My best known story was “My Mother Is Not Living.” At 21 I had returned from Israel, tanned and happy, with a girl on my arm. I had worked on the kibbutz for a summer picking cherries. My mother was waiting at the airport. “God, you’re ugly,” she said to me, smiling. Her eyes were flashing. This was better than sex for her. “Michael Goldberg, your mother is downstairs. Michael Goldberg, your mother is waiting,” Lily the telephone operator at Jewish Punchers announced over the loudspeaker. I heard it in my office. My mother stood in front of the building, breathing heavily. I hadn’t seen her more than three times in fifteen years. I’d fled to colleges in Vancouver and Boston, dodging the draft with deferments and dodging her. Now I was back in Manhattan. She handed me my presents, the first in fifteen years: a black raincoat that she knew I wanted, and a heavy wooden box with six bottles of Southern Comfort, which I’d never tasted. “For your new apartment,” she explained.
