The Progress of Love

do.”
    “Mood elevator,” says Stella. “Mood elevator, going up!”
    “I’m serious, Stella. Those pills are deadly.”
    “That’s your affair.”
    “Very funny.”
    “I didn’t even mean it to be. Whenever something slips out like that, I always pretend I meant it, though. I’ll take all the credit I can get!”
    These three people feel better at dinnertime than any of them might have expected. David feels better because he has remembered that there is a telephone booth across from the liquor store. Stella always feels better when she has cooked a meal and it has turned out so well. Catherine’s reasons for feeling better are chemical.
    Conversation is not difficult. Stella tells stories that she has come across in doing research for her article, about wrecks on the Great Lakes. Catherine knows something about wrecks. She has a boyfriend—a former boyfriend—who is a diver. David is gallant enough to assert that he is jealous of this fellow, does not care to hear about his deep-water prowess. Perhaps this is the truth.
    After dinner, David says he needs to go for a walk. Catherine tells him to go ahead. “Go on,” she says merrily. “We don’t need you here. Stella and I will get along fine without you!”Stella wonders where this new voice of Catherine’s comes from, this pert and rather foolish and flirtatious voice. Drink wouldn’t do it. Whatever Catherine has taken has made her sharper, not blunter. Several layers of wispy apology, tentative flattery, fearfulness, or hopefulness have simply blown away in this brisk chemical breeze.
    But when Catherine gets up and tries to clear the table it becomes apparent that the sharpening is not physical. Catherine bumps into a corner of the counter. She makes Stella think of an amputee. Not much cut off, just the tips of her fingers and maybe her toes. Stella has to keep an eye on her, relieving her of the dishes before they slide away.
    “Did you notice the hair?” says Catherine. Her voice goes up and down like a Ferris wheel; it dips and sparkles. “He’s dyeing it!”
    “David is?” says Stella, in genuine surprise.
    “Every time he’d think of it, he’d tilt his head back, so you couldn’t get too close a look. I think he was afraid you’d say something. He’s slightly afraid of you. Actually, it looks very natural.”
    “I really didn’t notice.”
    “He started a couple of months ago. I said, ‘David, what does it matter—your hair was getting gray when I fell in love with you, do you think it’s going to bother me now?’ Love is strange, it does strange things. David is actually a sensitive person—he’s a vulnerable person.” Stella rescues a wineglass that is drooping from Catherine’s fingers. “It can make you mean. Love can make you mean. If you feel dependent on somebody, then you can be mean to them. I understand that in David.”
    They drink mead at dinner. This is the first time Stella has tried this batch of homemade mead and she thinks now how good it was, dry and sparkling. It looked like champagne. She checks to see if there is any left in the bottle. About half a glass. She pours it out for herself, sets her glass behind the blender, rinses the bottle.
    “You have a good life here,” Catherine says.
    “I have a fine life. Yes.”
    “I feel a change coming in my life. I love David, but I’ve been submerged in this love for so long. Too long. Do you know what I mean? I was down looking at the waves and I started saying, ‘Heloves me, he loves me not.’ I do that often. Then I thought, Well, there isn’t any end to the waves, not like there is to a daisy. Or even like there is to my footsteps, if I start counting them to the end of the block. I thought, The waves never, ever come to an end. So then I knew, this is a message for me.”
    “Just leave the pots, Catherine. I’ll deal with them later.”
    Why doesn’t Stella say, “Sit down, I can manage better by myself”? It’s a thing she has said often to helpers less inept than Catherine. She doesn’t say it because she’s wary of something. Catherine’s state seems so brittle and delicate. Tripping her up could have consequences.
    “He loves me, he loves me not,” says Catherine. “That’s the way it goes. It goes forever. That’s what the waves were trying to tell me.”
    “Just out of curiosity,” says Stella, “do you believe in horoscopes?”
    “You mean have I had mine done? No, not really. I know people who have. I’ve