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days she was pretty solid, she was pretty much herself, she was just like the girl I fell in love with.

In those days she would set up the patio table with all kinds of vittles, she'd have the soppressata and the sugar ham and the crock of port wine cheese and the Ritz and Triscuits and she'd have plenty of carrot and celery sticks and pimiento olives and then she'd have the electric fryer on the extension cords snaking back through the kitchen window, to fry up chicken wings or butterfly shrimp and french fries right there on the table, so it was hot and fresh. If my folks or other people were going to be over she made sure to put out her homemade egg rolls and some colorful seaweed and rice thing that we didn't yet know back then was sushi, which people couldn't
believe
she had made, and maybe some other Oriental-style dishes like spicy sweet ribs and a cold noodle dish she always told us the name of but that we could never remember but which everyone loved and always finished first. She had this way of arranging the food on the platters that made you think of formal gardens, with everything garnished by fans of sliced oranges or shrubs of kale or waterfowl she'd carve out of apples, giving them shiny red wings.

I was working a lot then, having just been made second-in-command at Battle Brothers by my father and uncles, and Daisy was like a lot of the young mothers around the neighborhood, meaning she took care of the house and the kids and the cooking and the bills and whatever else came up that I could have dealt with but somehow didn't, for the usual semi-acceptable reasons of men; but I will tell you Daisy didn't mind, that was never a problem between us, because when you got right down to it she was an old-fashioned girl in matters of family, not only because she wasn't so long removed from the old country, but A L O F T

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also because her nature (if you can speak of someone's nature, before she changed and went a little crazy and ended up another person entirely) preferred order over almost all else, and certainly didn't want any lame hand Jerry Battle could provide.

In fact the first real signs of her troubles were the kinds of things you see whenever you go into most people's houses, stuff like piles of folded laundry to be put away, some dishes in the sink, toys loose underfoot, everything finding its own strewn place, but for Daisy, when it began to happen, it meant there was maybe a quiet disaster occurring, a cave-in somewhere deep in the core. One time, a day just like this, kids frolicking about, our guests arrayed as usual around the backyard and the spread of piquant goodies on the patio table, Daisy sort of lost it. I don't know what happened exactly but maybe one of the kids bumped the other table where she was working the deep fryer, and the hot oil lipped over the edge and splashed the table and then spilled down onto her sandaled foot. I knew it happened because I saw her jump a little and leap back, and it occurred to me only later that she didn't shout or scream or make any sound at all. I went over to see if she was burned but before I could get there Daisy did the oddest thing: she picked up the fryer by the handles and turned it over and sort of body-slammed it on the table, the oil and chicken wings gushing out sideways, luckily in nobody's direction. I ran up and quickly yanked the extension cords apart and asked her if she was all right and she had this sickened look on her face and she said it was an accident and that she was sorry. By this time our guests had descended and I'm sure no one saw what had really happened, as everyone was appropriately concerned, but I knew and I got angry (if only because I was confused and a little scared) and yelled at her about being more careful. She started crying and that pretty much
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brought an end to the afternoon, most of our guests deciding to leave, among them some neighbors who never called us again.

Of course somewhere not so deep down none of what happened with the fryer was a surprise to me. From the moment I met her on the main floor at Gimbel's in the city, where she was offering sample sprays of men's cologne (I think it was Pierre Cardin, a huge phallic bottle of which I bought that day and may still have in the bottom of the bathroom vanity), I knew Daisy was volatile, like the crazy girl who haunts every neighborhood, the one always climbing fences and trees and eating flower petals and terrorizing the boys with sudden kisses and crotch-grabs. At Gimbel's Daisy sprayed me before I consented and then sprayed me again, and I would have been really pissed except she was amazingly bright-eyed and pretty and she had these perfect little hands with which she smoothed down my coat collar. She had a heavy accent to her English but she wasn't a tentative talker like some who come to this country and seem just to linger in the scenery and either peep-peep or else have to bark to get your attention. Daisy just let it all spill out in her messy exuberant froth of semi-language, clueless and charming and quite sexy, at least in that
me Tarzan you Jane
mode I welcome, with its promise of most basic romance.

For I had no idea what real craziness meant. I thought people like my father and my mother and my brother Bobby were off-kilter and in need of professional help. I didn't know what it was to be DSM-certified, described in the literature, perhaps totally nuts. And it was a month or so after the deep fryer incident that the first genuine trouble reared itself, when Daisy went off to Bloomingdale's and charged $7000 for a leather living room set and a full-length chinchilla coat. We had a terrific fight, me rabid with disbelief and Daisy defiant and bitter, talking about A L U I

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how she "knew class people" and mocking me for "working in dirt" like some peasant or field hand. Her eyes were wild and she was practically spitting with hatred and I swear had she been wielding a knife I would be long in the grave.

I didn't know that the previous days in which she bought herself and the kids several new outfits and served us filet mignon and lobsters and repainted our bedroom a deep Persian crimson trimmed in gold leaf were indicative of a grandiose run-up to a truly alarming finale; in fact, I was pretty pleased, for Daisy seemed happy and even ecstatic for the first time in a long time. She was lively with the kids and once again we were making love nightly, and though she worried me a little with her insomnia and solo drinking and 2 A.M. neighborhood walks in her nightgown I figured I was still way ahead of a lot of other guys with young families I knew, who were already playing the field and spending most of their free time away from the house. I tell you if Daisy hadn't blitzkrieged our net worth at Bloomingdale's nothing much would have changed; probably I wouldn't have cared if she was only steadily depleting our bank account, a time-honored way in our civilized world. But this was 1975, when the economy was basically shitting the bed, and Jack and Theresa were seven and six and I was making $20,000 a year at Battle Brothers, which was a hell of a lot of money, actually, and much more than I deserved. But $7000 for anything was of course ruinous, so I had to beg the store manager to take everything back (with a 10 percent restocking fee, plus delivery), and then cut up her charge cards and take away her bank passbook and start giving her the minimum cash allowance for the week's groceries and sundries and gas.

As you can imagine, Daisy wasn't exactly pleased with the arrangement. It was a suggestion/directive from Pop, whom I
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hadn't consulted directly but who had overheard my mother telling Aunt Vicky what her daughter-in-law had done. The next day Pop barreled into the messy double office we shared at the shop and plunked his backside onto my desk blotter and asked me what the hell I was doing. I had no clue what he was talking about, and as usual in those days I just stared up at him with my mouth half-crooked, indolently probing my upper mo-lars with my tongue.

"I'm talking about
Daisy,"
he growled, as if he were the one who had married her, as if he were the one having the troubles.

I should mention that Pop always adored Daisy. From the second he met her it was clear, he could never stop talking about how gorgeous she was and how sexy and whenever they met he'd corral her with a big hug and kiss and then twirl her in a little cha-cha move, all of which Daisy welcomed and totally played into like she was Audrey Hepburn in
Roman Holiday,
just the kind of humoring and ass-kissing that my father has always lived for and measured everyone by.

"I hear she went on a spree at the department store and damn near bankrupted you."

"Not near," I said. "It was seven grand."

"Holy Jesus."

"But it's fixed now I'm making it go away."

"Damn it, Jerome, it's just going to happen again! Don't you know how to handle your wife yet?"

"I think I've learned something in these last eight years, yes."

"Bullshit. Listen to me. Are you listening, Jerome? This is what I'm telling you. You have to squash her every once in while, I mean completely flatten her. Otherwise a beautiful woman like Daisy gets big ideas, and those ideas get bigger every year. If she were a plain sedan like your mother you A L O F T

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wouldn't have to worry, you'd only have to deal with a certain displacement, you know what I mean? But with a sleek machine, you've got to tool a governer onto the sucker, do something to cut her fuel."

"I have no idea what you're talking about, Pop."

"What I'm saying is you've got to be a little brutal. Not always, just every once in a while. Now is a good time. All this women's-libbing and bra burning is confusing everybody. Treat her badly, don't give her any money or attention or even a chance to bitch or argue. Don't let her leave the house for a week. Then when she's really down in the dumps bring her some diamond earrings or a string of pearls and take her out to a lobster dinner. After, screw her brains out, or whatever you can manage. Then everything will go back to normal, you'll see."

"And how do you know any of this works, if Ma isn't that kind of woman?"

"Trust your Pop, Jerome. I have wide experience. And if that doesn't do it, call Dr. Derricone."

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I must have said, to get him off my desk and case. But that very night when I got home Daisy was un-dertaking a complete overhaul of our house décor; she was going through a couple of hundred fabric swatches piled on the kitchen table, she had four or five different dining room chairs, some Persian rugs, several china and silver patterns, she had odd squares of linoleum and porcelain floor tile; she had even begun painting the dining and living room with sample swaths of paint, quart cans of which lay out still opened, used brushes left on the rims, dripping. For dinner she was heating up some leftover pasta on the stovetop. In the den the kids were watching TV, rolling popcorn in baloney slices for their predinner snack, and then spitting streams of Dr Pepper at each other
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through the gaps in their front teeth. When I asked her what the heck was going on Daisy simply looked up from her work and answered that she couldn't decide between a shiny or not-so-shiny silk for the living room curtains and what did I think?

She was grinning, though sort of painfully, like part of her could see and hear the miserable scene and understood that another part was taking over and probably winning. I couldn't holler right then the way I wanted to, and instead just grum-bled my usual "Whatever, dear" and went to the bedroom and stripped out of my dusty workclothes and turned on the water in the shower as hot as I could bear, because there's nothing like a good near-scald to set you right again, take you out of a time line, set you momentarily free. And suddenly I was even feeling a little chubby down there with the hot trickles in my crack and so gave myself a couple exploratory tugs but maybe I was still too pissed (which is usually plenty good reason), when Daisy opened the shower door and stepped inside, paint-splattered clothes and all.

"Jerry," she said, crying, I think, through the billowing steam, "Jerry, I'm sorry"

I didn't answer and she said it again, said my name again, with her rolling, singsong, messed up Rs, and I hugged her, clutching her beneath the spray.

"So hot!" she gasped, recoiling, and I let go, but she grabbed back on and held me tight, tighter and tighter until she got used to the temperature. Then she kissed me, and kissed me again, and when I kissed her back I thought I was tasting something mineral, like thinner or paint, but when we broke for air I could see the faded wash of pink on her chin, on her mouth, as she'd bitten her tongue trying to stand the hot water.

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wet clothes and she said "Make love to me" and we started to screw on the built-in bench of the shower stall, something we hadn't done since we first bought the house, before Jack was even born. I remember Daisy being five months pregnant and showing in a way I didn't expect to be so attractive (both our kids, by the way, were tiny when they born, barely six pounds full-term), the smooth, sheened bulge of her belly and her popped out belly-button and the changed size and color of her nipples, long like on baby bottles and the color of dark caramels. Daisy was not volup-tuous, which I liked, her long, lean torso and shortish Asian legs (perfectly hairless) and her breasts that weren't so full and rounded but shaped rather in the form of gently pitched dunes, those delicate pale hillocks. I realize I may be waxing pathetic here, your basic sorry white dude afflicted with what Theresa refers to as "Saigon syndrome"
(Me so hor-ny, G.I. Joe!)
and fetishizing once again, but I'm not sorry because the fact is I found her desirable precisely because she was put together differently from what I was used to, as it were, totally unlike the wide-hipped Italian or leggy Irish girls or the broad-bottomed Polish chicks from Our Lady of Wherever I was raised on since youth, who compared to Daisy seemed pretty dreadful contraptions.

Unfair, I know, unfair.