He, who had always insisted on being the boss in the marriage, the maker of decisions, the adult protector of the childlike wife, now couldn't help behaving like the child. Now the unseemly outbursts were his, not my mother's. Now she ferried him around town the way she'd once ferried me and my brothers. Task by task, she took charge of their life. And so, although my father's "long illness" was a crushing strain and disappointment to her, it was also an opportunity to growslowly into an autonomy she'd never been allowed: to settle some very old scores.