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room and hear Norm’s steady breathing on the sofa, I take the empty couch across from him. The kids sleep long and quietly—they look comfortable for the first time in weeks.
    I wait until the sun comes up before I feel safe enough to fall asleep.
    In the morning, Rosie wakes Norm and me by turning on the TV. “Can we have some cereal?” she asks me.
    “Of course,” I tell her, just grateful we made it through our first night alone. “It’s in the kitchen.”
    She hesitates a moment, then twirls her hair around her finger. “Gi, will you get it for us? Cereal always tastes the best when you make it.”
    I smile, and ruffle her hair as I head into the kitchen. After they eat, the three of us sit down to play our favorite card game to pass the time: five hundred rummy.
    I pretend to be engaged as the kids laugh and tease each other. There’s dust floating around us in the sunlight, collecting everywhere—on the wood floor; in the corners of the cabinets and shelves. Rosie and Norm look at me with lost eyes when I jump up from the game and yank a towel from inside one of the pillows. I open the front door to let air in and sigh. “I’m tired of being surrounded by filth.”
    Cookie always wants the place to be clean when she comes home, and chronic tidying up has become a means of keeping peace. Fortunately, I only have the downstairs to clean, because that’s the only part of the house Cookie will ever bother to see.
    My eyes are on the sink when I march into the kitchen. Dishes are perennially piled up and I hate doing them. My habit of putting this chore off until last is one of the causes of our cockroach problem, but I know that after they’ve been sitting for a while in the summer heat, this has to be a priority. I grab my bottle of Heinz white vinegar from under the sink. We always have it to clean with, but because it’s too bulky and heavy to steal, we have to spend food stamps on it. I splash some vinegar over the dishes, hoping a thorough washing will deflect the army of cockroaches.
    Upstairs, I gather our dirty clothes from the floors in our rooms, run them downstairs to the bathroom, and run the tub full of cold water. I hold a half-bar of Ivory soap underneath the faucet to create bubbles, then scrub the clothes with the soap and rinse them until they feel clean. Normally, I wash only a shirt or two at a time, but Cookie or the landlord could show up any minute, and if we have to take off, it could be weeks before we see another bathtub. After every piece I scrub, I stretch to relieve the strain in my back that comes from leaning over the tub. I’ll wash everything except the clothes we have on.
    After wringing them out, I carry the damp bunch and hang them everywhere in the house: on doorknobs, hooks, and the backs of the couches and chairs. Then I open the back door and un-jam all the windows to let the air circulate.
     
    E ACH DAY FOR the next two weeks, the kids and I walk with a packed lunch to the park or the Middle Country Public Library. The kids moan about the sweltering forty-minute trek and are relieved when we’re finally situated at the library, which mercifully blasts with air-conditioning. They don’t know that I spent the two-mile trek watching for Doug’s brown Chevrolet or any possible hint that Camille’s about to return.
    At a library table we play Mad Libs and muse through the Highlights magazines together. When the kids are quietly wrapped in their storybooks, I find myself living with my favorite characters in the worlds of Judy Blume novels. I don’t care that I’ve already read Deenie , Forever , and Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. Camille frowned upon me reading Forever —“It’s not for kids your age,” she said—but then, Camille’s not here . . . and I’m not a kid my age. Anyway, as I’ve told Camille, I’m not concerned with the sex. I love the story because of the romance.
    I also go through every biography they have on Amelia Earhart, my