On Father’s Day my millionaire son walked into my freezing apartment, saw the tinned soup on the table, and asked how I was managing on the eight thousand a month his wife sends me. I told him nobody sends me anything.

And I had not been able to put them back. I sat on the floor next to them for about four hours and did not open one.

And then on the Tuesday I took eleven of them out of the top of a box and put them under my arm, because I had some idea of posting them somewhere or handing them to somebody, and I still do not know where or to whom.

PART 5

Thea did not take one cent of it.

I want that first, plainly, in a short line.

Because of what the first two days did to that woman. Because her own husband looked at her across a kitchen on Father’s Day and did not know for about four hours.

And because by the Monday at least four people in that family had already decided what she was.