At dinner David asked me when I was next to see my kids and, if I didn’t mind, he would like to join me. I said that I was planning to go up to Batesville on Sunday afternoon. He said he’d borrow a friend’s car and drive me up there. I was hesitant, wasn’t at all sure how the Willises would look upon my arriving with another man, especially someone like David, but in the end I said sure, why not? He picked me up that Sunday morning in a green Ford. We drove the ninety miles to Batesville, talking mostly about his family who, he said, were Jewish and very middle class. He asked me lots of questions about how Van had been able to take my kids away from me. He was of course no lawyer, but he said he didn’t think such a thing would have been possible in Chicago courts.

I explained to Edna that I had brought a friend along to meet Donald and Allen, and to my relief she didn’t give me a hard time about it. David turned out to be great with them. He called Donald Monsieur Canard explaining that canard was French for duck, and that of course the world’s most famous Donald was Donald Duck. Allen he called “Allsy”. He played tag with them. He tried to teach the six-year-old Donald to catch. They really went for him. For the first time in all my meetings with my kids since I lost custody of them I did not leave them with a heavy heart.

When David dropped me off at Dottie’s, I was nervous about inviting him in. My sister’s life, with her squalid love affair, her naturally unhappy husband, and her two kids, the younger of whom was a genuine brat, was a mess. The house, on the far east side of Little Rock, was ramshackle, a badly-painted business with a slightly falling-in porch. I could see a look of critical disappointment as he looked at the place upon dropping me off. “We have to find you a better place to live,” he said, after I kissed him on the cheek and got out of the car.

I should tell you that until now David and I had not slept together. So he must have been more than a little surprised when I showed up at his apartment the next night, after work, at 11pm with a suitcase containing all my clothes and cosmetics.

“You said I needed to find a better place to live,” I told him, standing in his doorway. “And I think I know of one. With you.”

“Welcome home,” he said, and took my suit- case.

The first thing that impressed me about Da- vid was how unpossessive he was, even after we had begun sleeping together. Working at the Garhole, I kept odd hours, yet if I happened to come in at one or two in the morning—some- times I would unwind after work at an after- hours club downtown—he never asked where I had been or with whom. Nor did he ask me to share his rent. In some ways, he was the ideal boyfriend: always there when I wanted him, but never insisting that I be there.