Diane had seen doctors and therapists y’d said more or the less the same thing. There was something wrong with her nerves. It sounded like the kind of diagnosis written a hundred years ago and Yates couldn’t believe it was being handed out now. Was there a pill that could help? They gave him pills and she’d take them but none of them did any good. In an attempt to remedy the disintegration of their marriage they’d tried for a child. The baby had been lost in pregnancy. Even though Yates had prayed for the strength not to blame Diane, he did: he blamed her for his dead child. He blamed her for the waitress – he blamed her for everything that was rotten about his life because the rot spread from her. He’d wanted the dream, the perfect marriage, children, the perfect home, he’d been able to provide it materially and emotionally, he’d been ready, and she’d trashed it with her craziness. Maybe that was the definition of craziness – to trash a good thing for no reason at all.

He’d arrived at West 145th Street. Parking the car, Yates wound up the window. His was one of only four cars on the street – the kind of Harlem street where no one would notice if a home had been left to ruin and the occupant was a crazy woman who didn’t get out of bed. This was the kind of neighbourhood where Diane belonged. She didn’t deserve their home. There was no greenery here, no parks for the children to play in. The children ran about the streets, jumping in and out of hopscotch chalk outlines that covered the summer-hot tarmac as if the streets were built for them and not for cars. Yates took pause every time he saw these kids. No space to play, no future, no hope – what made him mad were the men sitting around in the doorways, doing nothing, when they should be working, they should be trying to get these children a yard, a front lawn. But they never did anything, huddled in conversations, as though they had important matters to discuss. It was a joke, the seriousness with which the dropouts would sit around and talk while old women, as old as seventy, carried heavy bags of shopping. Yates never saw them move to help, never saw them offer to carry the bags or open the door. He was convinced they looked down on work. Work was beneath them. It was the only explanation.