“Ruthie, how are we ever going to put the Hannah episode behind us if we don’t talk about it?” “We’ll talk about Hannah later, Daddy. Maybe after I’m back from Europe.” For twenty years, she’d been trying to beat her father at squash. Now that she’d finally defeated him, Ruth found herself weeping in the bathtub. She wished she could feel even the slightest elation at her moment of victory; instead Ruth wept because her father had reduced her best friend to an “episode.” Or was it Hannah who’d reduced their friendship to something less than a fling with her father? Oh, don’t pick
