was fun. Rosalind loved the attention and became something of a ham. The photographer got expressions out of her — wily, funny, charming, coquettish, serious, pensive, playful, and others — they never saw before, or not all at one sitting. They hung the framed photo on the walls of their three bedrooms — Baltimore apartment and both houses — and her folks loved the one they gave them. “We should have ordered three large prints,” he said, “for how much more would it have cost us? The third one for my mother, which I also would have got framed, as we did for your parents.” He doesn’t know why they didn’t get a professional photographer for Maureen when she was that age. Money again, probably, but he never suggested it to Gwen and she must just never have thought of it. The osteopath. He had painful back spasms that went on for two weeks. “I don’t want to see our doctor about it. He’ll recommend a specialist, who’ll send me through all sorts of tests. It’ll go away by itself.” She told him about the osteopath who cured a friend’s Bell’s palsy in two visits, while her regular doctor said there wasn’t much he could do and her paralysis wouldn’t start to go away for three months and a complete cure could take a year, and he said “I’m glad for her, but it’s not for me. Acupuncturists, chiropractors, osteopaths, vitamin therapists, Chinese herbalists, macrobiotic dieticians. You name it and I or one of the women I’ve known has done it, and they’re all quacks.” “You’re being stubborn and ridiculous again and saying what you know you don’t believe. But all right; suffer.” After another week of it, but now where he couldn’t even stand or sit up straight, she said “You either go to the osteopath or I drag you to the doctor. I’ve gone online about it. Most people with your problem claim much better and faster success with it than any kind of traditional medicine. And no surgery or medication’s involved, so what do you have to lose? Try it just once?” The osteopath wanted to put him on a couple of machines in his office. “I don’t want anything like that. They’ll take too long and they look like remedial artifacts from a century ago that in no way can help me. I’ll be frank with you. I didn’t want to see you but my wife insisted I come. She did some research on it and what she came up with is that just your working your hands on me like a massage therapist does is the treatment that gets the best results.” The osteopath had him sit on an exam table, got behind him and grabbed his head firmly with both hands—“Don’t be alarmed if you hear a couple of loud cracks”—and gave it two quick twists. “Miracle,” he said to Gwen when he got back to the waiting room. “I can stand up straight and walk normally again and pain’s all gone. And look; I can wrap my arms around you without any part of me hurting,” and he wrapped his arms around her. “How come you know how to fix everything up?” First time they went to France together. It was his idea — he’d wanted to go there with her the June after they first met, but didn’t have the money to. As with the week’s vacation on St. John they had with Rosalind more than two years later, she took care of everything: travel, lodging, itinerary. Big cities like Nice and Marseilles but also small towns and chapels and museums in the south he’d never heard of. Day after they got to France, she took him to an outdoor food stand in Paris that was famous for its onion soup, she said. “The workers and farmers used to warm themselves up at night when the old wholesale food market was here. Now it’s strictly for tourists like us in the day, but it’s still supposed to be the best in the city.” She translated the sign for him. The soup had two prices: one for sitting at a table under a tent and the other for standing at a counter. “Let’s get it standing up,” he said. “It’s the same-sized bowl, you say, for half the price.” “It gets too sloppy, eating it that way,” she said. “And we’re in no rush, and I want to sit after all our walking this morning.” “We can sit on a park bench, after. — All right. But maybe we should get one bowl between us, sitting down, because it seems awfully high for a small bowl of onion soup in not the fanciest surroundings, no matter how good it might be. Then, if we don’t particularly like it, or I don’t, we wouldn’t have ordered two.” “What am I going to do with you?” she said. “If you’re to enjoy our month in France, and I’m to enjoy it with you, you’ll have to be much freer with your cash. Face it; things are more expensive here and the dollar’s down.” “Okay, two soups standing,” and she said “No. You stand and I’ll sit.” “Okay,” he said, “we both sit, but I hope they give us a roll or slice of bread or two with it, because this is our lunch.” “You have to be kidding if you think this is our lunch. What we’ll do, to compromise, though I wish you hadn’t forced me to, is get two bowls at the counter. Then, in about an hour, we’ll go to a sit-down bistro or bar for lunch.” She ordered two soups. “No bread?” and she said “If you’d look you’d see it’s in the soup, so please don’t ask for it.” After two spoonfuls and a chunk of grated cheese on top, he said “I’m being honest here; I really don’t think it’s very good. The cheese, yes. But I’ve tasted much better French onion soup in New York and at places that weren’t even famous for it.” “You’re lying,” she said. “To win the argument or prove me wrong or spoil any pleasure I might have in eating the soup. Or I don’t know why, but there it is. You and I have the same soup from the same tureen and oven. And I’ve had onion soup gratinée about a half-dozen times here — once, when it was still in the old market — and its quality has always been the same: great. You’re just ticked off about the price. Admit this one little thing to me and you’ll make me think I haven’t made a mistake coming to France with you.” “All right,” he said. “Maybe it is good. Maybe it is the price. I’m not completely sure, but it sounds right. You didn’t make a mistake coming to France with me and I’ll try from now on not to be so cheap or penny-pinching or money conscious, or whatever I’m being: tight! But you know, I’ve only had my teaching job a year. Before that — I’m giving you my excuse — it was more than ten years of not having much dough. You can say I haven’t quite adjusted yet to a full-time decent-paying job, and with a two-thousand-plus raise for the next academic year, no less.” “I guess there’s something to what you say,” she said. “Let me think about it. Meanwhile, please, no more chintziness. Trust me, my sweetheart, I’m doing my best, as I did with our airfares and hotels, to keep our expenses down. But I’m not, for both of us, going to do it to the point of ruining our trip.” “Got ya,” he said, “completely. And as you saw, I had some more soup. It’s actually quite good. And the top layer — must be some kind of Swiss — is the best I’ve ever had.” “I’m not going to say anything to that. Let’s just enjoy ourselves.” The farmhouse. The cottage she started renting in Maine ten years ago was up for sale. They wanted to buy it, but that would mean not buying a house in Baltimore. “So what are we going to do next summer?” he said. “I’ll come up with something,” she said. She tried all the rental agents in the area. There were very few houses available for an entire summer and what was available they couldn’t afford. “We’re really screwed,” he said. “I’ve come to love it here and would hate not coming back.” “Don’t worry,” she said. “We still have two weeks left and I haven’t tried everything.” She placed an ad in the local weekly — checked the wording with him first — that said “Writer and translator, husband a university professor and wife trained to be one, with a small child, another baby on the way, four well-behaved scratchless cats of the same Siamese family (mother and brood), would like to rent house in quiet, appealing surroundings in Blue Hill Bay area next summer for two to three months, and, if it’s a good fit for both parties, for as many summers after that.” “Perfect,” he said. “Every word and comma. And honest, intelligent, personable and informative. Add that we’re long-time summer residents here, and the responses should pour in. I know I’d be interested.” They got one call. She was out. “You should probably speak to my wife,” he said. “She handles everything like this,” and the woman said “Why? I’ve got you, and you can tell her what I’ve said. My husband and I thought we were done with all the problems of renting the farmhouse and would use it only when we needed to get away from each other. But your notice intrigued us. For one thing, we feel that intellectuals make the most responsible and congenial tenants. For another, we do a smattering of writing ourselves. Topical articles for the