“Yes, I just retired from the district.” I tried to keep my voice steady, anchoring myself to the present. “Is something wrong? Did you find a lump?”
Dr. Evans paused for a few seconds, swirling her chair slightly to face me. Her expression was complicated—a mix of confusion and delicate hesitation.
“Susan, I need to ask you a rather personal question,” she began, removing her glasses. “Have you and your husband maintained a normal, intimate life over the years?”
My face flushed hot, a sudden fever of shame. The question was a needle, unerringly finding the most secret, infected wound of the last two decades. It was absurd, really. Michael and I had been married for thirty years, a pearl anniversary celebrated with fake smiles and expensive wine, but we had been absolute strangers for eighteen of them.
It was the summer of 2008. I was forty, and so was he. Our son, Jake, had just left for college, leaving behind a silence in the house that echoed.
Michael and I were college sweethearts. We married right after graduation, falling into a comfortable, prescriptive life. He was an engineer at a large manufacturing firm—steady, logical, undemonstrative. I taught English at the local high school. Our life was stable and quiet, like a glass of lukewarm water left on a nightstand: no waves, no danger, but no taste, either.
Then, when I was forty, I met Ethan.
He was the new art teacher, five years younger than me, with fine lines that crinkled around his eyes when he smiled and paint stains permanently etched into his cuticles. He kept a vase of fresh wildflowers on his desk, hummed tunes I didn’t recognize while grading papers, and looked at the world as if it were something to be devoured, not just endured.
“Susan, what do you think of this one?”
One afternoon, Ethan walked into my classroom holding a watercolor painting of a hillside covered in violent, beautiful blooms.
