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answering service and told them Mrs. Standfield had changed her mind and flown back home. We called the concierge and told him to hold the ballet tickets for Tuesday night at the desk. “At least she’ll be able to see the ballet,” I said. “That should cheer her up.”
    â€œNothing’s going to cheer her up. She’s going to kill us.”
    â€œHow long will she sleep?”
    â€œUntil five or six in the morning. It was a knockout dose.”
    â€œI couldn’t believe she just took it, put it in her mouth and swallowed it.”
    â€œPeople trust doctors. They even trust first-year medical students.”
    â€œYou slipped your mom a Mickey.”
    â€œI know. I did, didn’t I?”
    â€œWhat if she calls the cops?”
    â€œShe won’t call the cops on us.”
    â€œWhat if she did?”
    â€œThen there wouldn’t be anyone left for her to love. That’s what’s wrong with her, Sara. That’s why she wants to lie down on a table and get butchered. To have a different hope. God knows what she thinks it will do for her. Make her young again. Save her from the giants.”
    â€œShe ought to have grandchildren by now. Only none of us wants to have them.”
    â€œIt’s the new world. People don’t get what they think they ought to have. They have to think up new things to want.”
    â€œElective surgery?”
    â€œMaybe we should have let her do this.” He sat on the bed and took my hand. Such a sweet, fine, chubby medical student. I did love him. That much was true.
    â€œMaybe we should make love.”
    â€œNot right now. We need to get back out there and see what’s going on.”
    She slept until dawn. “Think how tired she must have been,” Kathleen kept saying. “She’s just worn out with watching us grow up.”
    â€œWe have to be more careful of her,” Arthur kept saying. “We have to shield her from our pain.”
    â€œBullshit,” Cary said several times. “Children aren’t responsible for their parents’ lives. If she hadn’t left Daddy, she wouldn’t be alone. She left him when he was sick. I love her, but she’s still a bitch.”
    â€œMaybe she wanted to get in on the modern world,” I said once or twice. “Maybe she saw all these free young women and she wanted to be one.”
    â€œShe was always free. A rich man’s daughter and a rich man’s wife.”
    â€œThat’s not freedom. That’s chattel slavery.”
    â€œIt’s freedom to a starving peasant.”
    â€œIt doesn’t follow. It was slavery to her.” And so on and so forth. We talked a lot that night. Since we didn’t sleep.
    â€œSome vacation,” Arthur said. “What a pleasant rest.” See, he’s a real funny man and after this, I definitely will marry him.
    Finally, it was dawn and she was waking up. We had put music on the CD player. We had made coffee. Kathleen had gone out to a deli and bought eggs and bread and butter and bacon and pancake mix and syrup. Arthur and I had slept a few hours, curled up in our clothes. Actually, it was the kind of night I’d always dreamed of. A family in crisis and me in the middle of it. Decisions to be made, sacrifices called for, furrowed brows, the quick darting glances moving among us. You drugged me, she was going to say. You are disinherited.
    Forgive us, we will plead. We love you. We don’t want your face cut off and sewn back on to make your mouth into a straight line.
    â€œWe’re sorry,” I said, as she opened her eyes. First one eye and then the other. “We love you. We did it for you.”
    â€œWhere am I?” She sat up on one elbow. “What time is it?” She pulled herself into a sitting position, shook her head, looked at me, then shifted her gaze to Kathleen.
    â€œWe drugged you, Momma. You missed your appointment, by the way. There’s