"I have a lover! I have a lover!" she kept repeating to herself, reveling in the thought as though she were beginning a second puberty.
--Flaubert, Madame Bovary

In memory of my father, Joe Perrotta

The young mothers were telling each other how tired they were.

She was here because he said he'd run away with her, and she believed him - believed, for a few brief, intensely sweet moments, that she was something special, one of the lucky ones, a character in a love story with a happy ending.