“He’s very thin.” Frankie examined his emaciated arms and legs. He seemed to have lost at least ten pounds since she had seen him last week.

“He don’t eat. I try to feed him but he don’t.” The nurse attempted to turn his head. “Abraham, look, it’s your daughter!”

“That’s all right. I’ll just sit with him.” Frankie thanked her.

“We got the Marilyn Monroe movie. He likes that one. Should I put it on?” the nurse asked.

“Sure. That would be great,” Frankie answered her.

The nurse put on Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and began to leave the room. “Mrs. Helen is at Bloomingdale’s and I’ll be right next door.”

“Dad, I brought you the papers.” Frankie began to give him the morning papers while Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell were singing “Two Little Girls from Little Rock.” Abraham didn’t move. He just stared straight ahead.

“Can I sit next to you, Dad, and read?” Frankie asked him.

While Marilyn and Jane continued to sing in their suits and hats, Frankie opened the Times. She flipped past an ad for a Chanel fur-trimmed quilted purse and an announcement for the January Burberry sale, and finished the front-page piece on the recent intelligence from a prisoner in Guantánamo Bay that led to the change in the terror alert color code.

Abraham began to nod his head. “Dad, can I get you anything?” Frankie asked him. “How ’bout some water?” She picked up a glass and brought it to his lips. She tried to open his mouth, but he had forgotten how to sip. He lifted his finger slightly for her to stop, and Frankie sat down.

She distractedly picked up the Post. Half watching her father, half listening to Marilyn and Jane, Frankie turned the pages until she came across a photo of Judy Tremont in her museum gala couture under a headline reading “Socialite Dead at 43.” Frankie lifted the paper as if she could say to Abraham, “Look, Dad. I know this woman. Her daughters were my patients.”

Marilyn and Jane were now dancing in red satin evening gowns. Frankie continued to read. “Judy Tremont, a prominent socialite who cochaired the Museum of Modern Art gala this spring, died in a skiing accident in Aspen, Colorado, on Tuesday. The cause, according to her husband, Albert, was complications after she skied into a tree.”

Frankie looked again at Judy’s face. There was something so willing about it. She was desperate to do everything right. Not morally or ethically right. But the perfect Turkusion dinner party with the perfect seating chart. She would not have liked being relegated to the bottom corner of a paper devoted mostly to terrorist rumors. And she would definitely not have appreciated the references to Modesto and Fresno City College. On the other hand, she would have been delighted with the final sentence calling her “a leading member of the new breed of socialites.”