I'm in love with a chickpea named Peter. He's not always a chickpea. Sometimes he's an eggplant and less often he's a carrot. Peter owns a mid-eastern food stand on Boston's Fenway near the hospitals and colleges. He says dressing up as a vegetable is good for business because people like being served by someone in costume.

As I walk from my office to my stand, my mind jumps back and forth between subjects I don't want to think about. They sneak into my mind no matter how I try to avoid them

The first is the most pressing. Mother. I haven't the foggiest idea how I'll tell her that I want to marry a human vegetable. She won't understand. Lawyers, doctors, teachers have respectability. Even restaurant owners do, because a restaurant is concrete, but a food-stand to her would be flimsy, insubstantial.

She still wants to make decisions for me. When I visit her on our family farm in Concord, she tells me to bring a sweater even it's hot. If I protest, she says, "New England weather is very changeable, you know." When we disagree, she puts her lips together in a way that says, "Don't argue," louder than if she yelled.

She's right about the weather being changeable. Yesterday it was 76 degrees. Today it's 33. Wind blows the last leaves off the trees. They swirl around me, a leaf blizzard, which any minute may give way to snow.

The leaves remind me of my childhood. Mother calls this leaf-kicking weather.

When I was eight, my sister, brother and I watched Daddy rake the leaves into a huge pile. It was a crisp November Saturday with an unreal blue sky, much like today, except the cold wasn't as biting. When he finished, he let us jump in the pile. It was still legal to burn leaves then. What a wonderful smell they made. Autumn isn't quite the same without that odor.

That same night I was in bed and full from our traditional Saturday night summer of Boston baked beans, hot dogs and cole slaw. My brother and I had divided our apple pie as always. I ate both crusts. He ate all the fruit.

A draft, as well as an over full tummy, kept me awake. I could do nothing about my tummy, but I could change the cold. I got out of bed to lower the window. The wooden floor felt icy on my bare feet.

As I stretched up to shut the window, I saw Mother and Daddy jumping in the leaves, just as I had done that afternoon. In the moonlight they threw leaves at each others, stopping to hug and kiss. I'd been embarrassed, yet I couldn't stop looking. This was a side of them I'd never seen.

Mother never showed affection. I can't remember her hugging Daddy or other relatives. She rarely touched us. Daddy was different. We climbed all over him. He'd give us a cuddle or throw us in the air, then tickle us, although we begged him to stop. He knew we were really saying, "More."

When did Mother change from a woman who jumped in leaves to the nagger she is today?

Maybe it started when Daddy died. Maybe penny-pinching wore her down.

When I think about it, I realise that our house was paid for generations earlier. Our relatives had lived three since before the Revolution, so it never made any sense at all the times she said, "We can't afford it."

Or maybe it was the arthritis that started in her forties. Now her hands are gnarled. She chews aspirin like some people chew gum. She says it came from all the typing she did. Her job as a secretary at Boston University gave us all a free college education.

Guilt - the gift that keeps giving. I feel guilty for resenting her demands and complaints. She's the East Coast distributor of guilt. I dislike myself because I buy all she sells.

So who knows what changed her? Who cares? Me.

Thinking about Peter is more pleasant. I shove my hands in my pockets because I forgot my gloves. Maybe I'm rebelling against Mother's constant reminders to take appropriate clothing for the worst weather imaginable. At thirty-nine that's just plain stupid.

A tingle warms me as Peter's stand comes into sight. What would my students a Fenway College think if they knew that Dr. Elizabeth Anne Adams, tenured head of the nursing program, author of two textbooks, was acting like a teenager with a crush on a rock star?

My students love me, which is good because my husband doesn't. That's another thing I don't want to think of. It will be almost as hard to tell him I want a divorce as it will be to tell Mother. Pushing the words out of my mouth isn't difficult. I say them all the time to my reflection in the mirror, "David, I'm leaving." Of course, he is never there to hear them.

We see very little of each other, my husband and I. He's always working or off on a business trip. Even when he's home, he's working. He not only has a mobile phone but a car fax, supplementing the two house faxes and three computers.

He cares a lot about appearance and labels. When alligator shirts were in, I cut the logo off one of his old shirts and sewed it on top of another alligator on a second shirt. He didn't notice the copulating reptiles until his opponent pointed it out to him in the middle of a racquet-ball match. He stomped off the court, his Reeboks squeaking, or so his friend reported. I don't regret doing it at all.

He never said he doesn't love me. How do I know? I just do. If I ask for a divorce, he'll feel as if he were losing some property like the time his Volvo was stolen. He was furious that someone dared touch his car. He hates loss as much as I hate conflict. That's saying a lot.

Right now my husband is in California until late next week. I like it when's away on business because I can spend more time with Peter - although when David is at home he's so busy that he'd never notice if I slipped out. I still feel funny about doing that. More guilt.

As I approach Peter's stand, he sees me and waves. He's wearing his carrot costume rather than his chickpea outfit. The windows are shut keeping out the cold. A HOT CHOCOLATE sign replaced yesterday's LEMONADE.

Peter lets me in the back door. There's not much room to move between the grill, fridge and counter. His green leaves graze the ceiling.

A picture of Daddy harvesting carrots flashes into my mind. He took pride in culling vegetables from the rocky soil. He never expected me to cull a relationship with a human vegetable. I wonder what he'd say. He might be supportive as he was every time I suggested something I wanted to do. We'd discuss all the why and the why nots like two adults. Peter is the same.

"I spilled chocolate on my chickpea outfit," Peter says. His arms stretch out the holes. His dark shirt makes his arms look like roots. His hug brings me back into the present. It's like cuddling a stuffed animal.

"We'll leave as soon as Mohammed comes." Mohammed has worked for Peter for a year and is taking the 4.m. to 6 a.m. shift leaving us the night together.

A customer, probably a doctor judging by the stethoscope around his neck, knocks on the window. Peter slides it open to take his order for hummus and hot cider. I dish it up as Mohammed comes in. Leaves swirl in after him.

"Sorry I'm late," He's the same age as Peter, twenty-nine. Not only do I love a vegetable, I love one ten years younger than I am. Mohammed steps into his celery outfit as Peter cashes out and metamorphoses back into a human.

My lover lives within walking distance of the stand. He refuses to own a car, saying he won't add more pollutants to the air. We walk to his place, taking the short-cut across the Muddy River. A few ducks waddle onto the bank to mug us for the bread that Peter brought them. We hold hands and forget there's a major city nearby.

My chickpea owns a converted carriage house. His key is so huge that it looks like a Western jail key. He has to jiggle and wiggle the door knob at the same time to make it work. The lock finally gives, and the front door swings open into a huge room.

The walls are covered by books. I never trust people who don't read. Many of the couples David and I know use books as decoration.

David reads, mostly work stuff. He buys me antique books searched out at Goodspeed's. We both love that store with the smell of aging paper and musty leather. My husband values books as an investment.

Me? In wonder whose eyes wandered over the words before mine. Who did those long-age readers love? Hate? When I told David this, he just rolled his eyes. When I told Peter, he said he felt the same way.

Boss, Peter's golden retriever, greets us as we enter the carriage house. He says the dog is the only boss he'll accept. She's torn between her desire for affection and the need to go out. Nature wins. Inside Peter opens his half-sized refrigerator, over which is a "Small is better" sign.

Pulling out a bottle of California wine, he searches for his corkscrew. He never can find it, nor his keys, which considering the size of his house key, is amazing. But with all the clutter from books and magazines, they can slip out of sight easily. He calls his decorating style "creative chaos" the way others would say "Early American" or "French Country".

Last month, I bought him a key chain that beeps when you clap, but it also beeps when Boss barks. If I'd found a beeping corkscrew, I'd have bought that too. We locate the opener between Mother Jones and Atlantic Monthly.

Peter sees me shiver and rubs my arms. "Would you rather have not tea?" he asks. I nod. Putting on the water, he reaches for the teapot with his free hand. Although the spout is cracked, he won't throw it out. He says a teapot is like and old friend. His ex-landlady gave it to him to celebrate his buying the carriage house. He still grocery shops for her.

When he finds the tea infuses, he mixes two teas - Earl Grey and gunpowder. "I've a better idea," he says. "How about hot wine with cinnamon?" With David there's never a deviation from a plan. With Peter we might start out for a restaurant in Boston and end up walking a New Hampshire beach.

I'm spending more and more time comparing my husband and my lover. What good would it do me? Make me more dissatisfied with my marriage?

David and never talk about out differences. I may joke about them, but that's as close as we come to disagreeing. I guess it's the same path I take with Mother - the placating path, the lane of least resistance, happy highway. Even at work, I shrink from controversy except as a last resort. However, I can handle a bit more professional disagreement for reasons that make no sense to me.

The wine and fire warms us. "We've time to make love before going to Judy and Mark's," Peter says nodding in the eagerness that I find so cute.

I drop everything and run upstairs. A balcony juts halfway over the living room. Once a tack room, it now holds a sleeping platform I tear off my clothes and jump between the patchwork quilt and the flannel sheet.

Making love with him is wonderful. We talk and tickle and laugh our way through. The first time we did it, I asked just as his penis touched my vagina, "Are you sure you want to go through with this?" I was only half kidding. There's been so much sexual tension between us for so long that any other alternative was unthinkable.

After we'd made love the first time, Peter had said, "You know, Liz, you use humor to protect yourself." I'd felt more exposed than I had when I'd stood naked in front of him.

When we finish making love, I look down at the face of my beautiful boy. His eyes are closed. Moonlight shining on his face from the skylight makes him look even younger. I am shocked by the force of my feelings.

We didn't set out to be lovers. Regularly, I remind myself of how it happened, taking out each detail and looking it over, much like thumbing through a favorite photo album.

We'd met by accident almost a year earlier, when I'd stopped to eat lunch at his stand. Although I'd passed his place for years, I'd never bought anything.

Normally I ate at Puke hall. The real name was Duke Hall, after a dead college president. I'd been the one to rechristen it. Most of the college had adopted the unofficial name, despite written directives from the current president to show respect for dead ones.

The first day I went to the stand because I was bored and wanted something different. Business was slow. I'd glanced at a book next to the cash register. It was about the Lobi tribe in Ghana.

He saw me looking at it. "I worked with the Lobi for my dissertation in anthropology, but I didn't finish."

When I asked why he'd quit, he'd told me, "I was sleeping several nights at the funeral of an old man."

"I don't understand," I'd said.

"That was the custom," he continued, "because funerals went on for several days. The longer you're there, the more you show how much you cared. I loved that old man."

I didn't say a word. I was busy praying that a customer wouldn't come and interrupt us.

"Suddenly I was overwhelmed with doubt. Why am I here, I asked myself. I was intruding. So I packed up and went home."

We talked for so long I had to run for class. I arrived panting just as my students were gathering their books and putting on their coats.

Over time I learned that Peter's home was Seattle. His bank president father had little patience for anthropologists and less for those who dropped out before finishing their Ph.D.

According to Peter, he got tired of being picked at and had come back to Boston where he'd been happy as a student. Odd job after odd job led him into opening the stand more by accident than design.

I had enjoyed our first chat so much that I went back often. On my fifth visit, he said, "Hey Teach, try my new baba ghanoush recipe."

"I'm safe from vampires." I referred to the amount of garlic.

He said he liked my sense of humor.

After my vampire remark, I ate at Puke Hall for several days. The next time I went to the stand, his face broke into a big grin. When he said, "I thought you deserted me, Teach," I felt all mushy inside.

I compared it to David's return the night before. After a weeklong trip, he'd walked through the door, his briefcase in one hand, his portable phone in the other. When he hung up, he said, "Liz, did you pick up my blue suit from the dry cleaners?"

"Hello, I missed you, too," I said. He didn't respond. The phone's ringing drowned me out.

Having been raised by an old fashioned New England Yankee, I never set out to make Peter my lover. Old fashioned can be defined as moral. Moral means not committing adultery.

I ate much more mid-eastern food than I ever would have eaten has Peter not been there. I told myself that it tasted better and was healthier. When the lines were too long for him to talk to me, I'd take my pita bread back to the office, a not-so-faint feeling disappointment fighting with the larger one of stupidity. Finally, I started going for lunch at two because most people had finished eating, and Peter was freer to talk.

I fantasized about him stripping away his costume in slow motion, sweeping me up in his arms and carrying me away. I never finished the fantasy, just like I never worried about traffic hitting us as he carried me across the street. Or, even, if it weren't the best fantasy, it was mine, and as mine, I put what I wanted into it. Only I really didn't know what I wanted in it. I was a failure at fantasy.

Had it not been for The Christmas Revels I doubt if we would have become lovers. Peter says we would have, but I don't see how. My secretary had given me two tickets. A miracle. Revels' tickets are almost impossible to get.

David said he couldn't go. He had to finish a report, which was too bad, because theater was something we enjoyed together.

Previous commitments abounded when I finished my list of people who might go without a spouse. So rather than miss it, I went alone. Some people hate going places by themselves. I enjoy it, missing only the discussion of whatever "it" was afterwards.

The Lord of the Dance is a Revels' tradition. Before intermission, the performers lead the audience into the entrance hall. Hundreds of people sing as they wend in and out in a snake dance.

I watch my feet when I snake dance, because I'm clumsy. There I was changing and watching my feet, thoroughly enjoying the comradeship of strangers, when I glanced up to see Peter sans chickpea costume. He was thin without his padding. Wearing an Irish knit, he looked like a professor, a very, very, very handsome professor - better than any of my fantasies.

His eye caught mine. He smiled. No, it was more than that. He beamed. Deserting his place in line, he broke into the spot next to me. When the dance stopped, we hugged each other as most of the dancers did. "Who you with?" he asked.

"Myself."

"That's a sin. We'll correct that."

He introduced me to the couple he was with, except I already new Judy and Mark Smentsky. Judy was Fenway's doctor. Mark was a sculptor, whom I met at campus affairs. I didn't' socialize outside work with people from Fenway. David had little use for anyone working in education. They couldn't do anything for him.

I'd always liked Judy. She'd never mentioned that she knew Peter, but then, why should she say, "My husband's kid brother was the roommate at Northeastern University of the vegetable of your fantasies?" She had no way of knowing I was going through a pre-menopausal teenage crush.

When the curtain rose on the second act, Peter say in the empty seat next to me. Afterwards we walked through Harvard Yard.

Judy and Mark went home because they didn't trust their teenage daughter to properly care for their seven-year old. I reveled, no pun intended, in their teenager's irresponsibility. It was the first time I was alone with Peter without someone says, "Do you have any of that good cucumber and yogurt stuff?"

"Let's go to the Casablanca for something hot," he said.

We entered the small café under the Brattle Street Theater. We both ordered hot chocolate with mint at the same time without checking with the other. I seldom remember names, but I remember what people where and what they eat.

Two men, probably in their thirties, one bearded and the other clean shaven, played Othello at the next table. The slap, slap, slap of the pieces disturbed the quiet. The only other patron was an elderly man writing in a notebook.

A waiter cleaned the huge espresso machine, rubbing the copper with a cloth. He made shutdown noises, although the place was scheduled to be opened for another half hour.

We talked over a table barely large enough for our two glass cups. When Peter made a point, he'd touch my hand with his finger. He had hot fingers. "I lived with a woman for four years. One day I came home. She was gone, leaving a note that she wanted to find herself."

"Were you hurt to have her disappear with warning?" I asked.

"Looking back, the signs were there, but I'd ignored them. I hurt for a long while," he said.

"How long?"

"Eight months, three weeks, two days, twenty minutes, and thirty-three seconds."

"Exact?"

"No, but I learned how to recover from a cracked heart." When I look confused, he said, "A cracked heart isn't as serious as a broken one. I was in-like, not in-love with Susan."

"So how did you recover from a cracked heart? Don't tell me glue and scotch tape," I said.

"I concentrated on what was wrong instead of missing what was good. Now I can let the good memories back in."

I told him about my work. When he asked about men, I mentioned David.

He leaned back in his chair. "Is it good?"

"What's good?" I asked.

"If you have to ask, you don't know." He changed the subject to safer topics: movies, food, restaurants, the Celtics.

As the Othello players put away their pieces and the writer closed his notebook, we gave into the grumpy waiter who wanted to close. As the waiter held the door for us to file out, the bearded player dropped the box holding the game. The black and white stones rolled over the restaurant floor. The waiter sighed. Maybe he thought it was a plot to keep him from going home. Peter and I crawled under the tables along with the players until the stones were all back in the bag. The waiter watched us, tapping his foot.

We couldn't say good-bye. We walked around the Square looking in windows. Chippendale's Toys had its annual display of a cloth pea pod on cotton snow. Five-inch stuffed peas hung at various heights against a black starry background. A sign read "peas on earth."

"I get a chuckle each year when I see this," Peter said.

"Me too."

The Square was almost deserted. Another couple walked briskly and disappeared into a dormitory entrance. The street musicians who braved the weather all year for donations had packed up, but I could see the mark of a violin case in the snow. From an apartment over a store we heard Vivaldi's Four Seasons." The outline of someone directing an imaginary orchestra was silhouetted on the shade.

The Congregational Church clock struck two. "I've got to go," I said.

We walked to ma car, his arm around my shoulder, but he made no move to kiss me. In my fantasy, he'd have kissed me and the cold of the Square would have been replaced by the heat of passion, accompanied by Beethoven's Ode to Joy sung by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

In reality, my car coughed its unwillingness to start, then gave in. Peter patted the back of my car, and I could see in the rear-view mirror as he waved. It took ten miles for the car to warm.

I resented that we'd gone separate ways. I should have offered him a ride and wondered when he hadn't asked. Damn my passivity. Still that night marked a change in our relationship, only it wasn't a relationship then. Our friendship had begun.

After the holiday break, I rushed to the stand for lunch the first day of classes. When we'd exchanged the usual did-you-have-a-nice-Christmas remarks, he threw out, "Wanta go to Sterling's for a beer after work?" Then a couple o f says later, I worked up my nerve to suggest Margaritas at Sol Aztec. The entire day before I asked him, I remembered my mother's childhood rule of never calling a boy. I told myself we were friends, nothing more, except that he had more testosterone than estrogen.

Our meetings fell into a habit. One of us would name a place.

"Veronique's?"

"Sterling's?"

"Travers Tavern?"

"Longwood Towers?"

The other would reply, "What time?" There wasn't a pub, café or restaurant within a two-mile radius of The Fenway that we missed. We talked about everything except "us" as an "us".

He invited me to a reading at the Boston Public Library. The author had long hair and read several short stories. Peter asked her, "What do you do to prepare for a reading?"

"I pressed my slacks," she said. They did have sharp creases.

He'd been given tickets to a Celtics Game - fifth row sears behind the players, so close we could see their sweat.

Peter touched me a lot during our outings, sometimes he hit me playfully, sometimes he draped his arm around my shoulder. If he wanted to hurry, he'd grab my hand and pull me along as we ran, but he never kissed me or made a real pass.

In spring, May 5th, at eleven at night to be precise, after the first Boston Pops Concert, we were walking through the Christian Science Park. Although the trees were in first bloom, they'd been clipped to form perfect green bubbles. Peter took off his sandals, then knelt to take off mine, before pulling me into the long pool. The water only came to our ankles, but it made them prickle like the ocean in Maine, when even on the hottest day numbs the body.

"What are you thinking about?" he asked.

I couldn't say that I imagined him kissing me, so I turned away.

He turned me so I faced him and took his finger to lift my chin. Softly he brushed my lips with his. "Come to bed with me. We've waited long enough." Those nine words hung between us until I nodded.

We took the "T" to his place. The trolley took longer than ever before.

I was scared. David had been the only man I'd ever gone to bed with. The sexual revolution had gone on without me. Even David and I only made loves spasmodically. I'd never quite understood what the fuss was all about.

Peter held my hand tightly since I'd agreed, as if afraid I'd change my mind. Little did he know there was not danger of that. I hung onto him in case he changed his.

Once inside his house, Boss jumped all over us. In none of my fantasies did I imagine a menage à trois with the third party being of the canine persuasion. Peter shoved the dog into the garden and led me up the staircase. I thought of Rhett carrying Scarlet up the stairs, but Southern plantations had wide staircases. Peter's spiral one could have killed us both had he tripped. More to the point - this wasn't a fantasy. This was the real thing.

As Peter unbuttoned my blouse, I wished I'd worn prettier lingerie. Mother never told me to wear clean underwear in case I had to go to the hospital like all my friends' mothers did. She said, "Wear pretty underwear in case you meet Rock Hudson." We both had a terrible crush on him when I was in high school. She was heartbroken when he died of AIDS. She kept saying, "You just never know."

Since Mother guarded my virginity all through school, I wondered why she thought I might let Rock Hudson see my underwear even on the off chance he came to Concord, Massachusetts.

One night when we watched a Rock Hudson rerun on television, I asked her, "Why did you tell me that about my underwear."

"So you'd have clean underwear, if you ever had an accident and had to go to the hospital," she said.

When Peter reached my clean cotton panties, he found a lion and the word Tuesday. It was Thursday. "Sexy," he said and kissed the lion. My hip quivered. I wanted more. I got more.

Judy and Mark Smentsky own a Victorian mansion, ten minutes from Peter's. A five-foot metal tree with square metal leaves dominated the front yard. Mark's work is all over both inside and outside. Entering the front hall, I see a green suit of armor. Tonight a paper turkey hangs from one green metal glove. It's not one of Mark's sculptures, but a Mexican fake that Judy bought and painted green. She named it Gerlach Hauptdesert for the knight in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

"Sable put it there," Judy says pointing to the turkey as she takes out coats.

"Hi, guys," Sable calls from her chair in what Judy calls the sitting room across from the entrance hall, one of four such rooms. Large arches make this house seem very open. Judy could shut the rooms off with the sliding wooden doors, but she likes to be touch with all the activities of kids, dogs, birds, cats and gerbils that make up this household. Sable is in the middle of a giant economy pout because she's been grounded. Judy warned me yesterday when she invited us over. Sable likes us enough to forget her sulk long enough to hug Peter and me. Then she bats the turkey before stomping off. Mark bring four Amstel beers. "I'm out of Sam Adams," he says. He wears his hair sixties long. He is dressed in jeans, a plaid flannel shirt and work boots.

"What did you think about Wright helping the Nicaraguan peace effort?" Mark swigs his beer from the bottle.

"The administration is terrified peace might break out," Peter says, sipping his beer. When we smile he admits, he heard the remark on All Things Considered.

Sasha wanders in dressed in faded pajamas. On her feet are fuzzy slippers with bunny rabbit ears and face. "Can we have a sing-a-long?" she asks.

It's too homey for company," Judy says.

"Let's," Peter days. "We like homey stuff." The we grabs my heart.

Sable walks through the kitchen and says, "That's so tacky I could just die."

"Death threats are everywhere Sable is these days," Judy says so softly that Sable doesn't hear.

It feels good to sing the old Dylan and Seeger songs and brings up memories of marching down Commonwealth Avenue. Despite my goody,goody youth, I did my share of Vietnam peace demonstrations. Only I could never participate at the price of my grades. A low mark was the same thing as a dagger in Mother's heart, and flunking out wasn't any more of an alternative than giving her drinking water with arsenic. In fact, the latter would have been more acceptable.

Judy and Mark were more active in the movement, and have FBI records. Peter came in at the end of the war, but still has a few demonstrations to his credit for both Vietnam and civil rights.

David never protested. He's just that much older than I am. And even if we were the same age, he is politically conservative. He would have joined the Army and served his country like a man. He liked Nixon. He likes Reagan. He hates my Thanksgiving cards which bear a Reagan image saying, "This year we have a lot to be thankful for…I can't run again." Since politics is a taboo subject in our marriage, it's fun to be with those who see the world from my view.

We swing into "If I had a Hammer". When we sing out what we would do with our bells, Judy moves across the room. As soon as we stop singing, she marches a protesting Sasha to bed.

When she comes back, she announces, "he's dead."

"Who?" Peter asks.

"Frank N. Stein."

Mark looks at the Habitrail that covers a long bookshelf with plastic boxes filled with wheels, tunnels, and miniature staircases. A gerbil, the sole inhabitant of his rodent apartment complex, lies motionless in his wheel.

"Go get another," Judy says.

"Sable should learn to cope with death," Mark says.

"She already did when my mother died. Gerbils don't have to die when you're seven."

"Come on, Mark. The Chestnut Hill Mall is still open. I know where the pet store is," Mark says.

After the men leave on their gerbil safari, Judy and I shake old Frank out of the cage into the toilet.

"When I was a kid, we used to hold funerals for goldfish before flushing them," Judy says.

"We buried ours in the backyard," I say.

She looks at Frank floating in the water. "Go to God." She flushes.

We disinfect the cage. Because the men still aren't back, we start stringing popcorn and cranberries, which was the original reason we were invited. We've a standing invitation for anytime I can escape my real life.

The kernels and berries resist our needles until we wax them. Then they glide through. We giggle about being so domestic and glance at our watched, worrying that the men can't find a replacement.

"What are you going to do?" Judy asks, but adds, "We don't have to talk about it."

I smile at the way my relationship has turned Judy from a colleague into a friend. Jabbing my finger with the needle, I suck the blood. It has stained a popcorn kernel.

Judy has made me realize how much I miss having close women friends. After I married, David didn't like my college friends and we drifted apart. "Our friends" are all related to his law and business interests, and I constantly have to remember which messages to share and what not to. He talks about our evenings out in terms of "commercial interests".

"How should I know," I answer Judy's question. "I want Peter. I want this life. But I don't know how to leave the old one." My finger is still bleeding, and Judy gets me a Band-Aid. "There's all sorts of how to books on getting jobs, raising kids, but none on leaving a husband."

"How about the song, Fifty Ways to Leave your Lover?"

"I don't want to leave Peter."

"You know what I mean," she says.

Before I can answer, the men return with the new gerbil.

After we leave the Smentskys, after we make love, when we're almost asleep, Peter whispers, "Did you have a good time tonight?"

"Hmmmm." I'm too sleepy to say more.

"It could always be like this." He touches my cheek and rolls over.

I lay awake, sleep banished, listening to him snore on my right. Boss snores to my left.

I change worlds the next afternoon. I could stay at the carriage house, but I need to get ready for next week. After I get my stuff together, I'll head to back to Peter's. Maybe I can spend part of the week there - a luxury.

Usually I go home so the neighbors see me. Not that we associate with them, except for David's sister. She lives three houses down the road. I heard her say she doesn't think I'm good enough for him. In a way she's right. For all our incompatibilities, he doesn't deserve an unfaithful wife.

Driving back to the suburbs, I ask myself why do I keep procrastinating making a decision. I don't procrastinate chores. At school my papers are always done at least a day early. My Christmas shopping is usually done before Thanksgiving, except for this year. Dirty dishes go straight into the dishwasher. I've a reputation for being the professor who hands corrected work back faster than anyone.

It's only personal decisions that I put off. When David proposed, I didn't answer for weeks. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he was so handsome he could have been a refuge from Cosmo's most eligible bachelor column. Yet, I couldn't make up my mind.

Mother had a fit. She was convinced I'd lose an excellent catch. "He's even four inches taller than you," she reminded me. She had found my growth spurt at the age of fourteen to my current five foot eight a bit overwhelming. I tower over her and my older sister, Jill.

"You won't have to work, unlike me," Mother had said.

Right up to the moment when Uncle John delivered me to David in front of the minister, I kept thinking I could still back out. When the minister asked if there were any reason this couple shouldn't be joined together in holy matrimony, I almost said, "I do." For a crazy moment I pictured Mother, who had spent much more than she could afford on the wedding, fainting. I didn't do it because I had no idea of what I would say to her when she revived.

My fears seem unfounded in the early days. David was touchingly excited about his career. "How would you handle it?" he'd ask over dinner , and we'd would talk strategy. It changed so gradually, I never noticed.

I pull into our driveway. The house looks like a feature in Architectural Digest. My husband drove our architect, builder, plumber and everyone else who worked on it crazy getting it just so. It's modern with lots of glass and wood. We've three acres of forest overlooking a pond.

As I unlock the door, I see through the house to the large glass wall in the back. The Canadian geese swim on the pond. If I feed them, David will lecture me. "They'll stay all winter because the pickings are too easy." He's more worried about goose shit on the lawn than their welfare.

One year when a family decided to nest for the summer, he broke their eggs to make them leave. I didn't speak to him for a week, which didn't make any difference. He was in Florida.

Our house is furnished with antiques and oriental rugs, a striking contrast to the modern design. David has excellent taste, but his house has never felt homey to me.

I'm not allowed to mess things up, like spreading the Sunday newspapers around as I lie on the living room rug with a cup of coffee that David has made. His Sunday breakfasts are works of art. "Food belongs in the kitchen or dining room," he will remind me. A stained carpet may be a greater sin than my adultery.

Everything, and I mean everything, is exactly as David wants it. Even for the room I use as an office he chose all the furniture. When I make a suggestion, he looks at me. Those four inches make him seem a lot taller as he says in tone implying my taste is questionable: "(sigh-pause-sigh) Well…(sigh), if you really…(sigh) want it." Then his breath trails off.

Liz, the wonder wimp, always backs down. Well, almost always. Once I insisted on buying a vase we found in an antique store. He didn't like that some of the gold leaf had worn off the edge. It was pink sandwich glass made on the Cape around the time of the Civil war. I loved its luster and pictured my roses, which were almost the same color as the vase, in front to the hall mirror. I loved putting bouquets in front of mirrors because they look double. That had been David's idea. Although I've found fault with him, especially lately, I have to give him credit when he deserves it.

As for the effect of the flowers, I never got to see it because David dropped the vase as he carried it into the house. Smithereen City.

We've four bedrooms, three for children never conceived. After seven years of marriage my biological time clock went off with a vengeance. Walking by a baby carriage without staring was impossible. Between classes, I'd stroll through the Coop's baby department picking up little clothes.

When my body betrayed me monthly, I'd cry. I'd rail at God, convinced he was punishing me for my faithful use of birth control as I worked on my Ph.D.

"Hey, God! I've changed my mind," I screamed silently. God didn't get my new messages. Sex usually regulated by David's energy and business trips, became a timed maneuver, bearing no resemblance to love. I took days from work to fly to wherever he was if it corresponded with my egg production.

Finally, I went through all the tests, and the doctor said I'd less than a 15% chance of conceiving. David was never tested. The night I came home with the results, he held me until I stopped sobbing. I remember how tenderly he stroked my hair saying, "It's okay, it's okay. We have each other."

His car keys are on the kitchen counter. Shit. I'd left my car in the driveway without checking the garage. "Hello," I call. The kitchen has an all-glass sliding door looking into a greenhouse. My voice echoes against the glass. Glancing around I notice dirty dishes from at least two meals. Our housekeeper works Monday through Friday. When I left Saturday morning, the kitchen was spotless.

"Where the hell have you been?" David storms into the room. He's dressed in the red flannel bathrobe we bought at L.L. Bean the time we drove to Maine, not the silk one he prefers. He looks terrible with at least a two-day beard. Normally he's a manic shaver.

"What are you doing home?" I ask.

"Flu." My husband is a terrible patient. During his last cold, he kept moaning, "I hope you never suffer as I'm suffering." When he caught poison ivy, he was positive it was leprosy. He'd returned from Africa on a Friday, but we'd gone camping during the weekend. Since his hand didn't fall off and the rash disappeared, I assumed my diagnosis was correct. I feel his head. It's hot. He stiffens at my touch. "I asked where you were." David never yells. When he's angry, he lowers his voice and enunciates each syllable. This time he clips each letter.

"I stayed in town at Judy's."

"You should have left a note. I was worried sick."

Instead of my usual apology, I snap, "Who'd I leave it for? You weren't supposed to be home." I feel like a bully.

The phone rings. I answer.

"Elizabeth-Anne where have you been?"

Double shit. Mother!

She sighs. "I didn't sleep a wink after David called. I was positive I would read in the Globe, that they'd found your body." She watches too many crime shows and is convinced that you risk your life if you set one foot into a city. Don Johnson, Quincy and Columbo are to her mind, proof of the danger.

"I'm really sorry you were worried, but I'm fine." We go a few more rounds as once again I catch all the guilt she gives.

David sinks into a chair as I talk, his head in his hands. Hanging up, I tell him to go to bed. He does, falling asleep even before I leave the room.

I'm angry at myself for the way I dealt with Mother and David. I hang up my coat. It falls off the hanger, and I have to do it a second time. A cup of tea. I need a cup of tea. Tea soothes me when I'm upset. I push the intercom to the bedroom and hear David's steady snore. I call Peter to tell him I won't be back.

"Anything wrong?"

"No. Yes." I explain

Peter's funny about my husband. He refuses to push me because he wants the decision to be mine. "I don't want you to throw it back in my face after we're married." He said that at least a dozen times. His pressure is different from Mother's or David's. With them, I'm pushed where they want me to go. Peter makes me want what he wants all by himself. Why do I hold back?

As I wait for the water to boil, I realize how much more I see of Peter than of David. We talk over unimportant and important things. Maybe Peter will grow tired or waiting. That idea frightens me.

The tea doesn't calm me. My thoughts, like my life, are out of control.

Contact: donna-lane.nelson@wanadoo.fr