Grandma offered to come for a few weeks, but trying to picture my grandmother in South Brooklyn—walking down streets lined with trash and broken glass; passing buildings with boarded-up windows and stoops where junkies hung out; or just staying in the apartment she would hate even if I tried to clean it up—was like trying to picture a unicorn in Prospect Park. Tell Grandma to stay in Cleveland, I told Lillian; things at the McAlisters’ were going fine. Next I rode the IRT back to Brooklyn. From the apartment, I called Mrs. McAlister and told her that I had just brought my mother home. Thanks so much for your hospitality, I said. Then I went into the bedroom and closed the door. The air was sour, and the sheets on both beds were stained. There were dishes with old uneaten food on both nightstands and on the floor. I leaned out the window as far as I could. The streetlights were broken, and it was a clear, cloudless night. I counted six stars.

LETTER TO DEBORAH BRODSKY, APRIL 1970: I’m glad to hear about all your changes. Leave it to Kyle to appear with such a perfect opportunity at such a perfect time. You’re a natural teacher, and this college sounds very exciting—though I hope you won’t think I’m a dummy if I’m still not sure what Transcendental Poetics is. I’m not at all surprised Yuma has settled in so easily. If his three-year-old self is anything like the baby I met, he’ll have half the students wrapped around his little finger before the end of the first semester. I only ever glimpsed Arizona in scraps through the window during my cross-country bus trip to see you, but even then I was stunned by its beauty.

I write this using one arm while a tube delivers bright red hemoglobin to the other. Such a happy color in such a gray room, entering my gray body drop by drop, giving me back my desire to look, to read, to eat, to speak. The physical realities of being gravely ill are not a choice you get to make: your body simply gives up on certain things and there’s nothing you can do about it. My coming to terms with the larger consequences of this disease has been a very different thing. Against all evidence, I’d continued to insist to myself that my recovery was only a matter of time. If not for Mr. Wythe’s visit, I might have continued to think this until it was too late; however, with his help, I’ve formed a plan for Jane and for the future. While it wasn’t easy, and I wish I hadn’t needed to, it would have been much worse to risk leaving Jane with nothing.