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Alcoholism
The Birthday Present
The last time I’d seen Madame was right after I returned from Hazelden, a fancy drug- and alcohol-rehab center in Minnesota. It was now a year later, and my birthday, but considering the circumstances you’d think I wouldn’t have to remind her not to buy me wine.
May 1996Denial
How old is the habit of denial? We keep secrets from ourselves that all along we know. The public was told that old Dresden was bombed to destroy strategic railway lines. There were no railway lines in that part of the city. But it would be years before that story came to the surface.
October 1994Anatomy Of A Lie
I can’t tell you this, but my mother has a dot on her lung. It’s a small dot, on the left lung. If her lung were a map of Texas, the dot would be roughly the size of the city of El Paso, which is large enough to be written in boldface type by Rand McNally.
October 1994The Forgotten Children
When I pushed away the cot and lifted the trapdoor, his eyes glinted for a moment like an animal’s in the beam of Mother’s flashlight. Biscuit crumbs clung to his mouth, and around his shoulders was the old blanket he’d secreted away. I reached down to help him up, but he shrank from me, his eyes filled with hatred.
June 1994Homeless, But Not Crazy
Shortly after 1 a.m. recently, on-call in the psychiatric emergency room of a Boston hospital, I was asked to evaluate a homeless man, and in the process I confronted the limits of my professional empathy.
March 1993
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