I wander from room to room, into the bedroom to change my clothes, through the hallway in my Tyrolean hiking boots, to the living room doorway─black cotton backdrop stapled to one wall, mattress dressed up in orange and red Indian print beneath, green and blue shag Danish rug on the floor, morning snow outside the picture window. I lie face down on the orange rough wool sofa, then on my side, rearranging my legs to slightly bent, hips curving.

“Where are you?” I whisper. “If you love me, you’d be here. Come here if you really love me. I peak into the bedroom. He’s sleeping, his pale fat leering at me. I hate and love him. I take off my clothes and slide into bed. I know if he wakes up from my warm body pressing against his, he won’t be angry. But then he’ll want to fuck me, and I’m OK with that today; I’m tired of zig-zag flying and I figure fucking will help me land and glide into a gentle stop.

Leaving home. Green car filled with boxes and mismatched suitcases from my father’s collection. I was always homesick at camp. My first summer at Manitou-Wabing I cried every night for a week straight. I kept everyone awake, including Loren Deckelbaum who was the sweetest kid I ever met, then and ever since. In the second week, I took the train home and then I cried so hard to return that my mother drove me to Windsor Station and put me on the train back to camp. I pulled my two duffle bags across the main field to our cabin, opened the screen door and announced “I’m back." No one looked up, except for Lauren who welcomed me with that gentle smile of hers. For the rest of the summer, I cried inconsolably for my grandfather. Now I’m homesick even before the sign that says Welcome to Ontario.

“What?” Abie says as I turn my head and stare out at the flat land passing by, one horizontal landscape perfectly aligned with the next.
“You know it’s not that I hated them,” I say.
“Speak English,” he says, “What’re you talking about?'
“My parents. It’s not that I hated them or like I didn’t feel loved, you know. It was expressions of love. Expressions, that I needed.”
What’d you expect? They’re goys.”
“They are not goys and anyhow I hate that word.
“You wouldn’t know the difference,” Abie says and turns up the radio.
“You know I threw out all my writing from the top drawer in my grandfather’s desk before we got married. I figured I should start fresh. There was a paper with burnt edges that my cousin Linda wrote on with invisible ink.
“So how’d you see it then?'
“You had to light a candle and heat up the paper from underneath without burning it.”
"You’re burning me, Abie, you know that?”
I’m a self-made orphan.
"You never left your acting behind, did you? Packed up all your melodrama to bring to Guelph with you."
“Well you should be fine, you’ve got your TV and Gerka knife."
"You’ll thank me one day,” he says.

I don’t thank him. Ever. He’s in love with his TV. He flips channels and calls out for tea with lemon, for pretzels, sometimes he announces shows. “Hey, you’ll really like this,” he says and delivers a sport caster’s play by play. Usually I say I’m busy, I’m studying, working on a term paper. I despise that TV. Abie skips classes. He drops out of courses. I take my mother’s calls in the kitchen.
“Tell her my father is increasing what he gives us,” he whispers, his breath hot in my ear.
“Tell her,” he says. “my father is increasing to forty a week.
I cover the mouth piece, jerk my shoulder up, and turn around.
“Tell her,” he says more loudly this time. And then he opens the fridge which is empty and points inside.

My father has this deal. He’ll help us out, alright, but only equal to what Abie’s father gives. At first, Abie’s father gave us twenty-five dollars a week, but now he sends cash presents on holidays. I know Abie won’t let up until I say something, and later he’s going to tell me my father forgets where he came from and what he married into. And I’m going to say, “And how are you any different?” My grandfather on my father’s side was a shoemaker. Abie’s father sells kosher chickens.

“The trouble with you,” I going to say, “is you feel entitled." I think it’s important for him to know. Before we left Montreal, Abie phoned Dr. Wisebord. "Is she going to be alright?" he asked. "I've done everything I could," Dr. Wisebord said, which Abie translated as she's crazy as a loon. There's an old black and white movie where the husband drives his wife crazy and has her committed. I don't remember the name of the film or who starred in it. My selective memory didn't swoop down and snatch those particulars. I guess it was too close to home.