link

Your shell issupposed to collect the exit codes of all processes that it spawns. That is, you are not allowedto leave zombie processes around of commands that you start

Your shell should implement a simple REPL (read – eval – print – loop) paradigm. Your shellshould use “my_shell$” (without the quotes) as prompt. At each prompt, the user should beable to type commands (e.g., ls, ps, cat) which should be executed by the shell. You canaccess these binaries by searching directories determined by the PATH environment variablethat is passed to your shell

comparison(). In that way, this method matches an equality operator or anything of higher precedence.

Unlike the balance sheet, theincome statement is prepared for a given period such as a quarter or a year,versus a snapshot on a particular day

Capitalstock is, in most instances, shown as common stock, but at times it can alsobe shown as other types of stock, such as preferred stock.

How to Find Your Target Audience

However, if the strategy is along–short dollar-neutral strategy (i.e., the portfolio holds long andshort positions with equal capital), then 10 percent is quite a goodreturn, because then the benchmark of comparison is not the mar-ket index, but a riskless asset such as the yield of the three-monthUS Treasury bill (which at the time of this writing is just aboutzero percent)

Multiple Locations in the US

Your father’s in prison, she says.Oh yeah, I say.Interstate transportation of stolen securities, shesays.Hmm, I say.

Can youplease put your hands behind your back.” It was up to me tocalm him down, that’s how rattled he was to have capturedme.

send the ransom note, who would even notice if he wasgone? A few months later my father walks into a bank,passes his first forged check. Never shy in front of a camera,he allows himself to be photographed

Kurt Vonnegut told me to try Viking. Iwanted to stay with Little, Brown, but Vonnegut insisted

Of course, myfather’s father, he’d also be my grandfather, though I nevermet him

A young, good-looking woman.

After the years in the shelter it’s what Iwant, to work with children

Offered a full scholarship to study art atCooper Union, he moves to New York and falls immediatelyinto heroin. Within a few years I will see him panhandlingoutside the Bedford Avenue L station. Thirty-three, stillbeautiful, Jasper, I’ll say, what the fuck are you doing? He’lltalk of this job that has fallen through or that gig that driedup, someone who owes him something, a debt soon to berepaid

Before I leave Boston I stop by and visit Russell every monthor so. Russell has some problems adjusting to life inside—hecan’t figure out how to use the newfangled faucet in theshower, so he washes himself in the sink. He complainssoftly that the shower’s broken, and I show him again howto work it

Instead I locked my door, got high, slept until the sunentered me again. The Zen master says that we are adrift ina river of forgetfulness, which still, some days, doesn’tsound like the worst place to be

We start the process. It takesmonths—endless paperwork, missed appointments,inscrutable evaluations, foot-dragging all around—but theday he unlocks the door to his subsidized apartment, hishand still on the knob, it hits him—Ah, the key to heaven, hewhispers

Fine, I said, anything to get this overwith as quickly as possible. It also means you can’t get highanymore, he informed me, not ever again.No problem, I said, fully intending to give it all up.

Daughter Two: Buy him a jug, make sure he kills it. When hefalls, make sure he falls face-first into a snowbank, takeoff his shoes, lose the jacket. But...but...but someone willfind him, a samaritan, a Florence-goddamn-Nightingale.How to disguise the body as the heat dribbles out of theflesh?

SANTA FIVE starts, looks around frightened, covers his ears,runs behind mountain of shoes. Lights flicker.

hismeans something

Footprints in the snow meansomething. No footprints lead to this man.

I was in lovewith the broad, said I’d be right back, after I spoke withthe police. Dumb bunny’s probably still waiting for me,ha ha.

Santa Three:

Santa Two

One by one DAUGHTERS read thevital stats off each toe tag, and as they read each SANTAsits up briefly, winks, tells story, lays back dead

Salvation Army, each face disguised—rosy-cheeked, rosy-eyed, rosy-nosed—each bleating out a bleary, Ho-ho

The doctorwanted to amputate, he says, but I walked.

So how about it, laddie, brother,piece of my own heart? Are you holding tonight? I can’tfathom what would bring you to this particular bench atthis particular time of night if you weren’t holding a weetaste

You know it’s Flynn, my father growls, and everynight the same thing, and no, brother, I don’t have aspot, or a taste, or anything at all to share on this coldcold night.

My father will spend what’s left of the night upright on abench, down near the Ritz.

Unloading ships from other countries in Portsmouth, N.H.Richie Moore was my boss. I lived in Portsmouth N.H.before it became a yuppie town—rents were human—Iam a poet—I need a low rent place to live.

estroom of the library or the busstation, he can make himself recognizable, to himself, whichhas become a daily struggle.

I don’t think heknows what this means. I’m trying to put some moneyaside, he says, get my life back together.

It’s better if they don’tsee you shake—many don’t understand that a sip stops theshaking.

Circling the shelter inhis beat-up station wagon before dawn, he parks in theshadows between streetlights

He handed me somepaperwork, pointed to where I should sign. I glanced it overand noticed the declared value of the box was ten grand.Four suits, each valued at over two thousand dollars

They lost, but the lawyer offered them twenty dollars apiecefor the right to use their names for a business he wasstarting with a friend. Emack and Bolio’s. The sign showstwo hobos licking cones

As shelterworkers I suggest we print up t-shirts that read, THE HOMELESSPAY MY RENT, but no one else thinks it’s funny.

bitterness he always carried, and this bitterness is directedtoward Pine Street

My father will end up sleeping at Fort Point even afterhe’s unbarred from Pine Street

Sure, Paul answered, Ihear birds in the morning when everyone’s sleeping, I heartrees rustling when no one’s around.

A new map of the city has been created, several maps,actually, transparent layers, they can be laid one on top ofthe other. One shows only fire hydrants, another onlystoplights, another each school. My map would show theplaces one could sleep if one was or became or planned tobe homeless

I stop the Van beside an unidentifiable form asleep on abench, offer to watch the radio. Jeff knows why I staybehind, but he doesn’t ask about it. I write in the log, 3:05,_____ on a bench, the common by the bandstand. Jeff squatsbeside the bench, to see if John Doe is breathing, to see ifhe’s hungry, to see if he’s covered. Scooping bodies off ourfilthy streets. Who is our John Doe? What does this feel like?

The sheep may all be asleep butthe man must watch them sleep

if I leave asandwich beside his sleeping body, does this become afamily meal? Is this bench now our dinner table? Are weinside again? Is this what it means to be holding it together?Am I coping? How’s my driving?

Whatcolor was his blanket yesterday? Olive drab? Maroon? Lastnight it snowed, you could follow his footprints from hisbench to the church overhang, until the snow filled them

When they get to the top they grab him—(beat) Upside down, five-story drop.Held him by the ankles. Upside down.Son: They didn’t drop him?

We all need to create the story that willmake sense of our lives, to make sense of the daily tasks

he tells me his writing is going very, verywel

Noah had grandiose plans to save the world. Noah, it shouldbe remembered, was a disreputable man who heard a voice.The villagers, his neighbors, laughed. Noah, a bit of a drunk,was not taken seriously. The voice said, By what you makeyou will save the world. And so, reluctantly at first, Noahbegan his life’s work, an impossible project, somethingmuch larger than himself. But at night Noah was again filledwith doubt, and he drank to quiet the voices. The people inhis village spoke behind their hands as he passed, touchedtheir caps, smiled. The village was miles from the ocean andNoah was spending his days building a boat—Made it out ofhic-kory barky-barky.Noah had three sons—Shem, Ham and Japheth. Hamcame upon his father one day, naked and ranting, buildinghis impossible boat in a blackout. God had spoken, God keptspeaking, God wouldn’t stop speaking. For witnessing hisfather naked and drunk, Ham and all his offspring becameaccursed forever, to the end of time

I knew he was talking about my father even before he saidhis name. I was the one who was twenty-eigh

did apply for a job at Pine Street in a letter to Mr.Ring several weeks ago—a job as a counselor

Dear Nick,What does it feel like to drive a van for Pine Street—scooping bodies off our filthy streets to carry them to thewell run Pine Street Palace?—A gentle-old man—in our fully fucked up clothing linethis morning—smiled—as he said to me—behind him—“This place has died since Mr. Sullivan died. This newman is an asshole—he hires assholes and they work likeassholes—!”I fully agree—Up Pine Street! A Palace of Serfs—Respectfully—Jonathan

on the anniversary of my mother’s death, sixyears before

Inside, outside, home, homeless, the lines blur.

I invitehim in

We begin having breakfast once a week. As I getto know him I ask the basics—family, Social Securitynumber, last residence, work history. All spotty. The psychpeople have nothing on him, though he says he took “nervepills” at one point, and that they helped

he will be in bedwhen I come on, just waking when I punch out

Those who choose to sleep outhaven’t been as institutionalized—outside there are no linesto wait in, you have to make your own way.

He tellsme he’s in touch with Little, Brown, he tells me Kennedy isworking on his case, he tells me he’s been robbed. InSeptember I move back to Boston, work a few shifts, realizeI can’t do it anymore.

Some approached, sideways,crablike, offered support, sympathy, but this was merelyfuel for my shame

But I went to Boston, and stayed, and began working at PineStreet, which was and is a village within the greater city, aninverse city, where the majority of the townspeople, not justa few, are drunks or what we used to call idiots

so it wasn’t necessary that wewould meet

Closing lines—Nick—it is a disgrace that the PineStreet Inn allows cigarette smoking within its walls. Ashame. A pure shame. I am an avid non-smoker.Eno the Beano—27 Putnam—tells me you are intodrugs—if so—good luck.With love and respect, Nicholas—

watching my son at work. It hasbeen a very, very long 25 years

The past 2 monthshave brought the title back to me

Mugsy’s kids went to school with me, onewas in my class, I’d grown up playing with him.Bombardment. Geronimo. We knew them, knew theirfamilies, their struggles were public, a failing acted outdaily, daily forgiven. We could pray for them, if we prayed.

Are the walls closing in? Areplanets colliding in my brain? Did Captain just sing me asong?

Your father’s anightmare

And then there’s the Celtics, losing just across town. Lastnight Mackie had a la-z-boy set up in Rat Alley, watching atelevision hotwired into a light pole. My father stepped intoMackie’s living room, checked out a couple minutes of play—can these still be called the glory days of Bird? Step out ofyour room, settle into a discarded recliner—are you insidenow or out? Position your chair before your television, takeyour walk, find your coffee, by morning it all will be gone—no inside no outside, no cardboard box no mansion, no birthno death, no container no contained, a Zen koan, a frikkinriddle. A garbage truck hauled the tv away, another will beput out on the sidewalk tonight. But a la-z-boy, my lord,maybe not again in this lifetime

Wake up on the grass, soaking wet. Dew isthe piss of God. Another bullshit night in suck city, my fathermutters

ou might as well wakeup each morning shipwrecked on a deserted beach, all yourbelongings washed away.

his handsclosing in on a toothbrush. My father snatches his bag awayand storms out.

Ted Kennedy, lethim know what’s happened, this new situation. Kennedy willwant to know, the poor and the hungry are his constituents,both he and Kennedy care deeply about the poor and thehungry. We are put on this earth to help other people, myfather’s letter begins

A fine must be paid, damage made right,before he steps out into the cold sunshine without his hacklicense, a free man on probation

Overnightthe taxi becomes his room, the city his floor plan

He’s not homeless, not yet,not ready for sleeping on the ground, not sober.

Someone always comes along, picks youup. You have to end up somewhere, right? Damn near law ofphysics

He’ll come withhis truck and we’ll move somewhere, another room, ormaybe to Maine, with a barn.

Encyclopedia Americana

Richard takes the vicuna. We get high,and spend that afternoon, and it turns into the entiresummer, walking around the Combat Zone in our suits, andall our friends are in suits, we walk into Foley’s like a gang ofMods, in our beautiful vintage suits

These people don’t want to liveinside, they don’t want to work, this is the life they prefer,right?

Dead-low tide,the boat still chained through the salty ink to the sand. I’llrow out later, check the lines, the pump, maybe even spendone more night.

I first need to meet Crowbar,who perhaps owns the only boat still in the water so late inthe season

In subsequent years I’ll know to haul her earlier, bythe end of September at the latest

families inside

Summer’s over, the police murmur, buy a busticket or check into jail

Provincetowncan absorb nearly anything, nearly anyone who can’t fit inelsewhere, no such thing as too freaky, too lost, not here

All ofit fills me so I don’t have to dwell on what’s really in mybrain—a palmfull of pills, a gunshot wound, a splinteredchair. A nightgown left heavy with blood.

With other boaters you exchangestories of breachings and near-sinkings and total losses. Youtell about storms and how they’d been fought or ridden outor succumbed to

their revolution a glimmer

Some of the drunk guys, some of thepsych guys, you see them, halfway naked on a bench,staring at their reflections, open-mouthed—When did Ibecome a gargoyle?

I’ve been dating a guy the last couple weeks whothinks a lot like you do—that he is bright and can’t seehimself taking a mickey-mouse job. That the world oweshim a living. He considers himself a writer, like you, but Isense he’s going to wait until it’s too late before he reallygets to work. When he does try, wine and poor living aregoing to be his weakness, what ate away at his strength.He’ll die in some gutter like all the other poor uselessbums

In lieu ofdoing time he could pay a fine, not much, really, a fewhundred dollars, he could wire his father and ask for themoney, but maybe both of them know it’s better this way.My father, it seems, cannot stop drinking. Not on theoutside, not on his own. For almost twenty years, since highschool, he has identified himself as a writer, but he has yetto write much, beyond notes scribbled out on cocktailnapkins, titles for his novels-to-be. He’s been locked upbefore—a week here, an overnight there—so he knows whatthe inside of a cell is like.

The words he uses are “toxicamnesia.” Still bleary, he remembers none of it

checking for rashes or discolorations or anything weird,which I will report to the clinic

Spring-timed, the showers run maybe thirty seconds beforethe valve twists shut and you are forced to hit the stainlesssteel button again. When the water shuts off sometimes theman beneath the spray beside you doesn’t notice. Hands inhis hair, lather running in streams down his face, eyesstraight ahead—the sound of water surrounds him, you keephitting your button, but this one man is lost—lost in thewhite tiles, lost in the fluorescence, lost in the hiss and thefall

aken and not given back. For if you are notresponsible for your own father, who is? Who is going to pick

t’s his father, you know, the crazy one, the drunk, and theycouldn’t help but wonder what part of his madness hadpassed on to you, which part you had escaped. They wouldlook into your eyes to see if they were his eyes, they wouldnotice if you were to stumble slightly as you stepped into ashop, they would remember that your father too had startedwith promise, like you.

Get it straight, I’ve never flung aknife or shot a bullet at anyone. I’ve only been locked up fortwo of my fifty-nine years. I’m no jailbird. The nights dropbelow freezing and still he sleeps outside. “My toes,” hewrites me, “are being cut off.”

ome part of me knew he would show up, that if I stood inone place long enough he would find me, like you’re taughtto do when you’re lost. But they never taught us what to doif both of you are lost, and you both end up in the same

is clients are rich, away in Europe for thesummer, and these cars—BMWs and Mercedes, Fiats andMGs—sell themselves. But come fall there’s another cash-flow problem. My father takes his time notifying his clientsthat their cars have sold, waiting instead for them to contacthim. And when they do, often the money isn’t there, alreadyspent, and my father can’t say on what. He assumed theywere so rich that they wouldn’t miss the money, not rightaway, but he was wrong. In another version he claims not tohave kept track of the books, that he was born to be apresident, not a treasurer, and it was the treasurer who sethim up. But in the next breath he will claim, gleefully, thatthe entire “caper” made front-page news. A search throughmicrofilm records of newspapers from that time reveals nota word

Duffy, my grandfather will claim to this day, could sellsand to a beach. The cars start moving, and things lookbright, until the folks that bought the cars began returning,to redeem the new radios, or the custom paint jobs, or thewhitewall tires Duffy had promised them.

I was thinking of the childrenwe would have together—it was important what theirbackground was, that they came from culture. He looks mein the eye. It was all for the children, my father insists

Jonathan, years before he will become my father, isback north for another summer. For the past few winters,since he dropped out of college, he’s been working oncharter fishing boats out of Palm Beach

Sometimes I’d see my father, walking past my buildingon his way to another nowhere. I could have given him akey, offered a piece of my floor. A futon. A bed. But I neverdid. If I let him inside I would become him, the line betweenus would blur, my own slow-motion car wreck would speedup. The slogan on the side of a moving company truck readTOGETHER WE ARE GOING PLACES—modified by a vandal or adisgruntled employee to read TOGETHER WE ARE GOING DOWN. If Iwent to the drowning man the drowning man would pull meunder. I couldn’t be his life raft.

Iknew the three or four spots outside where he slept, eachone burned into my internal map of the city.

Ask me about him now and I’ll say, Housed. Twelve years.Subsidized. A Section 8. A disability. I’ll thank you for payinghis rent, unless you’re also a Section 8.

I would involuntarily check the driver of each thatpassed, uncertain what it would mean, what I would do, if itwas my father behind the wheel

wavered

In this story

Others find their way to the ATM after midnight, after thelast Dunkin’ Donuts closes. They rattle the magnetic door toget my father’s attention, but unless he knows them he’llfeign sleep or pretend he’s absorbed with his banking. Aftermidnight it’s hard to find an open lobby, a dry place toenter, and for some it’s hard to scrounge even so much as amagnetic card. My father knows Beady-Eyed Bill, anotherharmless weirdo, unlatches the door. The Beady-Eyed Onetalks out of the side of his mouth, glancing over my father’sshoulder to scope what’s coming. He fears he’s beingwatched, and inside this room who can say he’s not?Someone behind that wall is making a goddamn movie ofhis life

A machine speakswhile my father tries to speak, it doesn’t listen, it onlyspeaks, my father’s face reflected dimly on the screen

“They didn’t let me hold you,” he says. “Not at all. I don’tremember that they ever let me. They had you on a schedule. It wassacrosanct, it was absolute. They tolerated no exceptions. They fedyou, they changed you, they put you down. If you cried, no one wasallowed to pick you up.”

hat some of the longing in my life mustbe focused on that hole in the family portraits. It cannot all beconsecrated to my mother.

My mouth, so uncooperative

“Hasn’t anyone taught you not to touch things in amuseum!” he says, and he looks disapprovingly at both my motherand me.

And I am dierent. I learn French, never with the ease of othersubjects and never with pleasure, but I learn it well enough so that Ican still read a French novel. Very occasionally, I dream in French,and on those mornings I wake up ill: I vomit.

my mother pursues these interests on her own, she doesn’t ever goto college.

My mother sleeps. For as long as she lives with us, in her parents’house, she sleeps whenever she can. She sleeps very late every day,as much as six or seven hours past the time when I get up forbreakfast. I stand beside her bed as she sleeps

Other times,though, you might make your whole world, make a maxim, make anadage, dress for the position you want, not for the one you have,smile and the sun smiles back, ex and miraculous muscles arise.How odd that we are at once tethered to the truth of our bodies andyet, at the same time, utterly free to sculpt ourselves.It goes both ways. How odd.Act as if. As if

Theythought I was shy, but really I had lied, and then gotten tangled inthe lie, and I didn’t want to do it more into the microphone.

remembered a long time ago, dreaming of women touching me,many mothers gathered around me, here we were: Joy and Elaine,Mike and Elaine, Joy and Amy and Brad, they saw me. They said Iwas special. And in the following weeks I learned their names, and Istepped over their thresholds, into their house, this house, it becamemy house, saints walking in every window.

have clapped many times in my life, but this time was dierent.I clapped for Elaine, sad, strung-out Elaine, and I heard preciselyhow my singular claps joined the larger universe of claps, and wemade a single sound, for Elaine

can you nd such a sight, a synagogue all clean and quiet, smellingof bleach

A kid incostume, looking out to nd the faces that belong to her, but justbeams of light, oating auras, color that can’t be touched.

I felt terrible, fraudulent,but I also believed I needed to do whatever I needed to do to keephim impressed.

read Colette, whose sentences wereawless, and it was just too tempting, so I slipped some of hersentences in between my own, and then I did it again, and again,not only sentences but passages, paragraphs (pages, maybe? thepages in this book, maybe? I won’t say), so my work, at times, was acriminal mixture; I couldn’t stop stealing the words. “Plagiarist,plagiarist,”

“A contest,” I whispered, “for ction.”

“I like my auras,” I said. “They give me things.”

cannot cross over. Lauren Astands on one hemisphere, Lauren B on the other hemisphere, andthey reach across, trying to touch; air

I started to feel depressed. I started to feel like maybe staging aseizure. Certainly, if I staged a seizure while the editor was here,and then told her later I wanted to write a book called Lying, shewould pay attention

molded to their specic shapes, and I became their specic shapes, awhole series of shapes and smells in those dierent seats. When theblack lady got o the bus to get a soda in the Ho Jo’s, I sat in herseat, and I tried on the sunglasses she’d left behind. I was in herworld then, her eyes my eyes, a place dark green, every leaf a mint.

Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference,” Carol said.“Yes,” I said, making my voice very, very high so she would notrecognize it. “Is it too late to apply?”“We have one reader who still has time to review a fewmanuscripts,” Carol said.“Oh,” I said, my voice like Minnie Mouse, “who is she?”“He,” the secretary said. “This reader is a he. But we don’t giveout names.”“I would like to apply,” I said, still squeaking.“You may,” she said.So I did. I had a clean copy of the application, and where it askedfor my name I wrote Jean Levy, and I said I was nineteen again, andI sent in the exact same story, about Janey and her pimp Raymond,and he, whoever he was, my new hip reader, liked it a lot, and twoweeks later the letter came, and it said, “Dear Jean. Welcome.”

I could only speak of our God-given anatomyin terms like “you know where,” and “down there.”

I’d gured this one out. Certainly I couldn’t have my mothercalled each time; she would have caught on. Instead, I gave thenurses the number of a pay phone by my town’s trolley stop. Thedecrepit-looking pay phone hunched by itself in a corner, a phoneno one would answer when it rang. It must have rung and rung inthe nurses’ ears. I pictured the phone ringing in the late-day dark ofJune, and sometimes, despite myself, I would hope a person mightanswer—hello?—and I would have to say, “Yes. Hello. My name is—”Lauren. Lauren.I live at—But I didn’t live as Lauren. I lived, in those emergency rooms, asApril, Bobby, Maria and Juliette.“I am epileptic,” Juliette said. She showed the nurses her epilepsybracelet. “I have seizures all the time. I’m ne. Really. I can gonow.”And so they let her go. Sometimes, they gave her money for a cab,other times a trolley token. Whatever she got, she saved in a silver

I left for Saint Christopher’s, but when I came backhome, I was a dierent sort of girl. I still had epilepsy, but myenergy was Eastern; it was the blue petal in the inner chambers ofthe ame, it was hot, but it bent to the shape of the breeze blowingthrough.

my throat, where the littlethrob of sadness lived

“Oh yes,” my mother said, interrupting. She folded her hands inher lap. “I’m aware of that phenomenon.” I could see she was goinginto her impress-a-person mode. “The stress hormone cortisol andall.”

She read a book called The New Cure for Epilepsy, a book whichtalked about going o drugs completely and learning to breathe in adeep way

My mother nodded, but she didn’t like the idea of drugs at all

I waslearning, now, that at any minute I could go in a dangerous way. Iwas not a girl at all, but a marionette, and some huge hand—mymother’s hand?—held me up, and for a reason I absolutely could notpredict, that hand might let the strings go slack, oh, God

“Three steps more,” he said, and the next dayfour steps, and sometimes I longed to let the cardinal go, to open myheart and have him soar out, but I couldn’t. Instead I went threesteps, then four, then ve, all for fear and maybe a little love.

“The Jews,” my mother liked to say proudly,“marched forty miles in the snow without shoes.” When I was verylittle, maybe six or seven, I had taken to marching around our yard,barefoot in the snow, for no other reason than it was just the way tolive. Either you did it or you died.

Will is what makes the world go round. If you want something,push, pull, shake and scrape until it forms.

It hurts and you have to push yourself. You have to push yourselfrst to go out in the cold, and then to walk over a place where, rightbeneath, sharks and whales are waiting for you, and then to leapagainst your better judgment, when your whole self is longing justto nap. The place was called Dehaney’s Pond, and it was alwaysbeautiful in a winter way. Each December, January, February, reedscrackling like whiskers in the winter wind. “Spin,” she would shout,and I did it. The more it hurt, the better I was. “Leap now,” shewould shout, “with your toe turned out,” and I did it, even when mylungs burned and my lips lost all their moisture; I did it until I wentfar away, far, far away to someplace silver, and beyond pain

Before and at rst even after my seizures started, I skated at apond. For years my mother had been buying me books aboutchampions, the biographies of Dorothy Hamill and Estelle Drier. Athome my shelves were stocked full of fame, and when it came to theice, my mother thought I had potential

Van Gogh, of course, had epilepsy, which may be why he isthe van Gogh we know, a painter of tilted stars, low-hanging moons,elds full of owers and blue vortexes that take all sensible shapeaway. If you look at a van Gogh painting, you might get a sense ofwhat the world looks like as you go down

“You,” she said to me, all sternness, “need to learn to pull yourselftogether.”

Maybe during the day I would have a career, but Iwould always come back here, where they would be waiting withthermometers and foot soaks, and if I ever did anything wrong, if Icouldn’t get into college or forever unked Mrs. Bezen’s math class,no one could blame me, for I was sick and being studied by asurgeo

All the waiters had stopped, and all the people had stoppedeating, and the patio looked like a frozen place, a garish game offreeze tag.“I have my own Steinway at home,” she said.“How nice,” the pianist said.“And I’ve played,” she said, and paused. “I’ve played in ... manysituations.

But she had a small smile on her face, and, well, just for the sakeof the story let’s say she even licked her lips a little bit, and that wasthe rst time I realized how, through illness, I might be able to giveher good food

We didn’t have our lobster. It required bibs and tongs, scrapinggreen gunk from dark places, and my mother, it turned out, couldn’tlower herself to partake.

The room, despite her perfumes, had a sour smell, and the air-conditioning unit banged above them. The heavy hotel curtainsmoved in the false breeze. Slowly, my mother turned, opened hereyes. She seemed to be entirely awake, as though she’d been waitingfor me. She seemed monstrous. She did not say a word. Just saw mestanding there and stared, and stared, as if to say, “So now you see,”and I, well, I stepped back

I don’t like it,” he said, but you could tell, anyone could tell, hedidn’t know how to stand up to her. I hate to say it, it’s so politicallyincorrect, but I think if he’d been brutish, my father, she may havelearned to love him.

Here were my clues. Her postcards home. She bought postcardsevery day and scripted out messages, her handwriting a series ofcareful curves. “Lovely time,” she wrote to a woman named Nance.“Dear Nance, lovely time. Lovely island. We’re purchasing a secondhome here.” Or, “Emma, I’m painting every day, the colors aremagnicent.” And yet, I’d never seen her paint, and I’d heardnothing of a second home, but then again, what did I know? Did shepaint in private? Was there a second home my parents might revealto me? It could have all been fact. It could have all been ction. Ilooked at the names on my mother’s postcards—Nance, Emma,Shelly, Judith, Lil, and said those names over and over to myself,like a song. Like words might make it real

I watched her. Please please let her be pleased.

You,” she said, when I came home one day, “are lthy.”She slapped me, hard, across the cheek.I hate to say it, but it’s true.My cheek.

I felt her grip my chin, force my face toward her. “How manyngers? Think.”I heard some panic in her voice now, but not a lot, because mymother believed you could conquer anything through will.“Two,” I said, a total guess. “Exactly,” she said, triumphant.And just like that, I started to see again. She said exactly and theangles came back, as though her words determined the truth andnot the other way around, the way it should be: something solid

That was one world, and I called it the jasmine world. I didn’tknow, then, that epilepsy often begins with strange smells, some ofwhich are pleasant, some of which are not. I was lucky to have agood smell. Other people’s epilepsy begins with bad smells, such astuna sh rotting in the sun, dead shark, gin and piss; these are justsome of the stories I’ve heard

But during the last months of my mother’s life I devote myself toher desires before my father’s and before my own. She wants pinkKleenex, not white

“It’s too long,”my mother complains, and then I always have to grow it longer,there can’t be enough of it to satisfy me

I am transformedfrom a person who assumed she had time to squander to one whonow knows that no matter how many years her fate holds, there willnot be enough.“Are you all right?” asks the nurse when she returns to themorgue and slides the drawer shut.My hands are shaking with my new knowledge. I stare at her.“I said are you all right?” she repeats.“Oh,” I say. “Yes.”

When the doctor asks me if I want to die, I tell him I’m worriedabout myself, but I don’t tell him about the sleeping pills becauseI’m too ashamed, a feeling I won’t understand until years later,when what will strike me as more damning than my self-destructiveness is my capacity for secrecy, my genius at revealing solittle of myself—and thus the risk that I, too, could end up a womanas trapped within herself as my mothe

“Yes,” I say.“You’re always there, aren’t you?” Her voice is not even as loud asa whisper. Like a ghost’s, it’s made of air.“Yes,” I say. Even when I’m with him, I’m standing by your bed.Especially then

“You did this to me!” she wails once, her tongue loosened bymorphine. “You and your father are killing me!”No! I think. Us! Us! Killing us. Not you. Never only you

I can’t imagine remaining alive. I can’t conceive of a life apartfrom my mother’s. I know my grandfather’s death will bring sorrow,but my mother’s is too great and too impossible to even begin toconsider

The clock strikes midnight, and my mother and I exchange asolemn kiss.

he pallor of her face, its ghostlytranslucence, predicts that what I’ve always feared will come topass; it whispers that the woman I have pursued for all my life willvanish

e has been murdering myhusband and stealing my children.

From the train’s mobile phone I call and call my own number. Noone answers, and I begin to sob, curled over on the seat before thetelephone, my face in my lap

“Oh God,” I say. But I don’t say more. The irony is notacknowledged, if irony is what it is

She doesn’t tell me until it’s done, and by the time I y from myfather’s to see her, she’s back in the hospital undergoingpostoperative therapy. She opens her gown to show me her breast,and the position of her hands around the sutured rent in her eshreminds me of the familiar image of Christ displaying His bleedingheart.

. I tell myself that if I give myself over to him to be sullied, thenby the topsy-turvy Christian logic that exalts the reviled, I’ll bemade clean. I will if I can just do it willingly, trusting in theultimate goodness of God, and the way in which he sometimes takesunexpected and even repugnant forms, like beggars and lepers, likeSaint Dymphna’s father. How could she have been martyred withouthim? How could she have been gloried?

My father’s possessing me physically seems increasingly to be justthat: Each time, he takes a little more of my life; each time, there isless of me left

I nod, say nothing. But I am surprised, and stung, at how easilymy mother and grandparents and the past two decades—all of mylife up until the point at which he reentered it—have been erased.Cut out of the picture, leaving even less than my grandmother’s nailscissors

From the start, we’ve had to meetin rooms such as the one we’re in, rooms for addicts and prostitutes,people who exist outside the social contract. Does my father believethat he can take me home to his wife and children, whom I’ve meton only a few awkward occasions?

I want to see that I’m there, and I don’t resist anyreective surface—puddles, shop windows, the sides of the teakettle.It’s a habit left over from childhood, my mother’s sleep mask. Tobelieve in myself I’d leave her bedside and look in the mirror on hercloset door. I’d stand before the image of myself for whole minutes,just to make sure that I was real and not a trick of the light, aphantom that might evaporate like the steam that roiled out fromunder the curtain when at last she got up and showered

consider the houses behind me, wondering in which Norman Mailerlives, if he still lives there, and if that’s the place where he stabbedhis wife, if she was his wife. Or maybe he just waved a knife at her,whoever she was

Because I feel toomuch—I always have—and it’s impossible to live with my heartalways breaking, equally impossible to keep myself anesthetized. If Iwere to die in a fall from the breakwater, the last thing I’d smellwould be the seaweed rotting on the beach. The last thing I’d seewould be my mother’s face, like that of a clock: still, at, and white,marked with the hour of my death.

We look into the water below and say little to eachother, at in our separate torment, betrayer and betrayed

No one spoke. My grandmother, my mother, and I all turned to itscenter and to one another, as if participating in a bizarre rite. Wegasped, too, echoing the house. A web of re hung between us.Tongues of it licked at everything: the curtains, our clothing, ourhair. I saw ames in the lenses of my grandmother’s eyeglasses. Andthen they were gone, it was over. We fell into one another’s arms,weeping with fright, laughing in relief. When we pulled apart wesaw how, among us, only I, closest to the oven, had lost myeyelashes and eyebrows, the hair on my arms and legs, and theoutermost layer of the hair on my head. A ne white dusting of ashcoated me. It fell from my limbs as I moved.“Oh God,” we said, over and over. “Oh God.

She gets to the point without preamble. “I think they’re havingsex,” she says.The doctor turns to me, his eyebrows raised, and I lie as I havenever lied before or since. I’m a bad liar, generally, but on thisafternoon, wearing what I’m wearing, I am brilliant.“It just looks bad,” I tell him. “I know why she’s worried. But ...it’s just that ...” I falter. “See, I never knew my father. I’m goingthrough a stage, like all little girls, just later than most.”I pause at exactly the right moments. My performance is so goodthat I’m frightened. Is my personality so unformed that putting on adress is enough to change it? Or is this shameless, sexual, purple-clad girl—someone I can’t imagine as a friend—a part of me? “She’sright,” I say, nodding. “I am in love with him, but it ... I’m not ... I’dnever ... I wouldn’t do that.”The doctor looks at me sitting before him in my vulgar dress, andhe believes me. I know it, and so does my mother. He’s mine, nothers, and so I have what I wanted—what I thought I wanted. She isalone. I’ve taken her husband and now her only ally, the one personwith whom she can share her troubles.And I, I begin to know the misery of wounding the person I lovemost. Seeing her face as she watches me speak, watching the deathof any hope that was there, not just my heart but my whole bodythrobs in sympathy.When we get home, I throw the dress out. I run down thedriveway at my grandparents’ house and throw it in the garbage.Later, I go outside with scissors. I stand in the dark and I cut thedress up. Head bent over the garbage can, I expect to weep, bu

n her house, my heart pounds, my hands shake. The smell of herperfume, the glint of sun on her hair, the way that, in her smallkitchen, our bodies sometimes inadvertently touch, separated by nomore than the fabric of two thin nightgowns: any of these is enoughto make me feel faint.My mother and I are gentle, polite, and careful with each other, ascareful as only enemies need be. We don’t speak about him, wewatch each other across the dining table. As if afraid that she mightpoison me, I pick at the food she cooks. Whatever I swallow, I throwup

The other object of my anger is myself. The good girl who failed,the thin girl, the achiever, the grade-earner, the quiet girl, theunhungry girl, the girl who will shape-shift and perform any self-alchemy to win her mother’s love. She failed, and I must destroyher. Obliterate this good daughter with one so bad that what shedoes is unspeakable

It’s anger that frightens me most. I sleep to escape my rage. Not athim, but at my mother. To avoid owning a fury so destructive that Iwould take from her what brief love she has known, because she hasbeen so unwilling for so long to love me just a little

When I wake, often as much as an hour after he has hung up infrustration, the phone, still o the hook, is bleating in my ear. Nostrategy works to control this. I tell myself I’ll stand throughout theconversation.

I look at the pictures and my heart pounds with a sudden wildinsistence. What I said is true, then. I thought I was being dramatic,but he does want it all, the whole of my life. He wants to leave onlythe little soap-bubble skin of the circle for me. The scru of myneck, perhaps, the callus on my heel

middle-American comfort and normalcy, and this isundoubtedly why I can’t take my place in it.

Don’t leave me alone with my love. Whether or not I takepause, at last I know how it feels to be on the other side of that plea

now eager to encourage me along any path that mightlead me away from the father they sense looms ever larger and moredangerous.