“The point is, Marsha—and I’ll be brief, here—the point is, he’s losing his marbles. Okay? Plain and simple. He is cracking up. All of a sudden, everything I do is wrong: his sandwich is cut straight across rather than on the diagnonal; I buy the wrong detergent—like he should know from detergent!—I park too close to the curb, I park too far from the curb. He wants I should stop wearing the perfume I have always worn, it is my signature scent which, by the way, he is the one who first gave it to me!” She takes in a breath, studies me. “Ma Griffe, I don’t know if you know it, do you?”

I shake my head no.

“Well, it is a very clean and classic scent, but now he says the smell bothers him. Meanwhile, he puts on his cheap cologne a bottle at a time. He who wears his underwear for days in a row, I kid you not, I have to pry it off him! I’m telling you, I’m very sorry to say this, but I think he needs to be placed.”

I have no idea what to say. I’m too tired; I got very little sleep. I lay in bed reviewing the stupid things I did last night. Examined myself from all angles, like an EKG looks at a heart, only less sympathetically.

“This is what I’m asking you: Will you just have a close look at him today? Just see if you notice anything you could maybe tell your supervisor? This is all I’m asking.”

“Sure,” I say. “I’ll look at him.”

“You want some rugelah before we start? It’s fresh; I just this morning defrosted it.”

“No thanks. I ate a lot of pie last night.” Six pieces, actually.

“Up to you,” she says, slightly offended as she always is when I reject her offers of food. She opens the bedroom door to yell to Murray that I’d like a moment with him, turns back to look at me significantly. Which is exactly the way Murray looks at me when I come into his bedroom.

“She’s driving me batty,” he says quietly, closing the door behind him.

• • •

When Frank and I walk into the house at four-thirty, I hear the sound of the shower running. No one has ever used that shower but me, and it feels odd, somehow, to hear it working for someone else.