She threw the gearshift into second. The car lurched; that gentle purr turned into a roar, dropping and rising again as she moved through the gears up to fifth. The trees along the roadside became a hurtling blur. As we neared a turn in the road, my mother shifted back into fourth and eased off the accelerator. The car drifted back down to normal speed, and the engine resumed its quiet hum. My mother giggled like a schoolgirl, her eyes bright with exhilaration.

The hard part of the job was not the work itself. Mrs. Haltom wanted to be a good person, I think—or at least, she wanted to be seen as such. Looking back now, the thought of her in those years fills me with a far greater measure of pity than resentment. Was she entitled, selfish, manipulative, spiteful? Yes, she was all of those things. But could it be the case that those outward flaws were merely symptoms of a deeper malaise? I think they were.

Most of us imagine that, were we to be as fortunate as she was—to have millions in the bank, to live in a sprawling manse on Belle Meade Boulevard, to have servants at our beck and call, to fly around in a private jet and buy whatever we liked without even looking at the price tags, to have a social calendar filled with grand events in opulent settings—most of us imagine this would be more than enough to make us happy, or, at least, content. But what if we were to have all of these things and discover that they weren’t enough?

I, for one, could not then conceive how anyone could have all the Haltoms did and be unhappy. But I have never known anyone as unhappy as Mrs. Haltom—at least, no one who seemed to have less reason to be so.

It might have been easier if she were simply awful. But she had moments of what felt like real tenderness, and would precede or follow an eruption of temper with gestures of touching generosity. Once, the day after calling my mother “useless” for neglecting to pay a bill (my mother swore she’d never seen the bill in the first place), Mrs. Haltom surprised her with a “girls’ day” at the spa. Another time, she gave my mother an expensive clutch purse she’d bought in Paris (“It doesn’t match anything I own,” she said), only to berate her the next day for taking too long on a trip to the bank. My mother never learned to shake off the feelings of worthlessness that followed phrases like “After all I’ve done for you.”

Still, my mother remained loyal. “I think she just gets lonely when Jim’s out of town,” she would say, or “She doesn’t mean the things she says when she’s tipsy.”