In Sleepless Nights, Elizabeth wrote that she was reminded of her father by the “handsome” workmen who came to the house she owned in Maine, with their “sunburned faces . . . their strong fingers yellowed by nicotine”—men who awakened “a flirtatiousness” on her part. What, she wondered, “would it be like to be married to such a man, to see him coming out of the shower, to sit at dinner at six o’clock, turn off the lights at nine, embrace, make love frequently in honor of a long day of working, get up at five, visit with the relations on Sunday, never leave town.” For both her parents, sleeping in their separate beds, “night is good because it leads to the day, to shoes and stockings, to coffee, to drudgery and repetition.” These are people, she is telling us, who do not question their lives or obsess about the past or the future.