It was mystifying. Eden wasn’t a virgin, but she never felt she was having a heart attack when she climaxed.

What’s with him? Well, he bought a house. In Massachusetts, crazy because of the taxes, but he fell in love with it.

It was with a great sense of relief that Bernice Franklin walked away from her latest “date.” What had possessed her to think she couldn’t live alone for the rest of her life? She’d get a cat; she’d be fine.

Skills. She had them. At middle management level. She could parlay what she did into another profession—like prison guard? What about going back to school to get her Ph.D. School boards like to hire someone with a doctorate.

The photo he had used for this new dating site, his umpteenth effort, was professionally taken. His glasses were missing and his hair was groomed. His mother called it Einstein hair.

Oh, there were men. Her age. Let the swiping begin. But when she had a date, she found all she did was listen to how important the men were, what their out-sized hopes for the future were and who they knew and could name-drop.

Frank was much better looking than she remembered. But then her glimpses of him were mainly fleeting, as Eden and she always went up to Eden’s bedroom to gossip and Snapchat with friends out of anyone’s, meaning, parents’, hearing.

She laughed at those simple fears. Now. But she hadn’t when Federal agents showed up at their Tuscan orange door in a quiet street away from traffic but near enough to walk to the train.

“I want to be blessed with my fucking twenty thousand dollars!” Eden shot back before she slammed down the phone.

In preparation for a brighter future, Frank kept a close eye on his finances.  Living in a modest and not especially well-located apartment, he was able to put a fourth of his salary away every month—so far. That was thanks to no medical emergencies and his very generous benefits package.  The money accruing in various investment plans would go toward what he really wanted to do with his life.  Yet, here he was, about to turn thirty and he had absolutely no idea whither he should wander. 

All the advice columns said give yourself a year before you make any rash decisions after a life-changing event. And within that year since the divorce was final, Jerry was dead. Was that another life-changing event? Did she have to wait another year?

Heidi had been married to their father exactly six months and seven days. Now he was dead, with the black widow getting everything. Where’s the payoff for being Dr. Frank’s children? He was there for everyone but not them. Patients came first. That was the lesson they learned very early in life. Hey, Dad, money isn’t love.

She was definitely not enough woman for Jerry. Boy, was he—needy? Up for it? Wanting it?

Dead. That’s what he was. Dead.

I don’t think I ever really meant to be a lawyer. Maybe some people grow up thinking, yes, I want to be a lawyer, crazy as that might sound. But the rest of us just sort of fall into it when our choices are limited. I was an English major in college, University of Wisconsin, Madison, thank you very much, to get away from the East Coast hot house and its rising expectations. And, okay, maybe my parents also. It was four years of freezing my ass off in the winter, but otherwise having an expansive time and finding out how the other half lives, the half in fly-over country.

The upshot of the divorce: I ended up impoverished, what do you think? I was totally blindsided, didn’t get a lawyer immediately because I was sure we could work it out, as we’d always done before, because Heidi wasn’t the first. So-bank account gone, despite court order, house on the market before I could wonder if anyone wanted Grandma’s dishes. (No one did.)

Why is every single day cluttered with things I don’t want to do? Why do the clothes need washing and folding and being put away? Why does the dishwasher need emptying? Why is there crap on the floor that wasn’t there yesterday, and why do I have to get out the vacuum cleaner to take care of it?

Our country was never what you thought it was. There was racism and isolationism and all sorts of discrimination, all those isms we were actually on the path to overcoming. And then— Well, we’re just not anymore, are we?

Happy birthday to me.

Where is the likes of Victor Borge now! Well, okay, we still have Mel Brooks and his brilliant movies and Carl Reiner’s laugh-out-loud “Enter Laughing.” But really, there would be long stretches before I found something to laugh at. Perhaps that’s why I married my husband. He has provided a constant, if perhaps unwitting, source of amusement.

Now, my husband is a rather mild-mannered man. And yet, when he gets frustrated, I recede into the background and pretend I have no idea who he is. Take, for example, our TGV ride from Paris to Nantes.