Pearl

My wife and I do not have sex. I just want you to know that up front, that I’m not some scoundrel. I did try. We were close, but it wasn’t that sexy. We both had weird childhoods with difficult mothers, and coming together when we did, almost at midlife, neither of us wanting children, felt right at the time. Maybe it’s still right. Even now, after everything, it doesn’t feel worse than any of my other options would have been. 

Early on when we did have sex, it wasn’t like it had been for me before I met her, when I was still a young man, when it was all about skill and ardor and bodies that could go for hours without having to stop because someone’s knees hurt or because someone was just spent. Our sex was more practical. Honestly, she was more practical, and I needed that, needed someone to ground me, to make me put into action all the ideas that I’d had that piled up over the years, ideas that used to excite me but had started to weigh me down. She was good with money, good with planning, good with implementing. She was the kind of woman you could tell any dream, even if it was pie in the sky, and she would write it all down, divide that pie up, figure out the steps, and if you gave her a few years, she could make it happen. That’s no small thing. She was sensible, even in the bedroom, so we never really lost our senses there. I’m not blaming her, but I never felt inspired. We kept our eyes closed and we did it. Then, when she hit that time of life and her body changed, I didn’t mind, but she couldn’t quite accept it. Maybe it was self-consciousness, maybe it was hormones, or maybe she was just looking for a way out of that part of our life, but when it was done it was done.

I had always been a big fantasizer, with a daily personal sexual practice, augmented of course by porn and the occasional cam girl. You’d think the cam girl thing would be exciting, and at first it was, but ultimately I found it disappointing. If nothing else I respected my wife’s total refusal to pretend that she was attracted to me, and as much as I used to be what more than a few women said was good-looking, there was no way some hot young cam girl was into a man this far into his fifties, and the way those girls pretended so hard distracted me. When my wife hit menopause and announced the policy change, I took it in stride, because by then all my sexual energy and satisfaction were coming from my individual pursuits. Now, and probably always, my wife and I are more like best friends. Or, better said, two people who have chosen to live in the same place in the same way. I don’t know anymore, and I sort of resent having to explain it, because my wife isn’t the point of this story.

We love our dogs and we love our house, which is low-key and cozy but with solar panels and a grey water collection system that hydrates the gardens, both of which we designed ourselves. We love our town, too, which is relatively small, tucked into a valley, wooded and lush but all the property owned and mostly undeveloped, so we’re not totally overrun by tourists. We settled here because it was a sleepy, beautiful place with room for us and the dogs to roam, the kind of place that kids left after high school and never came back, so by the time we got here it was mostly the middle-aged and their ailing parents. Then at some point as I guess you’d expect, the ailing parents died and their grandkids figured it might be nice to raise a family somewhere rural, all that fresh air, and now the place is starting to change.

I have a friend in town, a younger guy always on the make with women. He ran a low-key side gig during the summer for tourists, putting them up in a cabin on his property, building them campfires, taking them out on his pontoon boat to party on the lake. He had a nose for women who would cheat. We worked together before I retired, then kept our contact up, playing pool or hanging out in his cabin with a beer. He was pretty sexed up, always telling me of his latest exploits in great detail, which I appreciated. Sometimes I’d tell him about my own adventures from years before, and though he enjoyed those, I’d already revisited them so many times over the decades that I barely got a charge from thinking about them anymore, so mostly the spotlight was on him. There were things he was doing that I hadn’t tried, that young women just thought of as normal parts of sex when back in the day it would have been shocking. I kept a mental list of them, and I tried not to lose hope. Come winter, things around here revert to a more small town way of life, houseguests gone, everyone known to everyone else, and eventually he got a reputation. He went to the city and brought himself back a wife, a hot little number who was into all the stuff he liked, so though we saw each other less I still got an earful, and honestly, I think that wife of his got off on me knowing all about her. I sure did.

I had never cheated, besides the cam girl stuff which was only a few times. My wife and I were fine enough, and even when she retired we had a good rhythm, sharing most meals together, sometimes watching the same shows, and doting over the dogs who were like our kids. They’re mutts, mostly pitbull, just the sweetest things you can imagine. Petunia and Timmy. I always had a rescue, and usually handled the pain of losing one dog by immediately going out and bringing home another. When my wife and I met, she had never had a dog. I was living alone with another pitbull mix named Roger, which was before I knew that their pound names didn’t have to be the name you kept. She fell in love with Roger first, and I couldn’t blame her because he was by far the better looking of us two, just a year or two old and full of spunk. When she moved in, we went straight to the pound. Roger did okay adjusting to the new puppy, who we named Rocket, his name being our first real negotiation, and we focused on how they were adjusting to each other instead of how we were adjusting, which was mostly fine, but harder than you’d think. We had each lived alone a long time, and after a few weeks we got into a pattern of not spending every evening together, even if we were both in the house, and we’ve kept it that way ever since. 

My wife claimed the guest room as her space, which was fine because we never had any of those, and I took the family room, which was fine because we never had one of those either. Honestly I have no idea what she did in there. Maybe read or talked with her sister. She had some friends back where she used to live, and women she liked from work. I just assumed she was happy, and maybe I was right. I listened to music, noodled around on my guitar, watched movies, but mostly I just went on the internet looking for something that amounted to sex. Even in the dead of winter my friend with the hot wife still managed to find himself fresh women, and he was always encouraging me to do that too. I downloaded some of the apps he used, just to window shop. When I put in my actual age I wasn’t thrilled with my options, but when I lied, the options weren’t thrilled with me. Eventually I found an app that was specifically for cheaters. I had no idea if my wife cared if I cheated, but at that point it seemed almost rude to ask. Maybe it was because we had been friends for so long, or maybe it was because I had empathy for her because of what she’d been through, but I didn’t actually want to hurt her. The app had little boxes to check about what you’re looking for, and when I saw cyber affair I clicked it right away because I don’t count that as cheating, any more than I counted a cam girl as cheating, because it’s more like an extension of my fantasizing and not a real threat to my relationship. Plus I figured it was a good medium for me, since I can string words together pretty well and have an active imagination, and at that point both of those far outweighed what I might have been able to attract with a photo.

I knew on an app like that, at least in the heterosexual section which was where I stayed, the men would far outweigh the women. At first I was inundated with bots and a few human women looking for a sugar daddy, but after a while I learned to spot the real profiles. The main thing that told me I was dealing with an actual woman was that they always seemed compelled to explain why they were on the app in the first place, as if I were judging them. But their stories made sense. It was women who were frustrated like I was, women who had done everything they could do to make things better at home and had finally accepted the truth, that if they wanted sex or at least enjoyable sex, they needed to find it elsewhere. I told them that I had tried in my marriage, that this was an effort to save myself, to live a satisfying life instead of upholding some fantasy of what a good person was, which I guess was true but I said mainly because they seemed to find it reassuring. A lot of them were disappointed when they discovered how far away I lived, and they were resistant to having a cyber affair, saying that they had finally worked up the courage to do this thing and what they really needed was something real, in the flesh. I tried to convince them that a cyber affair was real: two real people interacting with each other in a real way, in real time. Since so much of sex happens in the mind anyway, this didn’t feel like much of a leap for me, but it took some doing with some of the women. I learned to be pushy without seeming pushy, to seem vulnerable when that wasn’t truly the case.

It was painstaking work, first getting their attention, then holding it, especially with the odds the way I’m assuming they were. Every move I made was a gamble that would either draw them closer or have their profile suddenly disappear when they blocked me. On occasion I’d hear “Sorry, not for me,” or “Good luck in your search,” but mostly they’d just vanish, taking their pretty pictures with them. Whether this was because I offended them or because they’d just lost interest, I never knew. Over time, though, I felt my skill improving. Light, flirty chat relaxing them enough to ask me for my photos, which were just a few, nothing racy, me by the river, me standing in the garden, me hiking with both of the dogs. I experimented until I found a set that worked, and I made sure my photos weren’t obviously just pictures where I cropped my wife out, because I’d seen some of those and it made it hard to deny what we were really doing. If the women liked mine well enough they let me see their photos, and I liked that, but not only because I was evaluating them. The truth is, I never once turned an interesting woman down because her photos weren’t good enough. Even in an ugly package a woman could be a good talker, sexually creative, or skilled at photographing her secret parts in just the right way so it worked. Photographing, or if you’re lucky, videoing. I tended to lay my actual preferences aside completely for a woman who was willing to send me videos.

Still, it was a balancing act. One woman said she was looking for a powerful man. Was it because she thought her husband was weak, or had she read 50 Shades of Gray with her book club and gotten curious? Should my opening gambit sound manly or like I was into ropes and discipline? Every move was a risk, and you never knew how it was going to land. Another woman showed off her thick thighs. Was it because she knew they were sexy, or was she anxious about them, revealing them up front to avoid disappointment down the road? Should I have told her how I wanted those legs wrapped around me? If I had called them big, soft, or dimpled, would she have felt seen after months, maybe years, of invisibility, or would she have felt suddenly exposed and back away? I personally have always liked a chubby woman, and I have a lot more empathy for them now that I’m older, now that the strip of what’s still considered attractive about me gets narrower by the day.

I met some great women, and sometimes it would be fast and furious for a week or two then fizzle out, and sometimes the intensity would last for months. My favorite ones could spin fantasies along with me, writing out long emails to each other for use later, or better yet texting them live, fantasizing together, and at the same time indicating the effects our words were having on each other in real time. Some women sent words only, some only photos. Each one was unique, like any sexual relationship. The best one had done this before and there was nothing she wouldn’t do. I wrote her some basic fantasy of taking her bent over her dressing table, our eyes locked in the mirror, and in response she sent me audio of her responding to my email. That emboldened me, so I sent her a video of my activities while listening to her audio, and we would go back and forth that way, layer upon layer, until someone got a new idea. It took up a fair amount of time, and maybe my wife noticed I was disappearing more, but I just felt so alive that I never really stopped to check.

At some point around then my wife thought we should take a vacation to reconnect. I wasn’t against it. Her idea of a vacation was to spend money on a nice hotel in the city and wander through museums until my knees ached. My idea of a vacation was what inspired me to move here in the first place so I would have preferred to just stay put, but I went to make her happy. She picked a place we had been before, back at the beginning when we had a weekend with some decent hotel room sex. I had to find a dog-sitter, which we’d never done in the entire lifetime of both Tuny and Tim. When I told her that, she kind of winced, in that way that you do when something unexpected makes you see how much time is passing, and being stunned by time passing was something my wife and I could enjoy together. I’m sure she was thinking that we were getting old; my take was that my sexual years were running out. Though those weren’t factually different, we were always focused on slightly different things. 

My wife and I had this idea that we had to take the dogs for a kind of test meeting first, as if we were placing them in a new home permanently instead of just for a week. There were a few kennels, mostly set up as doggie daycare for vacationers and hence absurdly expensive. Eventually we found a woman who took dogs into her home, but we almost didn’t use her because it took her forever to respond. My wife found this more annoying than I did, but I was against the kennels, which felt plastic and impersonal. When the woman, Pearl, finally called us back, we already had reservations somewhere else, but we went to meet her anyway because she turned out to live on our street. 

Pearl was older than we were, already well into her 60s from the looks of her, but still attractive, with thick silver curls she wore long. My wife never had especially lush hair, and right after we got married she cropped it short for functionality, which I have to say I took personally, like it was a do not disturb sign. Pearl’s hair was amazing. It turned out she had lived on our road even longer than we had, and though it’s a dirt road with houses far apart and we both have long driveways with houses set back in the woods, we were still surprised our paths had never crossed. She had a gorgeous Doberman named Cici with unclipped ears and the shiniest, silkiest coat you’ve ever seen. Tuny and Tim went crazy for Cici, who despite her powerful appearance went down on her back and showed her belly immediately. Tuny, who is more alpha than Tim but not more alpha than most, trotted around the yard proudly before they all tumbled together, playing. My wife and I judge dog owners who tense up when dogs show teeth and play-fight, but Pearl didn’t, she just smiled with delight alongside us, watching the dogs become friends.

After a bit, Pearl said, “I guess I should tell you that I’ve been having some short term memory problems.”

My wife said, “Who isn’t,” and we all laughed.

“We’ve already written everything down,” I told her, “and there’s a measuring scoop in the bag of food.” I watched her consider this, and then she broke into a broad smile when Cici let out a joyful bark, and so I thought it would probably be fine.

My wife and I never did have sex that weekend. I think we both thought we ought to, and so we circled around each other that first night like boxers in the first round, hopping and nervous and waiting for the other one to make a move. At some point my wife found a rerun of a Westminster Dog Show. I ordered room service and we ate in bed, equally relieved that sex was off the table. Once that was established, it was a nice trip. When we got back into town, my wife unpacked while I went to pick up the dogs. They were happy to see me, of course, but in good shape, and Pearl confirmed it was a success.

“They really took to each other,” she explained. After jumping all over me, Tuny and Tim went back to Cici, getting in their last licks. They did seem to be doing remarkably well together, because after the novelty of a new dog wore off usually Tuny and Tim only had eyes for each other. 

I asked Pearl if she’d like to walk the dogs with me sometime, and she lit up, like maybe she was lonely for some human company. Unless a coming rain was making my knees complain, most days I’d take the dogs on a long walk through the woods out to a nearby river. The spot hadn’t been discovered by the family people yet, and we dog people kept it a secret since little kids don’t like being nosed in the face and or the crotch or having their precious little mud pies trotted over, and if there’s a debate at town hall over who gets dibs on a swimming hole, you know kids win over dogs every time. Pearl knew exactly where I meant. She got on her knees, which I envied, and gave each dog a good scratch goodbye. When I handed her a check she looked surprised for a second, but then nodded and slipped it into her pocket.

Pretty soon Pearl and I were walking every day. She had been financially successful, having worked in the corporate world in biotech, one of the few women at the time, and doing well enough to retire early. More than once I had to remind her to deposit that check. My parents were terrible but they died early and left me money, and so I always admired people who worked hard and made it themselves. Pearl had raised a son who was still in the city, but they were close. She never made local friends, preferring to keep to herself. Her house, which wasn’t showy, was still beautiful, and she liked to cultivate local plants around her home in a way that made her house look like it was just a natural part of the forest. I found all of this impressive. 

But honestly, mostly I just liked to be near her, and if my wife cared, she didn’t mention it. After our initial flurry of explaining our histories, walks with Pearl moved into a rhythm of just being together, watching and enjoying the dogs and the way the seasons changed the woods and the river. We barely talked, but we felt so close. I felt accepted by her, like she didn’t need anything from me and so I couldn’t disappoint her. We developed a habit of grooming the dogs after they were spent from swimming against the current and running around on the rocks, toweling them off and brushing them, letting the damp fur float down the river. I had a backpack ready with dog treats, dog towels, two brushes, and a spray shampoo that Pearl loved, and after we were done she’d always press her nose into the dogs’ coats to smell it. I personally liked them smelling earthy from the river, but Pearl’s joy over these simple things would fill her up, and when that happened it would fill me up too.

I knew I was attracted to her. If I’m being honest, at that point just being near another woman’s body was thrilling. My activities with some of my cyber lovers had reached a fever pitch, but then kind of peaked. Even videos weren’t doing it for me, and I started not to remember, or even really care, which body part belonged to whom. But there was something about Pearl that felt so alive. So near to me. I felt completely aware of her when I was with her, and something small, like the scent of her hair, or her shape outlined when the wind pressed against her, could occupy my mind for hours. Once, when we were sitting on a rock, the dogs panting in a pile at our feet, we were petting them and our hands touched. It was an accident, for sure, but I looked into her dark eyes and she looked back into mine and though by then we were no longer touching, I felt like something important had transpired. Like there was a gate at the garden and we had walked through it, consciously and on purpose, even though it was still a ways to the house. On our way home, I tried walking a little closer to her, wanting so much to feel her hand against mine again, that soft skin, the pulse right underneath, but either she didn’t notice or she wasn’t ready. It was only later, when I got back into the house and smelled dinner cooking, that it occurred to me that Pearl might have been thinking about my wife. 

Though there was nothing provable going on between us, I felt Pearl coursing through my veins. I barely needed the input of my cyber lovers in order to feel sexually alive, and I thought about Pearl when I woke up and when I finally fell asleep after hours of restlessness alongside my soundly slumbering wife. My whole life felt arranged around those daily walks, and the dogs that had been the anchor between my wife and me now felt like they were part of my life with Pearl. 

It was months before I was able to touch Pearl again, but our closeness grew every day. More and more I saw her shift into a state I had never seen before, not just in her but in anyone, where she was so relaxed, so playful and uninhibited, that it felt almost like she was a child. Or how I imagine a child would be since I never had one: elated and sometimes lit up only for me. Her capacity for joy was mesmerizing. She’d frolic with the dogs in the shallows even though it meant a wet walk home, yelping back at them and laughing. I think anyone else might have felt foolish to behave the way she did, but that innocence freed me so totally that I was able even to join her. I felt so close to her in those moments, and I think she did too, but when I dared to try to kiss her she’d dismiss me, sometimes awkwardly, but mostly with a laugh, as if I were just offering more silliness. I kept trying, though. If we were still and watching the dogs in their endless game of chase, I could stand close behind her, close enough to feel the warmth of her through her clothing, fully aroused, moving myself closer. I remember thinking of how in high school we’d describe sexual progress in terms of baseball, but that with Pearl there were twenty or thirty bases on the way to first, and reaching each one was a triumph.

When it got cold enough, we’d walk the path with crampons clipped to our boots and the dogs skittering across the edge of the frozen river. I loved the way the snow muted the river’s sounds, enough that I could hear Pearl’s breathing, the way she’d inhale suddenly whenever she experienced joy or beauty. It felt so intimate I was almost disappointed when spring brought the water’s noisy rush back. We developed a kind of modified fetch that delighted Pearl as much as the dogs, where we’d throw rocks into the water and they would swim out and bite at the ripples where the rocks had sunk. I took to scanning the river’s edge for pretty stones to give her, because she always responded as if they were a true gift. She especially loved ones that had been eroded into little hearts, and in response she’d excitedly kiss my cheek or give me a quick hug. The extended courtship that was happening with Pearl was like nothing I’d ever experienced, and maybe that was part of what I found so spellbinding. I had been looking at up-close videos of women pleasuring themselves to fantasies I had created, and yet when I saw Pearl’s wrists after a winter of gloves and jackets, I nearly swooned. 

None of Pearl’s touches ever felt particularly sexual, and I interpreted that as her allowing herself to display only what she considered the acceptable portion of her feelings, the deep friendship and true camaraderie, neither of which were an affront to my marriage. Sometimes she’d ask about my wife, never by name, as if uttering it might be disrespectful. But I was patient, and more and more she let our bodies be in contact, permitting me to take her hand before we got back to the road, allowing me to kiss her cheek when I walked her to her door. She let me, but she never responded in kind, never once reached for me. The few times I tried to bring it up, to put into words what was happening between us, she either looked at me with deliberately no expression on her face, or else she giggled and called me silly. I was forgiving of her pace, though as time passed I began to examine myself more closely in the mirror, the months now visible on my face the way only years used to be, each wrinkle a door closing, and a little bit I worried.

Pearl’s son came for a visit, and she introduced me as her best friend, her smile crinkling the corner of her eyes. It tickled me to be described that way, and I beamed back at her. Her son was as vigorous as she was, shaking my hand and slapping me on the arm, thanking me for my good fellowship. He joined us on our walk, admiring our spot at the river, our dogs, our life as it was. He was a city boy, but he appreciated what Pearl had, and when the dogs jumped on him with wet paws, he laughed. He stayed for a few days, keeping Pearl from me, and just before his departure he knocked on my door. He wanted to talk about his mother.

“She’s changed so much,” he said sadly, “If only you had seen her in her prime.” It irked me terribly. Of course she had changed. She was no longer the corporate powerhouse who had raised him, but that was her choice. She was living close to the land, influenced now by the seasons and not the market. He had no right to judge her. I tried to defend her, to describe the richness of her life without revealing too much about us, and he just nodded. He reached into his pocket and handed me his card.

“If you ever need anything,” he said. “You are my eyes.” I agreed, of course, but I thought it was absurd. We walked in silence back to Pearl’s. I watched them embrace, then his quick wave as he pulled away. Pearl was quiet a long while, and I let her be. At last she told me he had insisted she get a gardener and a housecleaner, neither of which she wanted. I hadn’t been inside her house since that day we first met, but it had looked just fine to me. And, yes, her gardens were wilder, but that’s how she had intended them. It was like he didn’t get her at all.

“People change,” I said. “They grow apart.” Pearl nodded and went back inside, leaving me standing alone.

It was days before I saw her again, and when we started up our walks, I could tell something had shifted. She was down about her son, and I felt so much tenderness toward her that I took her hand, and this time pulled her in close for a hug. She let me, and then her arms reached up my back, and we stood there like that for a long time. She didn’t look at me once we let go, nor did she touch me on the walk back, and honestly I’ve never felt more lonely in all my life. I tried to talk about it just before we got to her house, but she acted like she didn’t know what I was talking about, and though I’m sure she was feeling guilty about my wife, it still stung.

The next day it was like nothing had happened. Sometimes it felt like that with Pearl, that she was so present, so completely in the moment, it was like she didn’t hold on to the past. I felt forgiven, if indeed I had even transgressed. I was getting used to her mixed messages, not only because I respected her reluctance to betray my wife but because I felt the physical part of our relationship steadily progressing regardless of her acknowledgement. 

A few days later Tim was trotting along a rock and slid unexpectedly into the water just above a small waterfall. He swam like mad but was no match for the current, slipping backwards over the falls, his claws grasping at the slippery rocks. We knew he’d be fine but he was terrified, and I cut around to catch him down below, wading in waist deep to rescue him. He was shuddering from fear when I looped my arms under his chest and got him out. Cici and Tuny rushed to sniff him, all of them whining until Tim was safely huddled against my legs. Pearl wrapped him in a towel, and we both held him until he quieted. I took the opportunity to place an arm around Pearl’s neck. She reached up to interlace her fingers in mine, and we stayed like that, comforting Tim together.

Instead of saying goodbye in the middle of our road as usual, I walked Pearl up the driveway to her house. There was a gate, and I let us through it, even though it was hers. We unleashed the dogs and they clambered onto the porch where a bowl of water waited. It was oversized, from when Pearl was doing the dog sitting, which she hadn’t done in a while. The dogs lapped up their fill and settled themselves into a slobbery pile. They were beat. I followed Pearl up the steps to her door, and when she turned to say something, I drew her swiftly into my arms and kissed her. For a split second her back stiffened, but as my tongue explored her mouth I felt the rest of her go languid, and I held her tight as we kissed. I wanted to lean into her, but her body was so slight, it was like carrying an injured bird, so close to weightless you had to keep your eyes on it to make sure it was still there in your palm. We were lost in the moment until Tuny’s quick bark about some scent on the wind broke the spell. Pearl disappeared into the house without a word.

“You’re in a good mood,” my wife said as I entered the kitchen, the dogs dragging their paws behind me. My wife picked up their water bowl and refilled it from the tap. “Maybe I should come on one of your walks. They seem medicinal.” Her back was to me as she said this, bending down to place the bowl on the ground and stroking each of the dogs, one at a time.

“Sure,” I said, keeping my voice even. “I’m sure Pearl would like that.”

“And how is Pearl?” she asked.

“She’s a wonderful woman,” I said, and my wife nodded and left the room. I’m sure she suspected nothing. To her, and maybe to everyone, Pearl was just an old woman that I had befriended out of some kind of charity. But that couldn’t have been further from the truth. I allowed myself to think the truth fully for the first time: Pearl and I were in the midst of a love affair. I looked out the kitchen window, in the direction of Pearl’s house, and though trees and distance made her house invisible to me, I could feel her there, so palpable it gave me an erection.

With the cam girls I could get whatever I wanted given I agreed to the price structure. With the married women, so desperate for sexual contact, they’d be talking dirty and sending astoundingly explicit photos in no time. Even as a young man I was able to maneuver women with relative efficiency. Still, I came to delight in the old fashioned pace with Pearl. We wanted each other, the slow build of our physical exploration excruciating and delicious, and I was attuned to even the most tiny shift in physical closeness between us. Most days Pearl seemed willfully oblivious to anything except our mutual love for the dogs, or else she seemed lost in her thoughts, far away not just from me but from everything. I stood at the vanguard of our sexual connection, constantly monitoring it, and the moment there was an opening, or even just a weakening of her resolve, I was ready. 

I began to take more risks, kissing her more intensely, more passionately, even touching her breasts. After some resistance she would relent, eventually even sighing from delight. I was in a state of constant arousal when I was with her, though I had no way of knowing if she noticed, and I longed to know if there was something comparable happening in her. At some point when I was kissing her again in her doorway, I got up the courage to just go ahead and feel for myself, and though she gasped in surprise, she was as aroused as I had hoped. Still, I think my reaching for her that way shocked her, because she sent me away. I walked home happy, though. Each time I pushed us deeper, we’d rebound and it would be days before she’d open herself again, but I kept pushing.

One morning Pearl wasn’t there at the mouth of her driveway to greet me with her usual happy wave that rivaled the dogs’ tails. I headed up to her house and through the gate. Cici was already outside, her leash trailing behind her, racing up and down the fence as we approached. As I climbed the steps to knock on the door, I could hear Pearl moving inside. She didn’t respond, so I let myself in. I found her in the living room, rifling through a drawer. I could hear the recurring thump of the end of a record, the volume slightly too loud, and I went to the stereo and lifted the needle. 

“That thing is broken,” she said dismissively, still at the drawer. I turned the volume knob all the way down until it clicked the power off. I hadn’t been inside Pearl’s house since I had assessed it for its dog-friendliness, but it had been nothing like the mess it was now. 

“Pearl,” I said gently, “what are you looking for?” She looked up, staring at me blankly for a moment or two before her face fell into happy recognition. 

Her expression flattened again, then she shook her head and furrowed her brow. “I guess I’ve forgotten.” I scanned the room again. No one had tidied in weeks, maybe months. She watched me take it in, and I expected her to make some excuse, but instead she just walked to the kitchen. I followed her. She pointed to the wall, at an empty hook below a pewter paw print.

“It’s Cici’s leash,” she said, partly upset, partly relieved to know the source of her search. I thought it was weird that she was looking in the drawer all the way in the living room, but honestly I didn’t know her habits.

“Cici has it clipped to her collar already,” I said. “Outside.” Pearl nodded, accepting this.

“I hate that,” she said. Then she shook her head, as if to clear it. “Ready?”

“Sure,” I said, and I followed her to the door. I hadn’t seen her without a jacket in a while, but she was skinnier than I remembered. For the first time I felt worried. 

“I’m hungry, actually,” I said. “Do you think we can have a snack before we go?” Pearl looked at me strangely, but nodded, and I followed her back into the kitchen, hoping for more information. She opened the fridge, which wasn’t stocked but wasn’t empty either. She sighed, then took out a tub of unopened hummus. She looked in the cupboards, but there was no bread, no crackers, not even chips to dip in it. I thought it was odd for a woman not to know exactly what was in her cupboards, and that worried me more. She went to the drawer and retrieved two spoons, and we sat at her small, round, kitchen table. I got the plastic seal off the hummus and we sat in silence, our first meal together. I wasn’t especially hungry, so I took small, slow bites, watching Pearl. She ate heartily, until the container was empty.

“I guess I was hungry,” she said.

I mustered up the courage and asked, “Do you know the last time you ate?” Pearl thought about it, and shook her head no.

“I think,” I said gently, “That maybe we should take you to the doctor’s.” I lay a hand over hers, and her eyes glistened. She agreed.

When I went to pick her up for the appointment, I was surprised to see her son’s car there. They must have heard me pull in because they came out immediately, his hand firm on her arm as they descended the steps like she was some kind of invalid. Her son opened the back door for Pearl, then settled himself in the seat next to me. He put a hand on my shoulder.

“I really appreciate this,” he said. I backed down the driveway. 

Pearl was sad but as sharp as she got that morning, and when she came out to us in the waiting room she announced it was short-term memory loss. She told us the doctor asked her to draw a clock, and to answer some questions that seemed obvious, but she didn’t want to run any real tests.

“I know what’s going on around me,” she said, more to her son than to me. “It’s just the things I have to do day in and day out that start to blend.” Her son didn’t answer, so I told her I understood completely, that I didn’t always remember if I had fed the dogs or put out the recycling. He was quiet on the drive back, and then thanked me again. He’d be leaving first thing the next morning, he told me, and reminded me to call him any time. 

When I got home, I told my wife, and she encouraged me to continue to keep an eye on Pearl. It was beautiful, really, how my wife worried for Pearl, and after that she began buying little things for her here and there, an extra loaf of bread when she was at the bakery, a box of dog treats when she was at the co-op. She saw Pearl as an old lady who needed us to look out for her, and though I knew how vibrant and mostly fine Pearl was, I let my wife think this because I knew it would give us more unexamined time.

Pearl’s son came up for day trips here and there, and when he was in town Pearl was sullen and constrained. It was like he was only coming to town to control her, not to bring her joy or to connect with her in a real way. She never said it directly, but I know she was deeply disappointed in what was happening in their relationship, especially since it had always been just the two of them when he was growing up. I personally thought he was infantilizing her, but I didn’t say anything, and just offered a sympathetic ear when Pearl mentioned they had had a difficult conversation. When her birthday came around, we laughed because her son got her one of those buttons that calls 911 if you fall. I bought her a new record player, and we danced all night.

More and more I was making it all the way to Pearl’s house before our walks because she had lost track of the time or couldn’t remember where she put Cici’s collar. Little stupid things that were a nuisance, all the more frustrating because she knew exactly what was going on. I liked the feeling of pulling her out of a tailspin by locating the missing thing or bringing her out of her reverie, not just because it was helpful to her but because more and more it seemed like I was the most important person in her life. She was avoiding her son, who kept going on about how the house was too much for her to handle, that her memory was worse. But she always recognized me, always engaged immediately with Tuny and Tim. I know I brought her as much joy as she brought me. 

Once we were out in the world, she was her old playful self, so able to stay in the moment it inspired me, so that when we were together there was nothing but water and sky and dogs and us. I always tried for a kiss goodbye, and if granted I’d try for making out, always guiding us toward the thing I knew she wanted if only she could let herself free. I tried sometimes to tell her how my wife didn’t want this from me anymore, or how my wife seemed perfectly satisfied by our life, or how I was a good partner to her in other ways. Sometimes Pearl could listen, offering me sympathy, but sometimes she didn’t seem to want to hear it, either changing the subject or staring at me blankly. Either way, it seemed to do nothing to assuage her guilt. So I kept at it, and made steady progress, until more often than not I could get Pearl into the house, sometimes to her couch, and on rare occasion, to her bed.

Her bed! That silver hair of hers against the deep red of her embroidered Indian bedspread, its small circles of mirror casting spots of light on the ceiling above us. While Pearl didn’t love intercourse, and seemed to do it only as a gift to me, she did love whenever I pleasured her. This was the thing that was so intoxicating about her, how uninhibited she could be if the mood struck her. She made sounds like no other woman I had ever met or seen, and in that way felt childlike too, as if she had no preconceived notions of how a woman feeling passion or pleasure ought to sound, and so she could make whatever sounds came naturally. I liked to focus on her, but she always let me cover her hand in mine and move her along me in ways that satisfied me tremendously. She kept her eyes open no matter what was happening, always watching me with an expression of fascination, even if it was something I had done to her before. I felt that she looked up to me in those moments, like I was the one guiding her into new territory, that she trusted me. My eyes never left her face. Though she must have known it was coming, even my ejaculation appeared to be a surprise to her, as if she were rediscovering a wonder every time.

Once, when I was kneeling on the couch in front of her, so lost in what I was doing that I didn’t even notice the ache in my knees, there was the sound of the key in the door. We dressed quickly enough, but when her son entered, I worried that he might have heard us. I think it bothered Pearl that he hadn’t knocked, and it certainly bothered me. He greeted both of us stiffly, which I’m sure upset Pearl, then went straight to the bathroom like it was his. He was coming to town more lately, to pay her bills and reconcile her accounts, always encouraging her to get rid of things in the house and generally trying to take over her life. I left whenever he came around. He was nice, but more and more stressed out, and his demeanor made it hard to know if he suspected something. Even if he had, I couldn’t imagine him telling my wife. He seemed like a man distracted by his own problems. 

Pearl’s memory got steadily worse, and so did my knees. We’d always commiserate. We showed each other photos of ourselves when we had been in our prime, laughing about the ravages of time. Pearl had always been beautiful, but honestly I preferred her now. There was something about her silver hair and the crinkles around her eyes that thrilled me. You could call it mother issues, but it wasn’t that. Pearl felt like a treasure that only I could see, one I had to dig deep to find. She seemed to prefer the me now to the young man I had been, the young man in the photo who was almost unrecognizable to me. Even her son, who seemed so young, was older than I had been then.

That son started to be a real nuisance. Even when he couldn’t get out of the city, he was intent on calling the shots from afar, with no real sense of what was going on with Pearl, and it bothered me that she felt like she had no choice but to comply. I understood it, how when someone in your life wants something more than you don’t want it, eventually it’s just easier to submit, but I hated to see her worn down. Still, it was me she chose in real life to be the one who helped her, carrying the heavy sack of dog food from the grocery store, fixing things around her house. I continued to get more involved, with my wife’s blessing. I took Pearl to all her doctor’s appointments, which she never missed now that I kept a copy of her schedule in my own calendar. Her doctor even let me come into the appointments, and I always came with a pen and notebook, and so she’d just directly make recommendations to me. When Pearl became eligible for social services, I was the one who coordinated it, not her son, finally getting a young woman to come in to help with cleaning, shopping, meal planning. Her son wanted to know everything that went on, but he never once asked Pearl what it was that she wanted. I was the one who saw her as a person, not just some score on a cognitive functioning test.

We kept up with our walks, and our relationship continued to deepen, ending up more often in her bed, where we were most ourselves. As the left hemisphere of her brain declined, her right side was increasingly a marvel, letting her be present in the here and now, free of doubt and fully happy, like no one I had ever experienced. Eventually there were no more boundaries between us, especially when we were naked together. I've never been more connected with anyone in my life, never felt more loved or more loving. Her freedom inspired my own, and I held nothing back. If it hadn’t been for my wife I would have married Pearl in a heartbeat.

One day, Pearl and I were naked on her living room couch. The dogs were nosing around us, and it was raining so we couldn’t let them out as usual. Pearl didn’t mind when the dogs watched us or came near—she just laughed—but I found it disruptive, and honestly I didn’t like sharing her even with them since those times we were intimate felt like never enough. I took her to the bedroom and closed the door against the dogs, so we didn’t hear her son arrive. He let himself in without knocking, like Pearl wasn’t even a person. When we emerged from the bedroom, he had his phone out. I worried the pervert was recording us. 

After that the son turned on me. He saw me as a “negative influence,” and I put that in quotes because he bothered to put together a written letter, even though I was the one there on the ground, helping her and making her happy. He had Adult Protective Services come in to evaluate her, and they deemed her incompetent, which almost broke her heart. He convinced her she had no choice but to move into an assisted living place, and I tried to help her rally against him, but it just stressed her more. I promised her we’d still be close, that I wouldn’t abandon her, and she gave me Cici to care for because Winter Valley, where her son was dumping her, didn’t allow pets. He came to town to help her move, and I geared myself up for a custody fight over Cici, but he didn’t bother, like he couldn’t even remember Cici existed. When I went over to try to help, to make sure that Pearl had her essentials and the things she loved so that her new place could feel like a home, he stood in the doorway, barring my entry, demanding privacy. For the first time I realized that he must be casing the place, looking for what he could sell or keep for himself. He didn’t care about Pearl at all.

Winter Valley was awful, full of people much worse than Pearl, and it had that nursing home smell you’d recognize anywhere. The first time I went to visit her I brought framed photos of the dogs, of me, and of me and Pearl together, but Pearl had been categorized in some way that she was only allowed visitors in the common living room, and so I never saw where she put those photos, never saw how she was really living. I led her to a wicker couch outside in the screened-in sunroom, in the corner with the most privacy. I caught her up on the dogs, on town gossip, anything to make her smile. While we talked she let me hold her hand, and even stroke the inside of her wrist with my fingers. If I had done any more than that, Pearl would have gasped or whimpered out loud, and so I had to keep it strictly nonsexual. She wanted to take me to see her new apartment, and I was desperate to be alone with her, but I knew the staff wouldn’t allow it. She just pointed sadly at the doors lining the blue hallway, one of which was hers, and then at the green and brown hallways, which were not. It was such a tiny existence. She said it was fine, but I knew how much she loved her old place, her freedom, and especially our long walks. Without Cici, the river, and me, Pearl languished.

The new place didn’t allow cell phones, but Pearl had a landline and I had the direct number. We’d talk every day. Sometimes, if she was having a rough time, usually in the evening, the nurses would help her call me. Even they agreed that I was the one she wanted when she was anxious or confused. That I was the one who could soothe her, who knew her best. Then her son called me and told me it would be best for everyone if I just let Pearl slip away. He even said please. It was outrageous. Right after that they changed her landline number, and I had to call the main switchboard in order to get a call through. Though the receptionist was nice, he was also incompetent, always telling me that Pearl was busy or at a meal and never giving her my messages to call back. 

Winter Valley started a weekly social hour, open to visitors, and so I went. There was music, which Pearl loved, and we danced, real old-timey so that we were laughing too. Then right there on the dance floor she started making out with me, and I had missed it so much that I made out right back. It didn’t last very long because one of the staff members separated us, like we were at some high school dance with chaperones. It annoyed me, but we did get hot and heavy almost immediately, which wasn’t the most appropriate thing for a family hour. I took her back to the wicker couch despite their dirty looks, and was secretive about touching her, pressing our knees together, my fingertips on her wrists. I know it was good for Pearl, because a person needs touch. Both of us did. 

The next time I visited, I was greeted by some woman in business attire, absurd since we were in a place where people sometimes wore bathrobes, and she insisted I follow her to the main office. When I got there, it was an ambush, a load of unsubstantiated charges of inappropriate activity and the mention of a restraining order, ridiculous because Pearl was a consenting adult. They showed me out, hands on my arms like I might make a break for it, and I couldn’t even say goodbye.

I was choking on how angry I was. When I walked the dogs, no easy task now that it was three against one, I’d talk to them, out there by the river where the rush of water would eat up whatever I was saying. I admit I even cried by that river, more than a few times. That helped, just howling my anger out into the wilds, the cascade of the waterfalls loud enough that I couldn’t even hear my own pain. But I made it a month, maybe two, before I had to go back and see her. I told myself it was just that I wanted to know if she was okay, and that was true, but if I’m honest it was because I needed her. No one had ever responded to me quite the way she did, mother and child and lover all at once. My life with my wife was built on pretending together that we didn’t need a family, that we never had needed one. But my life with Pearl was where I admitted how much I had lost, how much I had missed. I had the dogs but I needed Pearl.

When I arrived at Winter Valley, the weekly social hour had already begun. From the parking lot I could hear the piano playing, and I waited in the entryway until the receptionist went into the back room. It was easy to slip by unnoticed, more proof of how shoddily the place was run. By then someone was pounding out a happy birthday song on the piano, and the room was chaos, pieces of a big, chocolate sheet cake being passed around on floppy paper plates, some of the residents in those dopey cone hats with the rubber bands under their chins, two little kids getting reprimanded for a game of chase that nearly toppled someone with a walker. 

I found Pearl immediately. Even with all the action, she lit up the room. She was handing out plastic spoons, dancing cheerfully between wheelchairs and tables, and then, almost as if she could sense me, she looked up. We locked eyes for a second before she broke into a huge grin and danced her way over to me. She threw her arms around me, jumping up and down. I was overwhelmed with her joy, and I swept her off her feet with my hug, twirling her around. She was delighted enough to squeal, and maybe that was my mistake. Just as I was setting her down, the director and two of her most muscled staff were marching into the room, like I was such a threat that I’d need to be physically restrained.

“I have to go,” I told Pearl, and she wrapped her arms around my neck, tears springing from her eyes. She pressed her face into me, beginning to wail, and I hugged her tight again. She begged me to take her with me. I wanted to comfort her, but just as much I wanted that director to hear it in Pearl’s own words, that she was happier with me than with anyone else. That she needed me, wanted me, of her own free will. She was still begging when they peeled her off me, still begging when there was one of them on each side of me, holding my arms. I could hear Pearl’s cries through the hallway as they led me out, standing with their arms crossed at the front door, barring my return. When I got to the car, the dogs barked their hellos then immediately started to whine. They could smell Pearl all over me.