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“I have to go to the other patients. I’ll be back when the doctor comes.” She nods, resigned. She has that hopeless look you see on battered women. God forgive me, because I am a woman too, but when I see women with that look I want to slap them.

She holds him like a potato sack. The expression on her face says, “Where does this sack go?” It occurs to me that she has nobody to tell her anything at all.

“Your kids stole them Popsicles!” he said.

My mother slapped me whack whack. “Get inside, you criminal lying cheating brat!” But Mrs. Haddad said, “You lousy liar! Hjaddadinah! Tlajhama! Don’t you talk bad about my kids! I’m not going to your store no more!”

And she never did, taking a bus al…

When we got off the bridge, I pulled over and stopped, gave her my handkerchief. She fixed her face in the mirror, looked at me with a rictus of a smile.

We were crazy, made each other crazier. We decided neither of us was fit to live. He’d never make it as a musician, had already blown it. I had failed as a mother. We were hopeless alcoholics. We couldn’t live together. Neither one of us was fit for this world. So we would just die. It is awkward t…