As Husbands Go by Susan Isaacs

on because even though he was only borderline competent, he was very reliable. Stanley was without ambition to be any better off than he was, so he was truly reliable. His commissions were enough for us to live on. Also, his shaky voice made some customers believe he was becoming emotional about their back pain, so he was never fired. I guess he liked his job; the only time I saw my father anywhere close to animated was when he was holding forth on sciatica.
    “Maybe you should go on TV,” my mother said. “All those missing women? You always see their parents on the Today show with their home movies of the one who’s missing. The husbands sometimes do it, although ninety-nine times out of a hundred, you know what?”
    “What?” I knew what.
    “What?” my father asked.
    “The husbands turn out to be batterers who finally went over the line and did what all the friends and relatives always knew they would.” In case we weren’t clear on what this was, she added: “Kill the wife. And then the relatives all have the chutzpah to say, right on camera, ‘Oh, I begged her to get out while she still could, but she just wouldn’t listen.’”
    “I did give some thought about publicity,” I told her. Her mock turtleneck was covered by some weird little capelet, squares of black and forest green that looked like an afghan someone had abandoned when they realized they hated crocheting. The capelet had captured a lot of sandwich crumbs and three orange teardrops of melted cheese. I went on, “I may have to resort to going public. There are even organizations that help you with PR. But right now it’s only been two days. If something’s happened to Jonah that he or I or his partners wouldn’t want public, going on TV or whatever would put it all out there. Something embarrassing could mean the end of his career.”
    “Like what?” my mother asked. “What could he be doing that couldn’t be public? He’s not a drinker, as far as I know.” I shook my head: No, Jonah wasn’t a drinker. “So he wouldn’t be lying in the gutter on the Bowery. Is there something you haven’t told us?” She shrugged. “Drugs? You hear about doctors getting hooked because they have easy access. Homosexuality? Some other . . . whatever.”
    “No. To the best of my knowledge, which I truly believe is excellent, Jonah is what he seems to be: honorable and sober. And heterosexual.” Since she looked as if she still didn’t get it, I explained, “It doesn’t have to be a major issue. Sometimes even the best people get into trouble.”
    Silence. Maybe someone else’s mother would have clearly disagreed about not seeking publicity and told her daughter that finding Jonah was of paramount importance. “You have to risk bad publicity in order to find him. The more time elapses, the colder the trail gets.”
    But my mother had strong opinions only on matters with no direct effect on our lives, like what had been printed on her T-shirt the previous summer: SOCIAL WELFARE REVERSES EVOLUTION , which I’dspent half a barbecue thinking was an anagram I couldn’t figure out.
    “Well,” she said, “I guess you know what’s best.”
    The few good-hearted thoughts I had about my mother were like: Okay, she’s embarrassing, grabbing on to causes, letting the slogans on her T-shirts substitute for snappy conversation and a philosophy of life. Amazing. There is absolutely nothing she can do well or even competently—cook, clean, talk about a TV show, buy shoes, show affection (much less love). To be fair, she’s like someone who had a terrible accident as a kid and can’t walk. Her own mother abandoning her when she was eight was exactly like that—a terrible accident. It left my mother permanently crippled. She can’t do all the simple, normal things in life that other people take for granted.
    That abandonment was obviously the central fact in my mother’s life, and maybe in mine. If Ethel had left Lenny the Loser but kept little