The Lesson of Her Death

partial truth that she and Stu hadn’t had a good sex life. Although she didn’t dwell on it she assumed that Corde had had his share of women and hoped it was true so that he had sowed all the wild grains he had in him. But it wasn’t the sex that tormented Corde; it was something trickier—jealousy that the woman he wanted to marry had confessed secrets to another man, that she had cried in front of him, that she had comforted him. Corde could not be allayed, looking sheepish and sorrowful at this retroactive betrayal. “But it was before I even
knew
you,” Diane snapped, and he got a look at her spirited side, as she’d intended. Corde brooded plenty and finally Diane called the bluff. “You gonna mope like that, go find yourself a virgin you think is worth all this heartache you’re making for yourself.”
    Their wedding, the following month, was appropriately punctuated by an inundation to match that of the day they’d met. They both took this as a good omen, which had proved to be pretty accurate. Sixteen years of marriage and when they called each other darling, they more often than not meant it. Diane said the secret to their success was that they had faulty memory circuits and tended to forget rather than forgive the transgressions. The closest either of them had come to an affair were unpure thoughts—along the lines of those about Susan Sarandon and Kevin Costner when Corde and Diane made love the night they’d rented
Bull Durham
.
    They had weathered a near-bankruptcy, the deaths of Diane’s father and Corde’s mother, a stroke that made Corde’s father forever a stranger and then the old man’s death, and some bad problems when the family was living in St. Louis.
    Lately Corde was spending more and more time
on
cases, away from home. Yet oddly the brooding sense of threat she felt did not come from his long hours or moody obsession with his work. Rather, Diane Cordefelt that for some reason it was the trouble with Sarah that was driving them apart. She did not understand this at all but she sensed the momentum of the rift and sensed too, in her darker moments, its inevitability.
    She looked at her watch, felt a burst of irritation at having been kept waiting then looked at the receptionist, who moved the gum around in her mouth until she found it a comfy home and continued addressing bills.
    Question 11. Does your husband
…
    The door to the inner office opened and a woman in her late thirties stepped out. She wore a beautiful pink suit, radiant, vibrating. Diane studied the dress before she even glanced at the woman’s face.
That is a tart’s color
. A formal smile on her lips, the woman said, “Hello, I’m Dr. Parker. Would you like to come in?”
    Ohmagod, she’s a fake! Here she is just a Mary K rep who won the Buick and is on to better things. As she stood, Diane thought hard how to escape. Vet’s office, pink suit and the woman’s only references had been the yellow pages. But despite the misgivings Diane continued into the office. She sat in a comfortable armchair. Dr. Parker closed the door behind them. The room was small, painted yellow and—another glitch—contained no couch. All psychiatrists’ offices had couches. That much Diane knew. This office was furnished with two armchairs across from a virtually empty desk, two answering machines, a lamp and a clean ashtray on a pedestal. A cube box of Kleenex.
    The doctor’s thick gold bracelet clanked on the desktop as she uncapped a pen and took a notebook from the desk.
    On the other hand, the doctor passed the wall test. One side of the room was filled with somber, stout books like
Psychodynamics in the Treatment of Near-Functioning Individuals
and
Principles of Psychopharmacology
. On the facing wall were the diplomas. Dr. Parker had graduated from the University of Illinois, cum laude, from Northwestern Medical School and from the American College of Psychiatrists. Threeschools! Diane, who had limboed out of McCullough Teachers’ College with a B-minus average, looked at the squirrelly proclamations full of Latin or Greek phrases and seals and stamps then turned back to find the doctor gazing expectantly at her.
    “Well,” Diane said, and folded her sweating hands in her lap. She felt the wave of tears slosh inside her. She opened her mouth to tell the doctor about Sarah and said instead, “Are you new in town?”
    “I opened my practice a year ago.”
    “A year,” Diane said. “New Lebanon a little quiet for