39. Woman on Mott Street, New York, 1955

This is one of those permanent widows whose husband could have been just as easily dead ten days or ten years. Here’s what I wonder: was the guy really so great as all that? Or is wearing black this woman’s way of finally getting the world to leave her alone?

DEBORAH BRODSKY: Kenny Lowell was different. The first Tuesday he came, I could tell by the look on his face that he felt the city had given him a present. Not just Lilly but the whole scene: poets and artists scrounging dinner together, telling stories, dancing to Billie Holiday on my tiny turntable. Kenny was in publishing, according to him the only guy in the whole publicity department who read the books. Cass and Leon were history by this point, with shared custody over Tuesday night, so on even-numbered Tuesdays, Kenny and Leon went head-to-head over Woolf, Joyce, Beckett, and Hemingway. Odd-numbered Tuesdays, Kenny talked painting with Judy. All of which is to say, he fit right in.

He was vehement when it came to Lilly. She’s brilliant, he insisted as if anyone were arguing, just imagine what she’d do if she had more space and time. Imagine what any of us could do with those, I wanted to say, but that was beside the point. As for Lilly, I could see it was easier for her with Kenny than with Charles. She and Kenny had more in common, and since Kenny wasn’t a creative type, Lilly didn’t have to wrestle with whether she liked his art. And he was so good to her and so good with Samantha—or at least game, anyway. Like most men, he had no idea what to do with a baby, but unlike the rest, he was willing to hold her and didn’t flinch when Lilly took out her breast.

I guess he had an apartment up in the West Fifties, but he was never there. Our neighbors didn’t know what to make of him, but Kenny was always saying hello or carrying groceries up the stairs for the babas, so pretty soon they came around. I felt grateful to him—not so grateful as Lilly but grateful all the same—for filling in the void. Because by then it was all falling apart. Judy and I were acting more like dowager roommates than lovers; Leon was talking about joining the merchant marine or making tracks for Morocco; and Renaldo had started using, though I didn’t know it yet or at least wasn’t ready to connect it to his lashing out at odd moments or disappearing for days at a time. Lilly and Kenny were my last bit of stable ground.