She does this every week, asks for a “private moment” with me. Then her husband, Murray, has a “private moment” with me. Then we all sit at the dining room table, and while they silently fume and avoid looking at each other, I dole out the fifty or sixty pills they’ll each need to take that week. I line them up in Medi-Minders, the divided plastic cases that keep their pharmaceutical lives, at least, in order. His case is blue. Hers is pink and decorated with decoupaged pictures of flowers she clipped from seed catalogs, seed pearls, pink mini-rhinestones, and bits of ribbon.

She yells down the hall toward Murray’s bedroom that I’m here, then takes me into her bedroom. She keeps her heavy drapes closed, and it’s always dark in there, claustrophobic. She turns on her night-table lamp and sits on the bed, and I take my usual position in the Queen Anne chair she keeps in the corner. I pile four lacy pillows onto my lap so that I can lean back.

Ethel crosses her legs and wearily examines her fingernails, painted a dark rose color each week by the traveling manicurist. Then she sighs and says, “I’m telling you, Mary, I don’t know if I can take it anymore; he’s driving me bananas.”

“It’s Myra.”

“What?”

“My name is Myra.”

“Oh. You’re right. Myra. But anyway, I mean it, Myra, it’s gone too far. Listen to this: Yesterday, he took the drapes in the living room—and I’m sure I don’t have to tell you those are very expensive drapes, I had them custom-made—anyway, he takes those drapes and he yanks them apart and he duct tapes them to the wall. As God is my witness, he tapes them to the wall! I said, ‘Murray, what the hell are you doing?’ You know how he answers me? You know what he says?”

She stares at me; blinks once, twice.

“What did he say?” I ask, finally. She likes when I enter into the conversation this way. It makes her feel that I’m on her side.

“He said nothing. Can you believe it? Not one word. He tapes my drapes open and then he sits down in his recliner and picks up that damn Golf Digest and says nothing!”

“Hmmm.” My back hurts a little. I change my position.

“I said to him, ‘Murray, what are you, crazy? What are you doing? If you want the drapes open, then open them. What is it with the tape? You just open the drapes.’ And you know what he says to me?”

“Nothing?”