The end was as simple as catastrophe. When Owen was twenty-two, his mother went from the kitchen to the garage, got comfortable in the front seat of the car with a lumbar pillow and her favorite family picture, started the station wagon engine, and opened the car window. The garage door sealed so well that it only took fourteen minutes for her to asphyxiate herself.

She had called her husband first. But they’d been through almost eighteen years of sporadic counseling and three brief separations, and he was used to her threats by then, and the fact is he opted not to leave work for her. Owen and Sharon and Sheila no longer lived at home, and they didn’t get calls.

Owen’s world fell apart when his mother died. It wasn’t so much her absence as the sudden removal of the foundation of his existence. Because even with all the fights and threats and estrangements, Owen had thought he came from a happy family. His mother’s suicide was an abrupt and undebatable statement to the contrary.

He was just twenty-two. He was a new college graduate, recently single after three years with me, on the cusp of discovering himself as a writer or a graduate student or a stud or all three. Actually, he’d been rather happy in our relationship – he’d only broken up in an impulsive week of wondering what it would be like to fuck someone else – and after two months apart and three unsatisfactory liaisons he’d been trying to patch things up when his mother started her car to nowhere. In the initial, crazy, chest-searing aftermath Owen made a dozen desperate telephone calls to me, and two fevered proposals of marriage.

I was moved but not toward a wedding. I first fell in love with Owen’s way with words on paper and stayed to appreciate his unruly passions, and I’d had several rough weeks after he left me. But I also had time to notice how peaceful the evenings were without his frequent attempts to discuss dissertation ideas, and how restful the weekends were without his plans for our improvement. I was shocked and sympathetic, but I rushed neither to his side nor to acquiescence.

And in the ensuing silence Owen’s insanity was first heard.

He mostly stopped sleeping. The dining habits of the whole household were off, so no one noticed that he wasn’t eating. And by the time I got there, for I did get there after a few weeks, Owen was no longer functioning as a man.

The house was a mess. No one had cleaned since the funeral four weeks earlier. The family had two cats and the place reeked of them. There was hair all over the kitchen counter and stove.

The refrigerator was stocked with canned drinks and the freezer held stacks of casseroles from neighbors. I couldn’t find fresh fruit. The potatoes had sprouted in their drawer.

I had to take charge. Somebody had to do it. I put nineteen year-old Sharon and eighteen year-old Sheila to work on laundry. I set Owen to vacuuming. I dispatched their father to the grocery store, with a list. Then I went to the bathroom and locked the door. I turned on the water, pulled down my jeans, and sat on the toilet. Leaning forward, elbows on knees, I sobbed for a minute into my own hot palms.

Then I peed and flushed and used the running sink water to splash my wet eyes and cheeks. I patted my face with the cleanest towel I could find. I think I even squared my shoulders before I returned to the family.

Within a day the place showed improvement. Postures straightened and glances were met. It wasn’t a profound turnaround, but restoring a little order to the household had a beneficial effect. Except on Owen.

Those first nights we tried every technique we’d ever used but he wasn’t able to come. I even offered to attempt a few ideas we’d heard of and not yet dared, but Owen was frustrated and self-conscious. We said goodnight but he couldn’t relax on the mattress and I couldn’t ignore his tension. We talked, caressed, hassled and wrestled most of the night.