He woke and Eden wasn’t there. In a panic he ran downstairs, and there she was at the stove, scrambling eggs. He chided himself. Without speaking, they sat facing each other. A half grapefruit smiled at them like the morning sun.  As the lovers quietly went to work, a stream of juice squirted into Eden’s face. Any other time they would have laughed. Now she stole a furtive glance at Josh and wiped off the juice. The squish of bursting fruit was the only sound till the toast popped up. Eden went to the counter and prepared their plates. Josh stared at her back, etching every line and curve into his memory, till forced to lower his eyes again.

It could not last, the collision was inevitable. It almost happened when he looked up to thank her for refilling his cup. He held her gaze briefly ― and still not a word crossed their lips. Eating was a silent refuge from which neither wanted to be the first to emerge, but a plate of scrambled eggs and toast would go only so far. And so, each considerate of the other, they finished at the same time. Again they looked up, each willing the other to say something.

She opened the faucet and put her dishes in the sink. Then she returned for his. “Done?” It was not a conversation opener. He nodded mutely. She squeezed detergent into the water and began washing. After a minute he brought a forgotten knife to the sink and remained standing next to her. The faint scent of her hair reached his nostrils and he closed his eyes to recapture the darkness that had enveloped the sweetest experience of his life. Daylight had claimed its place in the progress of time but was powerless to sweep away that memory.

“Edie?”

“Yes, Josh?”

“Someone has to go first,—”

“—and we do have to talk, don’t we?” she finished, turning to him with a searching look.

“It’s so hard to think of the right thing to say.”

“I feel as if we’d communicated in a different language, and now we’re having trouble with the old. Or maybe there isn’t anything left to say.”

“There are endless things left to say.” He took her arm and turned her to face him.

“We know, don’t we?”

“Yes.”

“Josh,” she said, suddenly putting her wet, soapy hands around his neck, “I wish we could feel like this for the rest of our lives. Is that possible?”

He put his hands on her waist and smiled. “My father’s a chemist and my mother’s a statistician. I’ve drunk at that trough for eighteen years. Do you know what that means?”

She looked puzzled briefly, then broke out in a grin. “You’re thinking percent probability or some such gobbledygook. Now that really is blasphemy! But statistics isn’t all you drank at the trough. There’s so much love in your home. When I see your parents together, I feel a warmth radiating from them. My parents aren’t like that. They don’t fight, they just seem to live together and get along. Did you inherit love also, along with the statistics?”

“I must have. I know what you mean about my parents. I want to have a relationship like that with my wife too. But for that I also have to inherit their luck and find the right partner.”

“It’s not only finding, Josh, it’s recognizing. Can you recognize it if it stares you in the face?” She stared, unsmiling, into his face.

“If I had to decide right now, there wouldn’t be a smidgen of doubt.”

“You’re right to be cautious. You’re more mature, and you do have that scientific streak.”

“I wish I didn’t say things to disappoint you.  Maybe I’m all wrong in being so ‘mature.’”

“No, you’re right. I’m too emotional. And I’m still feeling what happened during the night, and fantasizing that it would always be like that. Isn’t that possible, Josh?”

“The first time is a very special time.”

“But don’t you think your parents enjoy each other as much now as they ever did?”

“Maybe more. It has to have developed into something else, something lasting, something that includes all those years of love and companionship; the children they made together, in whom each sees the other; and, every time they look at each other, or just think of each other, knowing they made the right choice. Compared with them, we barely know each other.”

“But we have to start somewhere,” she pleaded. “Your parents did. So, OK, it is different. And so are the leaves on your magnolia different from the flowers. But if you chop down the tree because the flowers won’t last, you’re not giving the leaves a chance to grow. All I know is that as we lay with each other, I felt such total love I can’t find the words to describe it. I felt it coming out of every pore in my body, I felt it coming at me from all sides, I felt as if the whole world were love. I felt that all was wonderful, with everything, with everybody, and that through embracing you I was embracing the whole world. Of course, now it’s day, there’s a newspaper on the doorstep, and I know all’s not well with the world. And you’re right about there only being one first time. Next time . . .” She stopped and looked into his eyes. He nodded. “. . . it’ll be different because of what we’re saying here now. But please let the leaves grow, Josh. Please, please, let them grow.  At least, don’t chop down the tree.”

There were tears in her eyes now. He pulled her toward him and laid her head on his chest. It was a full minute before he spoke. “Edie, you’ve used a word neither of us has spoken up to now. A word with so much meaning that it takes courage to say it. You had that courage and I didn’t. You name your feelings while I’m studying mine. You’re decisive while I’m tiptoeing around in uncertainty. And you have the grace to say I’m more mature. You’re the mature one. You have the clarity of vision and the courage to act on it. I’m ashamed.”

She lifted her head and looked up at him. Her eyes were dry now and she was surprised to see a hint of tears in his.

“Don’t be, Josh,” she said. “If it weren’t for you, I’d never be talking this way.”

He sighed. “What an exquisite creature you are. There must be something right with your parents to have produced you!”

She smiled. “I’ll be sure to tell them.” Then she became practical.

“Life goes on, and we can’t stand here all day. Let me rinse your neck; it’s soaked long enough. Then we’ll get dressed and take a walk, depending on how much time we have.”

“What do you mean, how much time? We have all day.”

Her look foretold the impact. “I want to go home today.” His face blanched.

“When did you decide that, Edie? What have I done? Did I say something to hurt you? Is it because I sounded overcautious? I can’t stand the idea of your leaving now.”

She took his hands in hers. “Everything you’ve said and done is wonderful. This whole visit has been so . . . so full, so rich, so momentous, I’m in such a state over it, I need time to myself. If I stay, one thing’ll happen on top of another and I’ll be a nervous wreck.”

“Oh dear, dear Edie, I’ll try. But I think the separation will make me a nervous wreck.”

“Just try to remember the last few hours. Can you imagine more wonderful memories to separate with? . . . Oh God, what a horrible word to use! But you know what I mean.”

“You have such a wonderful facility for recognizing things the way they are. Everything that’s been building up the last couple of years, what we’ve been seeing through a fog, now the sun’s come out and it’s there clear as day. Yes, it is momentous, there’s no better way to put it. Maybe I need time too. Let’s look at the bus schedule.”

They had three hours before the last bus that would get her home at a reasonable hour.

“Let’s take a walk,” he said. “Funny, now that I think about it, I’d like to walk in total silence. No more words today. Let’s just hold hands.”

“Do you remember Carpenter’s Woods?” she asked. “We didn’t say anything for a long time then either.”

“How could I forget? Even then, you knew exactly what to say and do.”

“You see, Josh, I too can recognize beauty. I hope that’s not the wrong word to apply to a man, but anything more ‘masculine’ just wouldn’t fit. . . . But now I remember something else. Doctor Harmon says my murmur’s got a little louder. I think they’re setting me up for maybe needing surgery one of these days. I’m not scared, and I don’t want you to be either. Just be there when I wake up from anesthesia. That way I’ll be all right. Will you promise?”

He was shaking his head in disbelief. “I wish I could be as calm about it as you. Open-heart surgery. I don’t care how good the surgeons are, it has to be dangerous.”

“In that case, be there as they’re putting me under. I want your voice to be the last I hear and I want you to hear me count. I think that’s the way they tell when I’m asleep.”

“I wish you didn’t treat it so lightly!”

“Realistically,” she corrected him. “But I want you to listen. Do you remember how it sounded before?”

“Don’t tell me you brought the stethoscope along!”

“No, we don’t need it. You can listen direct. Come upstairs.”

Uncertainly he followed her to the room where she had spent the first part of the night. “At least the bed’s been slept in,” he said, laughing. “In case someone suddenly walks in.”

“You know, it was a headache that woke me up. Sort of a hangover, I guess. Imagine what would have happened if I’d slept the night through.”

“Or what would not have happened.”

“Isn’t it amazing how the most important things happen by chance. If there hadn’t been that thunderstorm, and the fresh air after it, who knows whether we’d have taken that walk?”

“And if the ground hadn’t been sodden, how would it have ended?”

“With scratches on my back,” she answered, “which I’d have had to explain away.”

She removed her bathrobe and began to open the buttons on her pajama tops.”

“Edie,” he stopped her. “You know I’ve never seen you.”

“You may close your eyes if you’re embarrassed. I’m not. I want you to see me. I want you to listen to my murmur ― without a stethoscope.” And she removed the garment.

He did not close his eyes and allowed his ear to be laid against her breast.

“Yes, I hear it. But I can’t tell if it’s louder than before. I’m not listening the same way.”

“From now on that’s the way you’ll always listen, so you’ll be able to compare. And I want you to hear the other sounds too. Here, I’ll show you how they listen to the mitral valve. That’s the other one that gets damaged in rheumatic fever, but mine’s OK.”

She lifted her left breast and pressed his head against the ribs below it. The novelty of the sounds held his attention.

“This sounds quite different,” he said. “The first sound is really booming and louder than the second, the exact opposite from the way it sounds higher up.”

“Do you hear any murmurs?”

“I don’t think so. Well, I’m not sure. Just before the first sound there’s something real faint, lower pitched, sort of rumbling. I don’t know. I’m no doctor.”

“I’d really like it if you became one. But that’s not for me to say.”

Neither one moved or spoke for several seconds. Then he asked gingerly, “May I lie down next to you for a while? Who knows how long it’ll be before we get another chance?”

Her look conveyed both longing and anxiety. “Josh, I don’t want to overdo it. If it looks as if I’ve been teasing you, I didn’t mean it that way. Please believe me. I want to be totally unashamed with you, and I know I want even more than that. But still I think we ought to hold back just a little. Is this going to be hard for you?”

He paused a mere instant. “Yes, it is, but your feelings are just as important as mine. I won’t insist on anything you don’t want to do.”

“Then take off your pajama top too ― just the top, and lie down next to me.”

For the next quarter of an hour they lay in each other’s arms, each discreetly exploring the length of the other’s back but, by unspoken agreement, staying away from those areas that would have threatened their restraint. After one last kiss, he said softly:

“Edie, I think I’m in love, and what a wonderful feeling it is.”

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful if everyone were?” she whispered back. “Then there wouldn’t be any wars or murders. I can’t imagine how a person who truly loves another, who feels the ecstasy of loving, can hate anyone.”

There was nothing left to say. They got dressed and took a long walk, by the lake, in the park, through the campus, to the bus depot.