The phone call came unexpectedly on a Monday morning.

“Miriam, I hate to have to give you some bad news.  We’ve hired someone else for the job.”

“Oh no!” Miriam exclaimed. “That is disappointing!”  But in a second she composed herself.  “Can you tell me who?”

“His name is Gary Provo,”  Rupert Jones intoned in his British accent.  “Thank you for not yelling at me, Miriam.”

“You know I wouldn’t do that,” Miriam said politely, perfunctorily.  But even in her dazed state she was puzzled.  Why would he think she’d yell at him?  Miriam was hardly a yeller.  Later, when she had yelled at him in a sense, she would remember this little exchange.

Miriam Batson is sitting at her desk in Minneapolis, looking out the window. Her husband Ted has left for work and she has the morning to herself, to write, before she goes off to the university to teach in the afternoon. Her study is on the second floor, and her view is of the parking lot of the grammar school across the street. The parking lot is covered with snow and cars are parked on the snow. It is a January day, mild and sunny.

While she looks out the window at the view she sees every day, she is thinking of Edith. Ee-de-ith, they always pronounced it, as if it had three syllables. When Miriam spoke to her folks in South Carolina over the Christmas holidays, they told her Edith was doing poorly — fluid around the heart. She had called a few days before Christmas, in the hullabaloo of shopping, wrapping, mailing – because she hadn’t sent any money to Edith in time to reach her by Christmas. She wanted her parents to take twenty dollars in a card over to her; then she’d send them the money.

Lost Lake

Miriam Batson’s mother had been living in the nursing home exactly one year in August.  For the first six months Miriam wasn’t sure either of them would live through it.  Not that her mother was failing physically, dying (any more than usual).  Her mother was fine, physically, if you consider not being able to walk or remember “fine.”  The only medications she took were vitamins, an aspirin a day, and St. John’s Wort (Miriam’s suggestion — she began taking it too).  And the nurses there were even able to “train her bowels,” as they put it, conjuring up some strange images in Miriam’s mind.

The Student

Later, thinking about the student, Miriam couldn’t say when she first noticed him.  It was early in the term, that she was sure of, maybe even the first class or two, as the anonymous mass of new students, sixteen in this group, began to differentiate into individuals, as she searched, almost unconsciously, for someone to speak to, to speak with, a kindred spirit who would make it all worthwhile.  Of course Miriam, being if nothing else democratic, respectful of each and every one, would treat them all alike with an even hand; it was a point of pride that she didn’t show favorites.  But she had favorites, that much was clear.

Swimming, Snow

For Miriam the winter of her father’s death would always be juxtaposed with a summer day.  It was Saturday, Labor Day weekend, and she had ridden her bike down to Lake Harriet, near their house in Minneapolis, to the north beach, just beyond the bandstand, where her husband Ted had his sailboat tipped up on shore to clean the hull.  Miriam had meant to help with the scrubbing; she had good intentions.  But as soon as she saw the water, she wanted to go swimming.