I spent the best years of my life making breakfast for that man, and I don’t regret one egg of it. From the very first moment that he walked into my life, I knew he would never leave. I could not let him, you understand, because without him there would be no magic, no trumpet playing in the next room. We had six children together. He named every one of them after some character in a book that he had been reading while I was expecting. He was reading and I was picking up dirty socks with the vacuum hose. Daisy was the first. He said, “Maybe she will be beautiful, tragically beautiful.” But she was only mildly attractive to most, poor dear. Then there was Gertrude. She came along during the Lawrence years. She died on us when she was just three years old. Caught a fever one night and never saw the sun again. Victor came after that by one year. That was the year that I swore up and down that my husband was having an affair. He only spoke to me on Sundays after mass. I would come home and find him welled up with dirty tears. But I never asked. It might have been Mary Shelley, but I never asked. Her words saw more of him than I did. After Victor was here, things changed. We finally had a boy. We were very protective of Victor. Devoted a lot of time to him. Gave him things we couldn’t afford. If he wasn’t around, we talked about him endlessly, just to keep him near. I had not expected to have any more. So when Catherine showed up, we had to cancel our trip to New Rochelle. But I was quit content with the world inside our home. I lived my life through the eyes of my children. And my husband told me stories about things that might have been elsewhere and otherwise. He played me songs about far off places. I was too busy to notice what was down the road. By the time Catherine was five, I was preggers with Benjy. I was only thirty eight, and not ready for an extra set of hands. My own hands were scrubbed too clean to hold anything anymore.