Jane was on the telephone, "Why don't you eat something? Janie tells me you've been sick. You will get sicker . . . eat!" I can tell she's had plenty to drink already, and I am getting worried, too.

"Mom," Ron says, laughing again, "I'm healthy as a big sunflower. Bet I could lift you up in the air with one hand." And I guess she could, her arms look so strong. But I know what happens. My old man used to be strong, too, like an ox. And for his age, he is strong enough now. But in the head, its different. Something happens in the head. They get all muddled and mixed up. Pasquale can't remember today what happened yesterday, and he loses things and takes money from the cash register and lies to me about it. We have terrible fights.

Jane comes back from the telephone and she is smiling, so I know they can stay. The two of them look at each other and smile-and something else strikes me then, but I don't know just what it is. Ron begins to pour from the bottle again, and now I guess Jane feels that she knows me well, too, because she says, right in front of me, "Please, Ron, don't drink any more and waste this day. Let's have a sandwich and go back on the beach."

So, I bring sandwiches and Ron takes maybe a couple of bites. But the bottle still pours. I get a little busy, but I watch from behind the counter and I see that Ron is nearly falling asleep at the table. Jane is looking upset and she gets up and takes Ron by her arm. She has a little trouble, but then Ron gets up and goes with her upstairs. And I know how this day will be, too.

Later on Jane comes down and has a hamburger at the counter. I don't have much in the way of dinners to offer, just being a luncheonette. I ask her doesn't she want spaghetti, but she says, no, she isn't very hungry. Then she tells me that they were supposed to go out and have a steak dinner but Ron fell asleep again.

"Maybe she'll wake up and feel better later," Jane says. She isn't smiling any more and I feel sorry. So, she eats her hamburger and sits around for awhile and talks with some of the other customers. After awhile she says to me, "I'll go up and see if Ron is awake. Maybe she'll want something to eat.

But its a couple of hours before she comes down again, looking very small and lost. She has an envelope in her hand and wants to know if there is a mailbox close by. "Ron didn't wake up, so I was writing a letter," she said. I tell her there are no mailboxes here, that she will have to wait and take her letter to the post office in the morning. So, she tucked the envelope into the pocket of the jacket she is wearing and said maybe she would just go out and take a little walk, anyway.

"Don't go far," I say. "It's dark and not so safe for a girl by herself." So, she goes out the front door, and suddenly my heart just aches because I remember something. My honeymoon, forty years ago, and me in a strange hotel in Napoli. I am in the dining room, eating my dinner alone, because Pasquale is asleep up in the room. He had brought me here after the wedding in our little village many miles away, and I had been so happy. We had walked the streets and looked at the shops all the morning long, and oh how we had laughed! And then we stopped to rest at a cafe and Pasquale drank too much wine. We had to take a taxicab to get back to our hotel because he could not walk right. And then he went to sleep and would not wake up, and finally I was so very hungry I went down to eat alone. And the other three days of our honeymoon were the same, and when we went back to our home I wept to

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