My grandfather was blinded in his right eye during World War I.  I never knew exactly how or where it happened, let alone why. He never talked about it. I never asked.
      British families were like that back in the 50’s. Not for us the public display of emotion, the hugging and crying, the ultimate release of cathartic confrontation. Your pain was your own business; your doubts, your fears your own business; your privacy staunchly defended, scrupulously respected. As a child, my complicity in this tacit agreement was taken for granted.
      Still I did know my grandad’s right eye hadn’t always been the odd, mottled grey I remember; that once he had had two normal greenish eyes, the same color as my mother’s and my own. I also knew, from information gathered here and there and mostly surreptitiously, that his wound was the result of exposure to something called “mustard gas” (a term I irresistibly associated with the spicy yellow stuff I slathered on ham sandwiches), and that the war in which it had been inflicted was not the war my mother talked about, the one where the family narrowly escaped with their lives when their home was razed by German bombing. This war had happened even before that, was a war that old – really old – people called  the ‘Great War’ and had  been fought in the trenches in France and Belgium in places with funny names like Ypres and Verdun.
       Perhaps it was the end of the millennium that prompted my tentative journey into the past. People everywhere, it seemed, were digging up family skeletons, delving into their respective histories, all in the hope of finding out more about they had become who they were. It was “in the air” and I caught it, like a virus. Certainly reading Peter Jennings’ chapters on World War I in his book, The Century, touched off some spark of insight, for it was then it hit me with all the force of a revelation that perhaps my grandfather hadn’t always been the way I knew him as a child.
       Come to think of it, there had been something looking out of the unwounded, sepia-colored eyes in the family photographs, photos whose details are more distinct now, in memory taking on a significance they were denied then. It was something I could never quite recognize or  reconcile with the slightly cynical, highly reticent individual I knew and loved as a child. That was when it finally dawned on me: my grandfather had lost something more than the sight in one eye in the trenches in France or Belgium in the places with the funny names.
       I was only 11 when he died, and it is ironic that even now I do not know whether I regret the lost opportunity, or whether, if I could see and talk to him just one more time, I would break the bonds of our genteel, middle-class taboo – in part a cowardly thing – and finally ask him what it was like.
       What it was like, after enduring the horror of the waterlogged, rat-infested trenches, to be shipped back to England like so much damaged parcel post, with all the other maimed, shell-shocked human cargo, so disfigured from the yellow, encrusted sores your mother recognized you only by the signet ring she had given you, barely visible under swollen, oozing flesh.
        What it was like, at nineteen, your youth weighed down by the suffocating prison of complete blindness; the horror of not knowing whether you would ever escape; the agonizing vacillation between hope and despair as the sight in one eye gradually, grudgingly returned, all the while haunted by the insidiously persistent question, never quite formulated yet impossible to deny: Was it worth it?  Surely he must have asked himself that?  So that even though more than forty years have passed, I still cannot rid myself of the feeling that it might have helped him to tell me, might have helped me to listen. And the only partially irrational guilt I feel that it was due to some failure of my own that I shall never know now.
        My grandfather left me an inheritance infinitely more valuable than the color of my eyes, an inheritance I do not understand, and I feel its mystery every time I am reminded of him. All the public pride of duty done, all the private hell of fear and pain and doubt, are second-hand and speculative now, and part of this mystery I shall never solve.
        He never talked about it.  I never asked.

First Printed in Youngstown State University Penguin Review - 2007

     I'm writing all of this down for you, Dr. Russell, since you said it was time to confront what's really been troubling me, and I dare not reveal my incredible secret face-to-face. Because, so far, not one word I've told you about myself has been true.
     But you've been so kind to me since I've been in this place, I think you deserve to hear the truth at last. I know you won't believe me — nobody would. But perhaps seeing it all down on paper will help draw the tangled threads of my thoughts together — even give them some ghostly semblance of sanity in my own mind.
     Well, as you certainly know, I've been having what you choose to call "identity problems," along with the fear of light —"photophobia," I think the term is — and, especially, of mirrors. Of course, being a psychiatrist you think it can all be traced back to the repressed memory of some childhood trauma or other, when you see, the truth is very simple really, and so beautifully ironic. Because the person you visit in this room every day, the pitiful creature whose insensate ramblings you so patiently and persistently attempt to soothe and comprehend, isn’t the real me. And I mean that quite literally.
     I think too, that writing it all down will serve as an act of atonement for me — for all my silly, venial sins, past and present. But, most of all, as a penance for the great and abiding sin of vanity that has brought me to the strange and fearful condition you see me in today. (I do wish they hadn't taken the lipstick away, though. I know I probably look freakish wearing it now, but couldn't I please have it a little while longer?)
     If life were more like a novel with one chapter seamlessly flowing into the next, my fate would have been predictable from the very beginning, my story would never have had to be told.
     But life is more like a jigsaw puzzle, random and bizarre, at least when you are living it. It is only in retrospect some sort of coherent order emerges and significant events become easy to identify. From where I am now I can see that the first significant piece in my particular puzzle was irretrievably placed two years ago - the year of my 49th birthday — the year I took the first critical and undoubtedly reckless step on the weird and convoluted path that brought me here when I resigned my job as office manager at Hill and Perks.
     Hill and Perks was a very prestigious firm of corporate at attorneys where I had worked for so long -almost 28 years — that I knew everybody thought of me as a fixture. Certainly my decision to leave must have seemed rash and incomprehensible from their point of view — I would forfeit my pension after all. What they didn't realize was that I was deep in the throes of a diabolically irresistible wake-up call known as "mid-life crisis," which is really no more than a desperate last attempt to fulfill at least some of the dreams of youth before it is too late, aided and abetted, at least in my case, by the furiously fluctuating hormonal process ominously referred to as "change of life." (Yes, I know what you are thinking , but please, bear with me.)
     Soon afterwards, though, I began wondering whether I had made a mistake. It wasn't so much that I missed the job — I had never really found it rewarding in any but the obvious financial way. But back in the early 60's there had been few realistic career choices for women: nurse, teacher, secretary. All leading, eventually, of course, to the one universally desirable, biologically-predetermined career for females — wife and mother.
     But the job had filled my days, at least, and when I was introduced to strangers, I noticed it was often as "Lydia Banks, she's the office manager at Hill and Perks. You know, the big law firm at Eastgate Mall."
     And they would nod knowingly — even look quite impressed sometimes — because everybody had heard of Hill and Perks. So I suppose the job gave me a feeble kind of identity too.
     I had never married, so I couldn't claim identity as anybody's wife, as women of my generation had been taught to do. At least, up until the 70's, when a11 of a sudden they changed the rules on us, and with the rise of the feminist movement, women were expected to be doctors and lawyers and business executives as well as wives and mothers (I wasn't even that!) And perhaps that is one of the reasons I get so-mixed up — being sandwiched between generations as I was — and why everything turned out so queerly in the end.
     So it was around this time — the time I left my job — that my sister, Ann, married again and moved out of the big frame house in the suburbs left to us by our parents where we had been living together for the previous five years (along with Hector, my l2-year-old German Shepherd/Husky mix).
     Ann's first marriage had taken place when she was only 17, but her husband had died at the age of 46 of a particularly virulent and painful cancer, and afterwards she was lonely — her only son was in college — and thus decided to move in the house with me, for I had lived there alone since the death of our parents. It was an arrangement that suited us both, financially and otherwise, for Ann had always been a kind, sensible person, easy to get along with, and I enjoyed her company, missed her afterwards, even though we had never had much in common.
     Still, I know people thought it odd, her having married twice and I being the "old maid" of the family, because, you see as a girl she was considered pleasant looking, at best, an unobtrusive handmaid blending good-naturedly into the shadowy background, while my own spectacular beauty eclipsed everything that orbited within its radiant sphere!
     My soft, rippling hair, thick and black and lustrous, fell high from the perfect widow's peak on my forehead, then hung down gently caressing my shoulders, framing features of almost classical distinction: huge, green, thick-lashed eyes -like those of Bette Davis, (I had been told more than once), small well-shaped nose, with full, sensual lips, fresh, pink and succulent, so perfectly fashioned to taste the delights of love, so tragically and cruelly disfigured, in the end. (Couldn't you please ask them about the lipstick again? I'm sorry to keep interrupting my story like this, but I just can't seem to help it.)
     My breasts were full, my waist small, my legs long, with trim ankles and smooth firm thighs; my skin of a honey-gold color, so soft and satiny and wonderful to the touch I even used to caress it myself, sometimes — mostly at night, when I was alone in bed and nobody could see. Those were the times I would indulge in the recklessly romantic dreams about my future filled with white lace and handsome adoring husbands, the way girls did back then. Perhaps still do, for all I know.
     When visitors came to the house my striking appearance made me routinely the center of attention, and when my parents told them I was planning a career in business they would be disappointingly unimpressed, would often mutter something like, "Well, that won't last long — she'll soon be married after all. She's such a pretty girl." (People actually said things like that, back then.)
     And, of course, that is one of the reasons I became so frustrated when my looks began to fade. It wasn't so much that I looked old — I didn't. After all, I was still only middle-aged and looked a good deal younger than my actual years. My features were still good, my skin scarcely lined, but though it wasn't exactly sagging, it was softening — had taken on a sort of blurred look. All of the light seemed to have gone out of my face, and I just wasn't pretty — let alone beautiful — any more. On good days I could have passed for a drab 35. On bad, for a well-preserved 50. Either way, I didn't count.
     Even worse, I had begun to sense something definitely spinsterish in my appearance and manner, and wondered whether it was my imagination, or whether other people were aware of it too — whether they could just look at me and tell I was that universal object of pity and derision, an "old maid."
     So when people began looking at me — or rather through me — in that cruelly dismissive, perfunctory way, I felt almost unreal, as if they had somehow canceled me out. Maybe it was something to do with my transitional condition, too, some surge of activity on the part of my renegade hormones, because at such times I found myself filled with such overwhelming anger I wanted to scream at them "Do you think this is the way I really look?" Because I thought of the way I looked when I was young as the way I "really looked." As if the pretty girl was still in there somewhere, trapped inside me, struggling desperately to get out again and claim what was thoughtfully hers — the whole world, if what everybody had told me was to be believed.
     But I always kept my feelings well hidden, as I had been brought up to do, and nobody imagined for a moment all the passionate intensity lurking unsuspected behind the anonymous mask of middle age.
     Well, after I left Hill and Perks I found myself at a loss for a while. In spite of my bold resolution to effect some brilliant mid-life career change. I found out I was unsure exactly what to do. As a matter of fact, I had never had any specific plan, and that was unlike me. In spite of my emotional nature, I did not usually behave in a reckless, thoughtless fashion. In fact I was behaving so uncharacteristically there were times I wondered whether my hormones might be driving me crazy. I had heard of such things, but never quite believed them.
     I could have gone back to school, of course, and trained to become a teacher. But that would have meant two more years of college and I didn't have time to waste on something that had never held any particular charm for me, anyway. The truth was, most of the things I had wanted to do as a girl — actress, model, movie star, even wife and mother — I was probably too old for now. So there I was left in a sort of limbo-vacuum — too young to have run out of passion; no longer young enough to do anything about it. Or perhaps I was just afraid to try. At my age, any failure would have been so final.
     Still, sometimes my craving for action would manifest in sporadic and futile ways. For instance, I would sign up for courses in anything that offered itself by way of brochures from the local university or technical college — courses in anything that took my desperate fancy at the time: German, Spanish (though I hated the language), gourmet cooking (I despised cooking too) — classes I attended only once or twice because, deep down, I sensed the futility of what I was doing.
     Those were the times I felt full of such furious energy I could hardly restrain myself, and had to do something — anything at all — even housework, which I normally loathed. At other times I was overcome by a strange and overwhelming lassitude which made even the smallest effort impossible and I would lie on the bed and dream like a moody adolescent.
     I told myself I was in a transitional phase and just needed time to reevaluate my goals. I had money, for the time being, at least, and besides the rest would do me good. It was at least partially true, because since I had started menopause I had been beleaguered by such a variety of bizarre, ill-assorted symptoms I just didn't trust my body any more.
     Sometimes, during the night, I would feel my heart start fluttering like a wild, caged bird in my chest and I would wake up bathed in sweat and run to the bathroom to take a cold shower before returning to a light, uneasy sleep filled with troubled dreams and bizarre half-waking fantasies, leaving me tired and irritable during the day.
     My periods had become prolonged and heavy, so that I needed medication to control them. It wasn't estrogen I lacked according to the gynecologist, but progesterone — there was still something feminine about me, despite my barren womb, my lack of a mate!
     So desperate was I for reassurance I was a real woman, even a disruptive and disagreeable hormonal imbalance became a pathetic source of pride.
     Still, I knew I needed something to fill my time until I finally decided on the new and dramatic path I would take in life.
I had friends, of course, but suddenly I found I had nothing in common with them. They were all married, or at least, divorced. I mean, there was I, with my exciting, albeit nebulous, plans for starting a new life, while they were talking about their grown-up children — even their grandchildren. Some of their husbands were actually talking about retiring within the next few years!
     I felt so painfully incongruous most of the time, I finally lost touch with them, politely, but very deliberately on my part. I still liked them, but, to tell the truth, I no longer wanted to be identified with them. They all seemed so old.
     And so, in spite of all my grandiose plans, it was my passion for reading that dominated my life for a time after that — until my fantastic adventure began, that is. But I'll get to that eventually.
     I began to haunt the libraries and bookstores. I would browse for hours. After all, I reasoned to myself. I needed to find out all I could about mid-life career changes, but actually it was because I had nothing better to do.
     There was one bookstore that became my favorite; it was at the mall, about five or six miles away from my home (not the mall where I had worked but the one at the other end of town). Because, for one thing, they always had a large selection of new titles and my tastes were becoming so varied I could hardly keep up with them; and for another, there was a young man working there who looked almost exactly like Mike Rogers.
     I don't think I ever mentioned Mike Rogers to you, did I, Dr. Russell? Well, I'm sure I didn't, because, how could I, under the circumstances? But he was a boy I knew in my youth — when I was about 20. He was going to college on the GI Bill (this was during the early sixties and he had put in his time in Vietnam — against his better judgment so he told me). He was studying to be an architect and every day he would come into my father's grocery store where I helped out part-time, to buy miscellaneous items (to see me, really, I often suspected) And while I was weighing out the ham or slicing the cheese we would often talk together about our plans for the endless future all young people think they have. He was the most handsome boy I ever saw — I still say that without reservation in spite of everything. He had thick, chestnut brown hair, and an unruly lock of it would keep falling on his forehead so that he had to keep brushing it back with his hand.
     His eyes were of an elusive color somewhere between gray and blue — but you could never be sure which because they changed in different lights, and they were perfectly set in an angular face with high cheekbones and a narrow sloping chin. He was tall and well-built — yet not at all fat — the sort of man who could wear clothes well.
     But it was his manner that appealed to me more than anything — careless and easygoing — what the French call insouciant. More than any other quality, it was what always attracted me most in a man.
     He wasn't my great lost love, or anything so unrealistically romantic as that — as a matter of fact, we never even had a date . And later on there were others, of course (I wasn't technically an old maid!)
     But if there was ever a man upon whom I lavished all my hopes as a girl and all my vain regrets as a middle-aged woman, it was Mike Rogers.
     Looking back, I can see that he was probably too shy to ask me out, and it would have been unconventional — if not exactly revolutionary — for me to ask him in those days. Perhaps I just thought he would realize how much I liked him and eventually things would work out without my having to do anything about it. It sounds stupid and unimaginative now, but I was such a pretty girl, you see. Wasn't prettiness in a woman like strength in a man — conferring almost limitless power?
     Things didn't work out, of course — at least, not the way I wanted them to — and looking back from a more mature perspective I don't know why I expected it. Eventually he transferred to another college because our local university didn't have all the courses he required. And I never saw him again.
     Well, as have written, this young man at the bookstore looked so much like Mike Rogers — he even had the same lock of hair falling onto his forehead - that I thought at first it might have been his son. Then I saw his name tag: "David Evans,” and it didn't seem likely. It could have been his nephew, I suppose, or some other relative, but it wasn't important anyway. So I stopped thinking about possible relationships and just enjoyed being in his company whenever I would go to the bookstore to browse.
     Understand, it wasn't that I was attracted to him in a romantic way — he was much too young for that. It was more than I liked the idea of his possibly being attracted to me — for he always went out of his way to be pleasant and helpful and smiled in such a friendly way whenever he saw me come in. I knew young men were sometimes attracted to older women, and the possibility that I was still attractive enough to interest a man in his twenties made me dizzy with hope again.
     And so it was on a day I had just come back from the bookstore — I had had a particularly gratifying time, and, in an unreasoning burst of enthusiasm, had purchased a book, Writing Non-fiction for Profit, recommended to me by David Evans (was this another of my menopausal flights of fancy, or a realistic attempt to find a new and positive direction in my life — I really had no way of knowing?) — that I first began watching the woman over the road with any kind of interest. And since she is such an important — indeed a vital part of my story — it seems fitting that the incident that first aroused my curiosity was heralded by a visit to that other significant person in my life: the young man who brought back so many memories, who filled my heart with such impossible dreams; who was responsible for my downfall, in the end.
     I hope you won't think my life was so desperately empty I was becoming the pathetic sort of person who finds entertainment and diversion spying on her neighbors. To tell you the truth, I was never sufficiently interested in them to care about what they did.
     But at the time I was bored and alone — it was November and the days were growing short. Perhaps, too, my curiosity was fueled by that same restless energy I have described already — the need for change of some sort — any sort. At least, at first.
     Even so, it wasn't anything about the woman herself that made me begin watching the goings-on at her home, although she was an intriguing sort of person, by any standards.
     I had noticed her before, of course. She had lived in the house almost opposite my own for about six months, a frame dwelling, like mine, only much smaller, with blue and white shutters and a white picket fence.
     She looked to be in her mid-thirties — an age I had begun to consider enviably young — and obviously had a lot of African or black blood in her, what my parents would have called "colored." And she was beautiful. Even though I had lost most of my own beauty, I could never withhold admiration of it in others, Great beauty, like any other asset, has its own intrinsic value.
     She had long, crisp, curly black hair, liquid brown eyes, and a lithe, athletic body, although she was only of average height. Her walk was languid and graceful, and even her voice was sweet, and slow and dark-like molasses. It was an educated voice, and yet there was some kind of accent, too. One that I couldn't place.
     I had never spoken to her myself — I didn't even know her name. But I had heard her talking to the mailman on one or two occasions when I had happened to be outside foraging hopefully through my own mail for some sign of that long-delayed Something that would change my life.
     But in spite of the fact that she was so exotic and unusual, it was on account of all her visitors that I started to find the goings-on at her house so fascinating. When I say all of her visitors, I don't mean to imply that there were that many — about two or three a week on average, I suppose. And even they were ordinary enough in themselves. It was what happened to them after they went into her house that first piqued my curiosity.
     Let me give you an example. It happened on the day I just mentioned, the day I had just returned from the bookstore, and it was the first time I noticed anything out of the ordinary.
     I didn't really pay attention at the time, and the only reason I noticed her visitor at all was that it occurred to me that the man might be her father. He was certainly old enough — in his middle sixties — and completely bald. He was a white man, of course. But then, her father could easily have been white, and I noticed he was carrying a battered looking briefcase.
     I happened to see him get out of his car and walk up her driveway as I was watering my plants. I kept a number of them on the living room windowsill, and, lately, I had actually found myself talking to them once or twice, usually when Hector was outside or in another room. (Another of those spinsterish habits I deplored, did my best to resist.)
     It was about 4 o'clock in the afternoon. I remember the time because it was almost time for Oprah Winfrey on TV. Normally I disliked television talk shows, especially the daytime ones. But her program was often thought-provoking and relevant to the women's issues I had recently espoused.
     Well, later during the same evening, just after 8 o'clock it must have been, because some bland situation comedy had just begun. I wasn't at all interested in it — in fact the TV was only on because I had begun to doze over the book I was reading — the one I mentioned earlier (I always seemed to be sleepy, in those days), when I was rudely brought back to my senses by the unmistakable sound of furiously screeching tires on gravel.
     There were a couple of teenage boys living two doors down from me, and it flashed through my mind that it must be one of them — for they always drove in a reckless, mindless fashion secure in the conviction of their own immortality that is universal in the young. And I rushed over to the window to see what was going on. It sounded so close I thought at first the car might be in my own driveway.
     But after I had jumped from my chair and snatched my glasses off my nose — they were only for reading and actually obscured my long-range vision — I could see the commotion had been caused by the car backing out of the drive of the house across the road. And then my consternation turned to astonishment — then to indignation. How irresponsible and absurd for a man of his age to be driving in such a reckless fashion. And at night, too!
     I was sure it was the same car I had seen earlier. It was of a distinctive maroon color with spoked hubcaps of a rather peculiar design. It wasn't a clear night, but our street is well-lit, and her yard was bright, as usual. I could even see her standing there, just outside the doorway, waving goodbye, her long curly hair becoming damp and even curlier with the first feathery flakes of snow that had started to fall.
     Then I even forgot my indignation, because the car door opened and the occupant got out right in the middle of the road and waved back. And there was no longer any mystery as to why he had backed out his car so impetuously — he was obviously feeling so exhilarated he would have done just about anything. Because after that I swear he leapt a full five feet into the air before getting back into the car again and driving away.
     And then, of course, I saw that it wasn't the elderly man at all, but a youth of about 17, with crisp blonde hair, wearing blue jeans and a sweater — not dressed very warmly, considering the temperature, I thought. But I knew young people didn't notice the cold. There hadn't been anyone else in the car, either, because when he opened the door, the interior light went on and I had seen that it was empty.
     It was a puzzling incident, but after my initial startled reaction I felt no more than a mild curiosity. After I saw it was a teenager I dismissed his behavior as youthful high spirits. And I suppose I presumed the elderly man had left by some other means, if I thought about the matter at all.
     But during the next few weeks I couldn't help noticing — and believe me, it was purely by accident at first — that the same thing kept happening over and over again.
     The pattern was always the same. A car would be driven to the house by an elderly man, who would then walk up the drive, knock on the door, and be admitted by the woman. They were always carrying a bag or case or some sort, too, just like the first man I had seen, the one I had thought might be her father.
     Then after a period of a few hours, usually about three or four, the same car would be driven away by a young boy — a teenager — say between 18 and 20 years old.
     At first I thought the young men must be the sons of the men who went into the house first because they always bore a resemblance to the original visitor. But then, that left unanswered the question: even if they were the sons, where had they come from in the first place?
     Because I never saw one of them arrive. And what had happened to the older men? Because I never saw one of them leave. And I mean never.
     You'll probably think I couldn't have been watching all of the time, but that is exactly what I did do on one occasion, after I had become sufficiently intrigued - even obsessed — by the situation.
     I had seen one of the elderly men arrive in the early afternoon, at 2 p.m. exactly. By then I always made a note of the time. So I stayed by the window until I saw the car leave. That was at 5:30 p.m. And it was driven away by a youth, of course, a boy of about 16 or 17, tall and lanky with an olive complexion and thick, black hair. And I made up my mind not to budge from the window until I saw the older man leave by some means or other.
     Yet even though I stayed by the window all that night (fortunately it was one of fluid-retaining periods — for I had noticed during the previous several days that my breasts were heavy and sore, so I didn't have to leave my post for any reason), and I could see the front of the house clearly because the yard was brightly lit, as usual, I never saw him leave.
     Of course, he could have gone out the back, but what transportation would he have used to get home again? There is no public transportation in the suburbs, and if he lived far enough away that he needed to come by car in the first place, why wouldn't he have to leave the same way?
     And why leave by the back door, anyway? If he had left by the back door he would have had to struggle through two or three miles of dense woods, because that's all, there was at the back of her house (was that how the young men were arriving?) I suppose he could have left that way, but it seemed unlikely. He looked too old and out-of-shape for any sort of strenuous exercise, as all of the older men had.
     Were they staying there, then, with that woman? They had all carried bags large enough to contain a change of clothing, so perhaps they were. But if they were, why did I never see them again. You would think they would come out once in a while, to pick up a newspaper, or the mail, or even to stretch their legs a little. Not to mention the provocative question: why were they staying there in the first place? Which raised all sorts of interesting possibilities.
     I felt like, a middle-aged Nancy Drew, but it was an intellectual challenge, if nothing else. At last I had something to stimulate my sluggish brain!
     It was the red-headed man who first brought me to the realization of the incredible truth. You see, he was a little younger than the rest — just under sixty, I should guess — and the only one I had seen who had hair of any discernible color. All the others had been bald or grey. (I'm talking about the older men, of course, not the younger ones). It had faded from his youth, I presumed, but it was still undeniably red, and wavy, too. Hair often loses its natural wave as one grows older, as I had good reason to know!
     But this man's hair still retained enough of its youthful body to give it a slight kink, at least. There was something else different about him, too. He was the only older man I had seen who wasn't carrying a bag or case of some kind.
     He had good features but he looked old, in spite of that, for his face was badly wrinkled. I could see him plainly as he stepped out of his car — for a few minutes the winter sun was bright on his face.
     He had arrived in a blue Lincoln (I made note of the time, it was 1:00 p.m.), and as I watched him walk up the drive I made up my mind, as I had before not to budge until I saw him leave.
     So overwhelming had my curiosity become by that time that I had decided to use binoculars- I had purchased them earlier that day — for I was determined to get to the bottom of what was going on.
     It was exactly three hours and forty-five minutes before the door opened again, and when it did there emerged one of the most attractive individuals I had ever seen.
     All of the young men had been good-looking (or perhaps I had just reached the age where all young people looked good to me!) but this one was particularly striking, in spite of the frightful way in which he was dressed. His thick, wavy hair was of a dark, coppery color — not carroty, like most redheads — and his skin was bronzed and glowing with health. In fact, his whole person seemed to glow with a sublime youthful radiance!
     He bore a resemblance to the red-headed man who had gone in earlier, of course, as in a11 the other cases. Only this time, thanks to the binoculars, I could see it was more than just a resemblance, for he had the same well-shaped nose, the same wide-set eyes, the same high cheekbones and even the suit he was wearing looked the same — a gray pinstripe, and somewhat inappropriate for a teenager.
     And then, as he approached the car and came closer to my line of vision I was certain it was the same suit I had seen on the other man, for I had noticed it had a badly-folded mauve handkerchief sticking out of the breast pocket, only now it was baggy around the waist and tight across the shoulders and it just didn't fit!
     His suit did not fit! Incredible as it may be to believe or comprehend, you must surely see by now the implications of the facts, as I did — even though it was so stunning at the time it hit me almost with the force of a physical blow — even though I would scarcely be able to believe it now if I did not live every day with the dreadful proof of it.
     For the wrinkled, rumpled, oldish man I had seen earlier and the magnificent young creature who was just leaving — waving and smiling and bubbling with a joy he could not contain — were one and the same!
     And there was no longer any mystery about what had become of all those elderly men who had gone into her house. I had been watching them leave all the time, only I hadn't realized it. Because it was not their old, tired, lack-luster selves that had left, but these blooming, buoyant, rejuvenated selves.
     Although it violated all the laws of our smug, safe, scientific universe. Although it might almost have been easier to doubt my own sanity than to accept the evidence of my senses, I knew then, beyond any question of doubt, that by means of some secret and nefarious power I dared not even imagine — that woman was making them young again!

                                                      *****

     I suppose by now certain things are becoming obvious, but please don't think I had any intention of doing what I eventually did, then. Then I felt only awe, mingled with a kind of horror and revulsion, and I certainly had no desire to associate myself with the woman, or anyone connected with her.
     In fact, I felt I had learned much more than I wanted to know about the house across the road and its incredible visitors, and during the next few weeks I deliberately avoided watching. At night I would keep the curtains tightly drawn, and by day I would avoid looking out of the window as much as possible. I gave up taking Hector for his daily walk, and whenever I would go outside to get into my car, I would keep my eyes carefully averted.
     My interest in reading became the focal point of my whole life, again and I returned to it gratefully. It felt like coming home after journeying to a strange and dangerous country where nothing was what it seemed to be and where I had narrowly escaped some unknown and insidious evil.
     Of course I went back to the bookstore in the mall again, and my young friend seemed delighted to see me. He even expressed concern as to where I had been. He had wondered whether I might have been ill, he hadn't seen me for so long, he said. But I assured him I was fine, and we took up where we had left off, discussing all the new titles on the shelves. He had even put one or two new books aside that he thought might interest me.
     Now as I have told you already, I had never really been in love with Mike Rogers. Indeed from the vantage point of maturity it was easy to see that ours was the ideal relationship because it existed only in memory, in irretrievably lost potential, and was therefore inviolate, unlike my other disastrous, short-lived affairs.
     Where had I gone wrong? It had always seemed so easy for my sister - for most of the other women I knew. What was it, then, the elusive talent all those unexceptional women so effortlessly possessed, so shrewdly made use of; the enviable knack in which I was so deplorably lacking, in spite of my undeniable intelligence, my once spectacular beauty?
     At the age of almost fifty, I was ashamed to admit that I still did not know.
     But in spite of the fact that I had never been in love with Mike Rogers — was certainly not in love with this young man, young enough to be my son, as I was all too painfully aware — there must have been some sort of frail fantasy buried deep inside me somewhere. Indeed, what happened subsequently proved to me that there was. Because even though I was the world-weary middle-aged woman on the outside, I was still the irrepressible pretty girl on the inside, remember? With all of the hopes and dreams pretty girls have a right to.
     It happened on a cold, raw day in January. Christmas and New Year had come and gone with their usual furor, leaving behind their usual sense of anti-climax. At least, it always seemed so to me . Even when I was young I had always enjoyed the anticipation much more than the actual event. I had been to my sister's house over the holidays and she and her new husband had made me welcome. They were kind, decent people, though a little more conventional than I had ever been. And yet I realized — perhaps for the first time — that in spite of her conventional dreams and standards, (what I had always thought of as her lack of imagination), I had actually begun to envy my sister.
     After all, she had accomplished her goals, while I was still in the rather ridiculous process — at my age — of formulating my own!
     But on this particular day I was prey to no envious thoughts, for I was experiencing the sense of excited anticipation I always noticed in myself whenever the time came for one of my visits to the bookstore.
     I was wearing the emerald green scarf that had been one of the Christmas presents from my sister and her family. Emerald green had always been my favorite color, because it brought out the color of my eyes, and, to tell the truth, I always felt more comfortable with something around my neck. I had had a long and beautiful neck when I was young, but after a certain age a long neck becomes a liability.
     I arrived a little later than my usual time — it was about 5 o'clock — and obviously time for David to finish his shift, for he already had his overcoat on, and he kept glancing anxiously at the clock on the wall as I tried to engage him in conversation. But it was useless, and I couldn't understand why. After all, it wasn't that late, and he usually seemed to enjoy talking to me.
     Then the door opened and a young woman walked in, and as soon as she entered the place some sixth sense told me who she was. Even though she was carrying a tote bag full of books, and might well have been a customer, I knew, with a cold and heavy certainty, that she was not.
     She was young and blonde and pretty, and it is impossible to tell you how she made me feel. The best I can do is to say that it was if she had somehow taken everything that rightfully belonged to me — she the favored golden-haired fairy-tale princess, I the dark, despised older sister! Like being starved and looking through the window of a store filled with the most delectable food, with only a pane of glass between you and it, knowing you could never even touch one tiny crumb because you were trapped on the outside cold and hungry and alone forever.
     He broke off in the middle of what he had been saying as she walked toward us — neither of us was paying much attention to the conversation at that point, anyway. And as soon as she got close enough I could see that she had a perfect, porcelain complexion, smooth and flawless, with a rosebud mouth filled with white, even teeth that gleamed when she smiled, which she seemed to do a lot. Oh, she wasn't nearly as pretty as I'd been, and nothing extraordinary for a young person. But her just being young was enough to make me excruciatingly aware of how foolish and futile my half-formed daydreams had been.
     She was very courteous and pleasant to me after we had been introduced (he introduced us in an embarrassed, almost apologetic way — dear God, he didn't know, did he?) But then, she could afford to be. After all, she had everything in the world, and I was just another anonymous middle-aged woman, and certainly no threat to her.
     Her name was Cindy Hutchins, and she worked part-time at the steakhouse four doors down from the bookstore; she was going to college, studying to be an accountant, she told me. Then she smiled her pretty smile again, and said it had been nice meeting me and she hoped I would excuse them, they were already late for a party.
     Then they left together, her sort of hanging onto his arm and whispering something in his ear as they went out of the door. Then they both laughed softly, and I was sure it was at me.
     I watched them go past the store window with my foolish emerald green scarf covering my ropey neck, and as I rubbed the tears I felt starting to form in my eyes, I noticed the back of my hand was covered with the white, stiff pancake mask I had been wearing — "Guaranteed to give a firmer, younger, more supple complexion," the advertisement had said.
     I turned to stumble out the door — for my eyes were so blurry with the sticky mask and my tears I could hardly see — and I caught my heel in a tiny hole in the marble tile flooring and tripped and almost fell. Such a silly, useless little hole it was, for I wished that it would open up into a great, black, gaping chasm that would swallow me up so I could vanish from the face of the pitiless earth.

                                                      *****

     During the next few days I kept pretty much to myself, waiting to heal, like a wounded animal.
     But one of the few advantages of maturity is that at least one realizes everything passes, sooner or later. Besides, you are running out of time to brood. "The knowledge that you are to be hanged in the morning concentrates the mind wonderfully," Samuel Johnson had said. Now it seemed more apt than ever.
     After my initial hurt had subsided, as I had known in my mature cynicism that it would, my passion to regain my youthful beauty reemerged, stronger than ever, reinforced by all the pain and humiliation of my recent experience.
     I began watching the house over the road again, only with a quite different motive this time. Before I had watched only out of curiosity, albeit of an overwhelming, even obsessive kind. But now I had quite a different objective in mind. Like many people my own age, I dreamed of — I ached — to be young again. But unlike them, I was in the extraordinary, almost unique, position of being able to do something about it. All they could do was dream. I had been given the opportunity to turn the dream into reality. I knew it was possible. Hadn't I witnessed it over and over again?
      I didn't know how it was done of course, and I realized it might even be dangerous, even fatal. But what did that mean to me ? Realistically — or so I thought then — what did the future have to offer me?
     I might live another thirty years, or so, of course, but what kind of years would they be? Drab, graying years, accompanied by all the inevitable indignities of old age, culminating in the ultimate, inescapable indignity of death. My eyesight and hearing would deteriorate — already I had noticed I could hardly hear my watch ticking when I held it to my right ear. And there were the reading glasses of course — trivial things in themselves, but surely indicative of what was to come?
     Eventually perhaps, even my mind would fail, leaving me in some frightening limbo world, neither dead nor alive — feeble and vulnerable and at the mercy of strangers, like the pitiful creatures I had seen in nursing homes when I had gone to visit elderly relatives.
     Looking back now, it seems obvious that at least some of my reactions were distorted, my interpretations extreme — even adolescent — the blackness of my mood due, at least in part, to causes prosaic and biochemical.
     But what you must realize is how very real it felt then, how ungovernable and unreasoning my desire had become.
     There was that strange dusky woman, and all of her jubilant clients, and youth beckoning, and it was as close as the house across the road. I could go back again, with all of my exotic beauty restored, my future intact, and the world waiting for me and the richness of a million tomorrows. All of the things that young people had, and did not deserve, because they could not possibly appreciate them as I would! Youth was undeniably wasted on the young, but it would not be wasted on me!
     It was no choice at all, really, and I knew what I would do even before I started to turn it over in my mind, and thinking it through had been no more than a formality.
     Of course, there were a frustrating number of details to be worked out before I could implement my plan. For one thing, I had to get to know the woman — at the time, I had never even spoken to her.
     I had found out her name, though, and that had happened purely by accident, because, Jerry, the mailman had left a piece of mail belonging to her at my house. It didn't look the least important — just another advertisement — but nevertheless I managed to catch him before he left and give it back to him, though not before I had seen her name on the envelope:
          "Celeste Robineaux
          245 Briarfield Road
     I knew that was her address.
     In all the years he had been delivering mail along our route, I had never known Jerry to make such a mistake, for he was usually scrupulously efficient and conscientious, and though I had never been a superstitious woman, I couldn't help regarding the incident as a favorable omen.
     So now I knew her name. But I still needed some sort of pretext in order to visit and get to know her. After all, I could hardly just knock on her door and ask her to make me young again! Of course if I had thought of it at the time, I could have kept the piece of mail and used that as a means of introduction, trivial as it was. But my normally quick and supple intelligence often deserted me in those days. In fact, sometimes my sinking estrogen made me so forgetful and fuzzy I felt as if my brain were wrapped in a thick woolen blanket, and I would curse my stupidity, wondering whether it might be something even more sinister — perhaps the first sign of impending senility?
     Then I remembered her cat. He was a large black and white tom I had seen lots of times, mostly on the occasions when I watch ed her visitors come and go, ambling about and stretching himself lackadaisically, the way cats do. And on one occasion I had seen Hector,during one of his increasingly rare bursts of energy, chasing him up a tree in the yard of the house next to my own.
     I knew the cat was never in the slightest danger, but nevertheless, I could pretend concern for her pet, perhaps suggest she keep him out of the dog's way in the future.
     It was the flimsiest of excuses — I knew it and she probably would, too. But it would serve as a pretext to get inside her house, and that was all I really needed.
     It had snowed on the day I finally plucked up enough courage to put my plan into action. It was the perfect day — the day the fates had graciously designed just for me (or so I thought, then!) — because I knew she could not have gone out, would not be likely to be going out for quite a while, for there was about a foot of snow covering the ground like a thick blanket and there were no tire marks in her drive, so I knew her car had to be the garage. The snow plow hadn't even cleared the main road yet; for some reason our road was always one of the last.
     I put on my warm coat and scarf, an old pair of loose, faded blue jeans, pulled on my high, fur-lined boots, making sure I took my checkbook along with me. I had saved quite a bit over the years, being single, and always having had a comfortable income, and presumably money was the appropriate form of payment for the woman's services, although I had never been involved in such an extraordinary transaction before and wasn't even sure about that!
     It had crossed my mind more than once that she might want my immortal soul or some other intangible commodity. I had never been a particularly religious woman — although I was raised a Catholic I become an agnostic over the years — and thus was not at all sure I believed in immortal souls. Still the thought made me uneasy, nevertheless, but I shoved it to the back of my mind, and decided to deal with that particular contingency when and if it arose.
     I'll never forget how cold it was that day. It is summer as I write, and thus hard to imagine. But that particular day was one of the coldest on record, and as I stepped outside the crisp air crackled with it.
     I crossed the road carefully, for the snow was so thick it made walking difficult, and as I reached her drive I felt excitement, mixed with great trepidation, like a traveler ready to embark on a great adventure — as indeed I was, only not the kind I had anticipated or hoped for. And the closer I came to her front door, the greater my trepidation grew, so that it almost overwhelmed every other feeling.
     But as I stood poised with my hand ready to ring her bell, or, alternatively, to turn tail and head for the safety of home — either one would have been just as likely at that point — her door opened from the inside, and there she stood in all her radiant beauty, sparkling like the frosty morning.
     She was wearing a vivid scarlet robe that should have conveyed the impression of warmth, but suddenly I felt even colder than before, and it was a penetrating kind of cold that invaded my body and clutched at my heart like an icy hand, so that I fancied it actually stopped for a moment.
     It must have been a combination of the weather and my fears, for even though she had a pleasant, welcoming expression on her face, the twinkle in her eyes against the dusky background of her skin reminded me of the icicles I had just seen hanging from the roof of my front porch.
     She opened the door a little wider then, and stepped back two or three paces, motioning me to enter.
     "Good morning, Miss Banks," she said, in her strange, husky voice.
     "Please come in. I've been expecting you."

                                                      *****

     Her house was so ordinary. That was what I couldn't get over at first. I don't know exactly what I had been expecting, but whatever it was, it was nothing like what I saw.
     Her furniture was old-looking — almost shabby — although everything looked neat and clean. There was an enormous fire crackling in her fireplace with flames that leapt so high they reminded me of the bonfires my father had made to burn leaves in the sweet, far-off days of my girlhood when autumn had been a time of beginnings. The cat was stretched out, warm and contented and asleep on the hearth rug, twitching slightly every now and then, as if he were in the middle of an exciting dream, and everything looked comfortable and almost benevolent as it glowed in the light from the flames, and it ought to have reassured me, but it didn't.
     She invited me to take off my coat and boots and sit down on her faded Damask sofa, and I sank gratefully into the springy cushions, feeling the first real warmth creep into my bones since I had left my house.
     Then she brought me tea in a china mug on a tray, although she hadn't asked me if I wanted any, and I saw that it was made with a Lipton teabag — she had left it in the mug and there was a container for it on the tray so I could place it there when my tea was strong enough — and it was so prosaic that I almost laughed, for I think I was slightly hysterical by that time.
     She sat down opposite me, on the other side of the huge fire, holding a mug in her own hand, and studying me so intently with her large liquid eyes that I felt embarrassment mingling with my fear, and I turned my head to stare into the flames again to avoid her gaze.
     And as I stared into that fire it seemed I could see wizards and dragons and beautiful maidens being carried off by knights on white chargers, and black-hatted witches on broomsticks soaring high atop the flames, until the woman spoke and made them all melt like sugar, as though it had all been some fantastic fever dream though the smell of sizzling hair and flesh made my nostrils smart and my eyes water.
     "Do you like my fire, Ms. Banks," she said, and her voice was so soft I could hardly hear her.
     And I nodded, "yes," because my half-mesmerized condition seemed to have robbed me of the power of speech.
     "It is a very special sort of fire," she went on. "Did you know fire can renew as well as destroy?"
     Then she leaned forward with a confidential air and cupped her chin in her hand.
     "Ms. Banks, I am not a stupid women. Neither are you — and we both know why you are here."
     And I didn't ask her how she knew, or how she had known my name, or anything at all. So far I had not uttered one single word, and I didn't really want to.
     For I was so busy with the tug-of-war going on inside me that it was almost physically painful! On one side, the seductive promise of my youth beckoned, with all my beauty and health restored and my whole life to live over again — but only at the risk of everything I already had. I know many people would have considered me lucky. I was in decent enough health, considering my menopausal condition, which was, after all, only supposed to be a transitional phase.
     I was comfortably off, financially. I had opportunities, if I chose to pursue them in a rational, determined manner. I had even had friends, before I distanced myself from them. My life was comfortable. My life was lifeless.
     Could I get used to that? Could I finally become resigned — as all of my friends had — to the stability and comfort of middle age?
     "Calm of mind, all passion spent." It sounded so lovely and peaceful but it sounded like death, too.
     Wasn't running out of passion like running out of life? I knew I wasn't ready for that, yet!
     The intensity of my emotions had always frightened me. My turbulent inner life was always in danger of spilling over and sending me spinning out of control. But it was the only life I knew. I could not give it up!
     And so perhaps, I was a coward too, and my one supreme act of courage in the face of whatever gods there might be, only the reckless and futile kind born of desperation.
     I hadn't expected things to progress so quickly. I had thought I would have had more time to think it over — perhaps make an appointment, or something — so I might savor the idea a little while longer, so that I could dream about it some more.
     Was it even possible? Had I been duped by this gorgeous, witch-like creature? Or was it merely my renegade hormones playing tricks on me again?
     I looked at her dumbly, and she answered the unspoken question in my eyes.
     "No, it is not impossible. I have done it for others. You have seen it with your own eyes. I think I can do it for you. But you must trust me."
     She smiled, and then she looked her old self again, warm and sweet; the woman I had seen waving goodbye to all those young men; the woman I had watched talking to the mailman; the woman I had instinctively liked and trusted, because, even though I was white and she was black, her exotic beauty had reminded me of my own.
     "You were very beautiful, Ms. Banks," she said gently, and I shuddered slightly, in spite of my renewed feeling of trust for her, wondering if this were a revelation of some kind of clairvoyant power, or merely a lucky guess.
     "You want to regain that beauty," she continued, in her strange, husky, voice, tilting her hand to one side slightly so that she looked somewhat quizzical.
     "And your health, and your youth, and all that goes with it. And you are not even old — merely middle aged! That is rather unreasonable, don't you think?"
     She chuckled softly, almost, to herself, as if at the thought of some secret joke, and I shrugged, helplessly and hopelessly. I had not expected this. Had the women been making fun of me all along?
     She laughed out loud then, displaying her perfect, white teeth, and her next words made me wonder again whether she were able to read my mind.
     "I am not making fun of you, Ms. Banks. I can help you. You will be the first woman I have ever helped in this way, and I can only do it if you are sure this is what you really want. Are you completely sure?”
     "I'm sure," I creaked. They were the first words I had spoken to her, the only words. In a way, the last words I ever spoke to anyone.
     "Then I am going to take you on a journey. In some ways, a perilous journey. A journey of the mind into a country of the imagination."
     "You want a miracle, but that is not possible in this world, because this world is made of coarse physical matter which always obeys natural laws. You will never find your miracle there."
      There was an edge of contempt in her voice. So she too despised implacable, uncompromising reality, as I did! Through my near-trance condition, I could feel tears of submission and gratitude coursing down my cheeks.
     The fire crackled and a spark from a burning log flew out into the room and landed on the rug near the sleeping cat. He jumped up in fright and scurried away to a safer perch on the windowsill.
     She regarded him impassively for a moment, then looked back at me again. I had never seen such eyes! Now I could see that they were not just brown, but striped with grey and black as well — a weird and wondrous maze you could wander about in forever and never find your way out of.
     "I shall be gone when you wake up," she went on. "It is necessary that I go out for a little while. You may let yourself out and leave me a check on the kitchen table for whatever you think my services are worth."
     I had forgotten about the question of payment, and I felt the hysterical urge to laugh again at the sheer incongruity of the banal little touch in the dense mystery of the atmosphere.
     "Look into the fire, Lydia,” she commanded, then (it was the only time she used my given name) "look into the flames and see yourself as a young girl. Interpenetrating with our own universe lies another just beyond the reach of the fingertips — a universe of the mind created entirely by our thoughts and fears, and desires, and within that, another and another, and another. Just imagine it, worlds within worlds, galaxies within galaxies, universes within universes, so many possible universes…
     "In one of these other universes, your young self still exists.
     "Age is nothing but a heavy, worn-out garment you have been forced to wear — because of your own expectations, because of the expectations of others."
     "Cast it off now. Find that other universe, and what you find there you will bring back with you... ."
     And nothing mattered but the blazing fire and the woman's hypnotic voice and the drowsy warmth that was spreading through my body like delicious potent wine, and the glorious images I was beginning to see in the flames.
     I saw myself as a young girl again, helping out in my father's store, my heavy black hair curling into the nape of my neck, making a perfect frame for my classic features and soft, satiny skin.
     It was summer, and I was wearing one of my favorite dresses. It was of the color called "aquamarine" — somewhere between blue and green — and it had puff sleeves and a narrow, fitted waist with a flared skirt that swirled gently as I walked, making me even more aware of my youth and beauty and femininity.
     I was talking to Mike Rogers. I could see his handsome face as clearly as my own, his blue-gray eyes looking intently into mine, the errant lock of hair falling onto his forehead as he bent to kiss me, as he had once, although I had forgotten the incident until then.
     And in that moment, I remembered how much I had loved him, and what my young love had felt like: a sort of yearning, a self-abandonment, and how, in all the long, lonely years I had been afraid to give it its rightful name.
     All of my father's customers were there, in the background, admiring my beauty. I could actually hear their voices, but I couldn't make out exactly what they were saying because they all fused together, and the only words I could distinguish clearly were: "Pretty girl, pretty girl, pretty girl..." over and over again, in a chorus that grew louder and louder, and suddenly the fire seemed to freeze my bones instead of warming them, and something exploded inside my head as I fell into a black, bottomless well of sleep.

                                                      *****

      As I sit writing these words, it is summer, as I have said before, and as you certainly know, and through my window I can see other patients wandering around the grounds, some of them alone, some of them accompanied by nurses or orderlies. A lot of them seen fearfully strange to me, but then I know I must seem strange to everyone else, too. I wonder if I shall ever leave this place, and if I really want to, and how much my life will have to change if I do.
     I haven't had any visitors since I came here, but then, under the circumstances I didn't expect any. I know they all blame me — even my sister — and I've given up trying to make them understand (I still wish they'd let me have the lipstick, though. I know it seems stupid and trivial, but could you please talk to them about it?)
     It seems so long ago that all of this happened, but in reality it is only a few months, yet those few months have been so filled with terror and confusion that everything that went before pales in comparison, for on that frigid winter day when I awoke from my profound sleep I knew my life had changed, although I did not know exactly how, then.
     The room was very dark because the fire had gone out, and it was getting on for evening. There were no lights on, the curtains had been drawn and the house seemed empty, so I knew the woman had gone out, as she had said she would, and that I was alone.
     Except for the cat, that is, for I could see his green eyes glowing in the dark, as cats' eyes do, and yet he startled me for a moment before I realized what it was.
     I felt something was wrong from the moment I awoke. I remembered exactly what had happened, for my memory was sharp and detailed and I knew my mind had regained the clarity and quickness of youth, and even though it was dark, somehow I could tell that I wouldn't need my reading glasses any more.
     My body felt young, too — strong and supple and powerful. I couldn't remember ever having felt this powerful. The wide, springy sofa was suddenly cramped and uncomfortable; my clothes felt different, somehow, and even my limbs seemed to be getting in the way.
     Then I put up my hand to my face, hoping to feel my smooth, satiny skin, and it did feel young again — taut and firm and supple. But something was different — not just different from my skin as a middle-aged woman, but different from my skin as a young girl, too. The strange prickling of my fingers made me shudder slightly as if an electric current had passed through my body.
     I got up then, knocking over the coffee table in my haste, for all of a sudden I was shockingly clumsy, and rushed out to the hall where I remembered seeing a mirror just inside the doorway; and as I reached it I just stopped there, my eyes tightly shut, for I needed to defer the moment of revelation for a reason my conscious mind could not acknowledge.
     Her porch light was on — I had noticed that it shone through the glass panel at the top of her door — and though the hall was still dim and shadowy I knew it would be bright enough for me to see all that I wanted.
     I opened my eyes then — quickly, desperately and defiantly…..
     Dr. Russell, I have written that the truth of my situation is incredible. Now I must reveal to you in what manner:
     In my shallow and misguided vanity, I had wanted youth. In my loneliness I had rejected and despised my single condition and yearned for love.
     Now, without anticipation or conscious desire, my wishes were granted, my atonement complete, for, along with that youth, had I not achieved the perfect union of lovers? — beautifully ironic, tragically inescapable. A union without passion or promises that would nonetheless last until death.
     … and I saw horror revealed in the handsome, youthful features and clear, blue-gray eyes staring back at me, as I instinctively pushed the thick lock of chestnut hair from off my forehead.

                                                      *****

     So I just stayed there — what else could I do? — until the woman returned and found me hiding in the hall closet and she called the police and they took me away.