We lived together five years. Then one day Stefan left the house and he didn’t come back. Our marriage was ended. And indeed, why not? We had each wearied of the struggle between us. We each wanted to take a breath in rooms free of that oppressive tension. We wanted that more than we wanted to be together. I dismantled the flat, sold everything in it, left graduate school (always an abstraction to me), and returned to New York. I was thirty years old, and I was relieved to be alone. I moved into the little tenement apartment on First Avenue and got myself a job writing for a weekly newspaper. I fixed up the apartment. In no time at all the place was cosy. The colours all worked this time: no surprises between the can and the wall. I had a desk built that was just right for me: high enough, slim enough, manageable enough. I worked during the day, and in the evening I lay down on the couch to read. Often, however, I lost the concentration for reading rather quickly, and then I’d find myself lying there for hours on end, staring into space.

These were years when women like myself were being called New, Liberated, Odd (myself I preferred Odd, I still do), and indeed, I was new, liberated, odd during the day when I sat at the desk, but at night when I lay on the couch staring into space my mother materialised in the air before me, as if to say, ‘Not so fast, my dear. All is not done between us.’