M. Gessen

It was the same house where I had interviewed Priscilla a couple of years earlier, just a bit more cluttered with her flea market finds, more lived in with the addition of a little black cat named Nibbles, but a very different life and a different Priscilla.

Priscilla has retrained as a certified nurse's aide.

who watched her study for her exams, was very proud, impressed by how much she had to learn.

And he told me Priscilla had gotten much higher marks than the other people in her course.

Priscilla is working 60 hours a week, both at a hospital and as a home health aide.

It's a far cry from her old life and fashion, and as different as one can imagine from the big, fast life she once thought she'd live with Alan.

The night I brought O back, Priscilla was stuck working until midnight because an elderly man that she works with who has cancer had to be hospitalized.

And then his wife, who has dementia, couldn't be left alone.

There was a lot of juggling.

Someone had to watch Elle.

Someone had to relieve Priscilla.

And as all these arrangements fell into place, I saw that Priscilla now has a community.

It includes other home health aides and a Zimbabwean neighbor who has a daughter who babysits.

And even, I realized, the old lady with dementia.

Priscilla has built a life in which she and the kids can be stable.

O has his music lessons again, and horseback riding and fencing, along with Russian math lessons.

It's a thing, Russian math.

And other activities.

L has most of the same activities, along with gymnastics.

All of this requires an almost superhuman effort from Priscilla.