So we made up and this time we were going to have a chance. We were twenty-three years old and we had suffered. Even the Greeks knew you had to suffer to be wise. Aeschylus knew that and put it in the mouths of the chorus in Agamemnon, the play that Donald had given me to read. We had suffered and I had met some people who weren’t crazy and Malcolm had begun to make a small success in the world. People had begun to talk about him in his profession. They said he was a comer, they said he was after it. He still had to spend nine and ten hours a day inside of manufacturing plants but at least people had their eyes on him.

“I talked to my boss about you,” he said to me. “He let me have extra time to come and get you. He’s really a nice guy. I’m really going to like working for him, I think. It’s going to be a damned hard job though, Rhoda. You have to help me. You have to start acting like a wife. You can’t drink all the time and act like you’re crazy.”

“I will,” I swore. “I can. I want to. I love you. Come here, get closer to me.” We were in bed, waiting to get up and buy our new station wagon and drive it down to Alexandria and begin our life.

“I mean it, Rhoda. You have to help me. You have to do your part. I mean it about drinking. We can do it on the weekends but not during the week.”

“I won’t. I swear I won’t. I won’t do it at all.” I snuggled my head down into his chest. I was so glad to be in his arms. So glad not to be alone. I had a vision of the bottles of diet pills I had hidden in my suitcase. If I took them they made me want to drink. But if I didn’t take them I would get fat and he would never love me, never touch me, would be disgusted by my body.

“Don’t you think I look good?” I asked. “Did you notice how thin I am? Do you think I feel good?”

“You’re a lot thinner. You look better. You’re fine.” He lay back against the pillows. “We’d better get up now. I want to get packed. I want to leave as soon as we can.”

“Do you think I’m thin enough?”