In a few days she wanted a divorce. This was a relief, a kind of solution. Then she changed her mind, apparently after a conversation with a close friend, another wife, the gist of which, as I heard it later, was: “If you want him, you’ll have to take him as he is. What’s happened to you happens to us all; just wait a little.” Molly called off the action. What she did was move out of our apartment. I came home one afternoon and found that she and our kids were gone—to my parents’ home in New Rochelle. My mother loved Molly, and she was my mother.

We were now separated; Constance and Molly were in open, deadly conflict; and I was where I deserved to be, alone in the wreckage, shamefaced.