I sat beside her on the train from Standhope. She was elegantly dressed in clothes my father had bought her, a lovely black dress with a velvet collar. She spoke very little during the journey in, and only rarely glanced up from the story she was reading, “Bartleby the Scrivener.” I didn’t try to engage her in idle chitchat. I knew she was subdued. I also knew why. Only a week before, she had finally agreed to have our mother installed in Whitman House. It took almost the entire morning to get Mother ready for the short ride to the asylum. The task had fallen entirely to Elena, and in New England Maid she called it “the woman’s work of my mother’s commitment.” For our part, my father and I stood staunchly outside these female labors. My father smoked absently as he slouched in the chair by the living room window. I watched him coldly from the swing on the front porch. Just before we left, and with Father already calling impatiently from the front porch, I walked to Mother’s room and opened the door.
