“I have the wallet. Dear, I have the wallet!” Helen pulled a billfold from her purse.

“That’s not fair.” Abraham tried to snatch it from her.

“You always think they come in and take things. This way at least you know I have it.” She put it back in her purse.

Abraham reached for Helen’s hand and turned to Frankie. “Isn’t she beautiful? My bride is so beautiful.”

Helen looked directly at Frankie. “This should be the happiest time of my life. I should be traveling, I should be entertaining.”

“Then travel,” Frankie snapped at her.

“You just don’t know what it’s like to be part of a couple.” Helen’s purple fingernails gripped Abraham’s arm. “I’m not like you, Frankie. I don’t feel comfortable alone. Maybe you like it that way, but I don’t.”

“Isn’t she beautiful?” Abraham continued to squeeze Helen’s hand.

“Let’s go upstairs, Abraham.”

Frankie watched as Helen walked her father to the elevator bank.

When Frankie got home to Columbus Avenue, she fed the cat and put her feet up on the kitchen table. Because the kitchen in her father’s apartment was virtually a closet, Frankie had always wanted a large “eat-in” one when she grew up. Frankie never cooked but she spent hours in her kitchen staring at the Planetarium. It was the only room in her apartment with a saleable view.

Gilda, her fifteen-year-old calico cat, jumped on her lap. Ever since Frankie met Helen her senior year, she had a habit of dissecting her stepmother’s every criticism like a high school anatomy student. As she stroked the cat Frankie thought Helen was once again probably right. Maybe she was perfectly comfortable living alone. By now maybe she couldn’t imagine living any other way. Except she always thought things would have turned out differently.

When Frankie was thirty and in the third year of her residency at Columbia Presbyterian she began dating Dr. Jack Stanley, an immunologist with a Ph.D. in public health. Frankie had just assumed that when the right man came along she would fall in love. That’s what she remembered her mother telling her when she was young. Unfortunately, however, Frankie’s mother died when she was twelve, so she never got to meet Jack or any of the young men Frankie brought home.

Frankie and Jack moved in together to an affordable apartment in Washington Heights. Jack, who was five years older than she, had an idea to research and write a book about the new viruses. Believing in both his abilities and their permanent partnership, Frankie offered to support Jack while he wrote. After completing her residency, she turned down a fellowship at Einstein Hospital in the Bronx to study Tay-Sachs disease and took a more lucrative position at Park Avenue Pediatrics instead.

It took Jack five years to write his book. Although Frankie’s mind would wander to her biological clock, she accepted his proposal that they postpone marriage and starting a family until this literal chapter of their lives was completed. Every time Helen would comment, “I know what you’re doing for him, so what’s he doing for you?” Frankie dismissed it.