QUOTE : I COULD SEE MY mother slipping away by the day, maybe even the hour, convinced that her public humiliation of Mr. Krauser had caused his suicide. The western sky could be strung with evening clouds that looked like flamingo wings; rain might patter on her caladiums and hibiscus and hydrangeas and roses and fill the air with a smell out of The Arabian Nights, the book that probably saved her sanity as a child. But no matter how grand a place the world might be, my mother’s eyes had the hollow expression of someone staring into a crypt.