Charlotte still dressed herself each morning, a matching blouse and skirt, a sweater against the chill which came so oddly now from inside herself, and slippers for feet too swollen for shoes. She brushed her hair each morning, too, into a fine, pale cloud about her head. Pretty hair, the aides said. Such pretty, pretty hair.

Yet she was in there with all the others. They were all in there together, the diabetic, the palsied, the brittle-boned, the broken-hearted husbands who sobbed into the night for their missing wives. The most excruciating, mournful sobs that caused Charlotte to cry out as she lay in bed, "Why can't we sleep? Oh why can't we all be medicated? What harm would it do?" Because they were all in there together. She was in there with the others. The infirm. The incontinent. The demented.

Every day Charlotte told her story to people who took her blood pressure and fetched her pills and served her lunch. She told her story every day to people who were not paid to listen to stories but who listened to her story nonetheless.

as a young girl, and I desperately wanted a Bermuda honeymoon. I don't remember why exactly, except that I had heard about the color of the water. Or perhaps a friend of mine whom I was envious of had already gone. Young girls are silly at that age.

I had the loveliest trousseau. Silk lingerie, of course, and lovely lace peignoirs, and party dresses, and the prettiest little white kid slippers to wear with them and dance and dance. I had ten new dresses, three pink, two yellow, and five white, all of lawn, bought just for my Bermuda honeymoon--and maybe it would be hot enough in Lexington that summer for me to wear them again--and maybe it wouldn't! And if it were hot enough the following summer, the dresses just might be out of style by then, mightn't they, and I would get new ones!

After the wedding, my husband and I traveled by steam ship from New York. Our wedding night was not consummated, as I had not my "sea legs." That first night out, I was dreadfully ill. Dreadfully. I lay awake all night, just the queasiest young bride!

I finally fell asleep at dawn and when I awoke at noon, I felt much better, but of course one couldn't very well consummate a marriage in the middle of the day.

It took two days to get to Bermuda. I remember being so impatient! I kept running to the rail to search the horizon for a sign of land. And each time, my bridegroom thought I was about to be ill!

Bermuda rose before me a gentle swell of emerald green against the aquamarine sea, ringed with white sand. As the ship drew nearer, first trees appeared, then buildings, then streets, and finally the dock where we were to land and the men who would moor us, the sound of their shouts as they worked telling us we had at last arrived.

Do you know, James and I walked along the beach without our shoes? I watched our feet as we walked; it thrilled me to see our naked feet together in the daylight, sinking into the wet sand and washed clean under the warm, quivering water.

And the flowers! You cannot imagine the flowers, so many of them, everywhere you looked, of every variety and every color and the sweetest fragrances. As we walked hand-in-hand along the white road--the roads were white as bleached linen!--I would point with my free hand and ask James, "What is this one called?" and he would point with his free hand to the opposite side of the road and ask me, "What is the name of that one, do you know?" and of course neither one of us knew any of their names at all, but it didn't matter a bit because they were so beautiful.

By midday, it would be very hot, and James and I would lie down together on our bed with nothing on but our underthings. Lying there with James, a warm breeze from the open window drifting across us, the sweet fragrance of flowers wafting over us, I felt so happy I didn't care if I never fell asleep or if I slept forever, so long as I lay next to James.

The houses were quite remarkable, cottages really, of a white stone so smooth you wanted to run your hands over it to find any imperfection, no matter how slight. The houses had no ornamentation, just green shutters over the windows to shield the occupants from the sun. As James and I were exploring one morning, we came upon one of these houses perched high on a cliff, surrounded by vegetation with leaves larger and greener than you can ever imagine. That night, as we lay in bed, James asked me if I would like to live with him in a white stone cottage overlooking the turquoise sea, flowers and fruit within reach of my hand every morning, and do you know what I said? I said, "Oh, but I couldn't! Papa's bought us a house on Waltham Street."

I didn't know what James meant, you see. He wasn't asking me to live in a cottage in Bermuda overlooking the sea. He was just asking me to imagine it. That would have been enough.

Copyright 2004 by Elizabeth Gauffreau