WHEN RON came home from New Orleans, Claire didn't get up from the couch. She didn't clean up, shop, cook, change the sheets, put on lipstick, or try to make it better. She lay in her red bathrobe on the couch, sherry bottle right by her hand, she'd been sipping steadily all day long, eating cinnamon toast and leaving the crusts, listening to opera. That's what she craved. Hysterical loves and inevitable betrayals. The women all ended up stabbing themselves, drinking poison, bitten by snakes.

"For Christ's sake, at least get dressed," Ron said. "Astrid shouldn't have to see this."

I wished he wouldn't use me as a reason. Why couldn't he say, I'm worried about you, I love you, you need to see someone?

"Astrid, do I embarrass you?" Claire asked. If she were sober, she would never have put me on the spot like that.

"No," I said. But it did, when they passed me back and forth like a side dish at dinner.

"She says I don't embarrass her."

Ron said, "You embarrass me."

Claire nodded, drunk against the armrest of the couch in the blinking Christmas lights. She raised one thin philosophical finger. "Now we're getting somewhere. Tell me, Ron, have I always embarrassed you? Or is this a recent development?" She had a funny way of talking when she was drinking, of lipping her words, top over bottom, like Sandy Dennis in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

On the stereo, the soprano launched into her big aria before she did herself in, Madame Butterfly or Aida, I can't remember which. Claire closed her eyes, tried to lose herself in the singing. Ron turned off the CD.

"Claire, I had to go. It's what I do," Ron explained, standing over her, his palms out, as if he were singing. "I'm sorry it was Christmas, but it was a Christmas story. I couldn't wait until February, now could I."

"It's what you do," she said in the flat voice I hated.

He pointed with that smooth clean finger. "Don't."

I wished she'd bite it, break it off, but instead she glanced down, finished her drink and put the sherry glass on the table, carefully, and nestled down under the mohair blanket. She was always cold now. "Did she go with you? The blond, what's-her-bimbo, Cindy. Kimmie."

"Oh this." He turned away, starting picking things up, dirty Kleenexes, empty glasses, dishtowel, bowl. I didn't help him. I sat on the couch with Claire, wishing he 'd leave us alone. "Christ I'm tired of your paranoia. I should have an affair, just to give you some basis. At least then I'd get the fun along with the crap."

Claire watched him with heavy-lidded eyes, red-rimmed from crying. "She doesn't embarrass you, though. It doesn't embarrass you to be running around with her."

He reached down to pick up her empty glass. "Blah, blah, blah."

Before I realized what was happening, she sprang to her feet and slapped him across the face. I was glad, she'd needed to do that for months. But then, instead of telling him so, she sagged back to the couch, hands flopped on her knees, and started to cry in hiccupy sobs. It took all her strength just to slap him. I felt both sorry and disgusted.

"Excuse us, will you?" Ron asked me.

I looked at Claire, to see if she wanted me to stay, be a witness. But she was just sobbing, her face uncovered.

"Please," he said, more firmly.

I went back to my room, closed the door, then opened it slightly when they started talking again.

"You promised," he said. "If we got a child."

"I can't help it," she said.

"I didn't think so," he said. "She really should go, then."

I strained my ears for the sound of her voice, but I couldn't hear her reply. Why didn't she say something? I wished I could see her, but his back blocked my view as he stood over her. I tried to imagine her face. She was drunk, her skin stained and rubbery. What was in her eyes? Hatred? Pleading? Confusion? I waited for her to defend me, something, but she didn't respond.

"It isn't working out," he continued.

What struck me was not so much that he could talk about sending me back, like a dog you got from the pound when it dug up the yard and ruined the carpets. It was the reasonableness of his tone, caring but detached, like a doctor. It was the only reasonable thing, the voice said. It just wasn't working out.

"Maybe you're the one who's not working out," she said, reaching for the sherry bottle as she said it. He knocked it from her hand. It went flying, I heard it hit and roll on the pine floor.

"I can't stand your poses," he said. "Who are you supposed to be now, the wounded matriarch? Christ, she takes care of you. That wasn't the idea."

He was lying. That was exactly the idea. He got me to take care of her, keep an eye on her, keep her company while he was away. Why didn't she say it? She didn't know how to defy him.

"You can't take her away," was all she said. "Where would she go?"

It was the wrong question, Claire.

"She'll have a place, I'm sure," Ron said. "But look at you. You're falling apart. Again. You promised, but here we are. And I'm supposed to drop everything and put you back together again. Well, I'm warning you, if I have to pick up the pieces again, you're going to give up something too." Still the reasonable voice. He was making it all her fault.

"You take everything away," she sobbed. "You leave me with nothing."

He turned away from her, and now I could see his face, the disgust. "God, you're such a bad actress," he said. "I'd almost forgotten."

When he stepped out of my line of sight, I saw her, hands around her ears, her knees under her chin, she was rocking back and forth, saying, "Do you have to take everything? Do you have to have it all?"

"Maybe you need some time," he said. "Think it over."

I heard his footsteps, closed the door before he caught me spying on them. I heard him pass down the hall.

I peeked out the door, she was back lying on the couch. She pulled the mohair blanket up over her head. I could hear her moaning.

I closed the door and sat on my bed, helpless. It was my mother all over again. Why did they do this? I'd been taking care of Claire for almost two years. I was the one she told everything.

I was the one who worried, submitted to her rituals, calmed her fears, while he was off chasing poltergeists and Virgin Mary apparitions. How could he send me away now? I opened the door determined to talk to him, to tell him he couldn't, when he came out of the bedroom with his hanging bag over his shoulder, his briefcase in his hand. His eyes caught mine, but they slid closed like steel doors as he swung past me out into the living room.