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"One day at the spring festival, she met a man named Michael, a relative of friends. They couldn't marry because Michael had a wife in Italy. In order to live with him, Maria explained the following truths to her reasonable head:

1. This man Michael was tall with a peculiar scar on his shoulder. Her husband had been unusually tall and had had a scar on his shoulder.

2. This man was redheaded. Her dead husband had been redheaded.

3. This man was a tailor. Her husband had been a tailor.

4. His name was Michael. Her husband had been called Michael.

In this way, persuading her own understanding, Maria was able to not live alone at an important time in her life, to have a father for the good of her children's character, a man in her bed for comfort, a husband to serve. Still and all, though he died in her arms, Anna, the child, didn't like him at all. It was a pity, because he had always called her 'my little one.' Every day she had visited him, she had found him in the hallway waiting, or at the edge of his white bed, and she had called out, 'Hey, Zio, here's your dinner. Mama sent it. I have to go now.' "

-Grace Paley, Debts, from Enormous Changes at the Last Minute