us and made a face. "You two are weird."
    He had no idea how weird at least one of us was. Kate might have had some idea, but so far it didn't seem she'd said anything to anyone about the mirror.
    "Why are we weird?" Sam asked.
    Alex shrugged. "John Harman's parents broke up, Sally Kershaw's, Larry Selwin's—and all their parents hate each other. John's mother says she wouldn't get back together with his father if he was the last man on earth—"
    "Well, some parents do get back together, obviously," Kate said.
    "Your sister has a point, Alex." Sam glanced at me. "Here we are, back together, you can see for yourself."
    "Yeah, but that doesn't count because you're weird." There was a hint of a smile.
    "You just have no faith in the power of true love, Alex," Kate said.
    "True love," said Elijah, smiling.
    After dinner Kate gave us a flute concert, playing the Bach sonatina she'd been working on tenderly, flawlessly. Alex and Sam played some video games, then Sam and Elijah looked through Creatures of the Deep together. Elijah told him about going in the pool, showed off his latest drawings, and they checked up on the fish named Elvis. Finally we said goodnight to the children, then Sam put his arm around me and we walked into our bedroom in silence. I had hidden all evidence of my possession—the candles, the books, all of it.
    I started to take off my clothes and found that I couldn't bring myself to get undressed in front of my husband. It wasn't only that another man had touched me, it was more that our lovemaking had always been about mutual pleasure, and I felt as if my body were no longer my own. I took my nightgown into the bathroom, thinking I wanted to come to bed after he was already settled in. Afraid he'd leave again?
    I kept the light off while I washed my face; I couldn't bear to look at myself in the mirror. I tried not to think about what had gone on in this room while he was gone. Though the vision I'd had that afternoon had been markedly different than the others, I believed I was still a long way from resolution.
    When I came back into the bedroom, Sam was sitting up on his side of the bed, the covers drawn up to his waist. He didn't have his pajama top on. My husband's body, lean and long and smooth, was nearly as familiar to me as my own, even after an absence of six weeks, four days, sixteen hours.
    I sat down next to him, on his side of the bed. "I've always loved you, Sam."
    Sam looked into my eyes. "Who is he? The man you were with."
    "He's no one, Sam."
    "You have sex with another man, and he's no one?"
    I put my hand on his thigh. I had hurt him deeply. Perhaps I would never again be able to look into his eyes without seeing the hurt that I had caused.
    "You really want the details, Sam? I'll tell you if you want me to."
    He sighed. "I guess not."
    "It was just that one time, Sam. It won't happen again. I've told him I made a terrible mistake."
    He held out his arms, drew me close. We kissed, then he pulled back just a little.
    "Do you remember what I said when I asked you to marry me? That we'd be together always, no matter what?"
    "I remember."
    He smiled. "What I meant to say was 'no matter what, except adultery.'" He sighed. "You and the kids are my life."
    "That's exactly what I told Rabbi Leiberman the other day. That you're my life."
    "Rabbi Leiberman?"
    "He's the rabbi at Temple Beth Elohim. I told him about all this."
    Sam looked wary. "What did he say?"
    I got up and went over to my side of the bed, got in, pulled the