Four days later, I found out (some intermediate test) that the therapy was not really helping my mother as much as had been hoped. I packed all my sheet music, and went back to New York.

• • •

My relationship to Bernard had been part of my appearance of a happy life and it had, in fact, made me happy. I found that I had begun, once I slept with someone else, to forget what it was like. I mean it literally; I couldn’t remember what my two years with Bernard entailed, what we did day to day, how we made plans. I couldn’t hold on to any of it, the way you find that you cannot remember a dream. I could still occasionally muster a deep, vengeful, passionate hatred for Bernard; I could still imagine taking the keys to his flat and going in and putting rat poison in his coffee, but I couldn’t remember why. I called him and we had lunch the day I was leaving, which I thought would remind me; I expected to love him again, or to hate him, but in fact, I was only a bit bored.

• • •