Sometimes I envy Louis his family, which started out small and then disappeared. Other times I feel badly for his loss. But it is always clear that he has no idea what having a family really means. The ties that crisscross and bind and trip up my brothers and sisters and my mother and me are invisible pieces of thread to my husband. No matter how closely he looks, even when I push his nose right up against the glass, he does not see it. He does not understand.

