Was there any point before the wedding when either of you thought, "Never mind?"

M: I think it was about an hour before. Daddy ran away.

D: I peeled off and went down to A&W to have a root-beer float.

Why did you freak out?

M: Go ahead, tell her.

D: Well, these friends of your mother's family, they were florists, and they made this thing for Mom's head that looked like a crown of thorns [laughs]. And I didn't like it.

M: Flowers. And he didn't like that I had makeup on. Like, I might have had a little eyeshadow or something.

D: So I had my root-beer float and I came back and I apologized to Ayn and her father.

So you got married, and you moved to the South Bronx, and everything was fine?

M: No! First, our honeymoon. We were supposed to stay at the Plaza, but we got stuck in traffic, so we weren't going to make it. And it was really hot and it started to rain. There was a Howard Johnson's off the Expressway, and we got there and Daddy said — there was some sporting event —

D: It was Jets football.

M: So he asked for a color TV so he could watch the game. That was our honeymoon [laughs].

D: Then we wound up going back to our apartment, and we realized we had cockroaches, and we had no mattress.

M: So we slept at Uncle Bob's apartment, which was right down the block.

D: I'm not enjoying this.

M: And prior to this, there was the whole thing with the apartment on the Upper West Side. We found a great place, but we weren't married yet.

D: Grandma threatened to kill herself if I moved out.

Why did she do that?

D: So I wouldn't move out.

M: She was Grandma. That's what she did.

D: And like an idiot, I fell for it.

M: We had weird families. Johnny used to just hide in the corner. I remember once I went to your house and he was in the living room on the floor, and it was the summer, and he was in sweats with the hood on, and the smell was... I don't know how to describe it.

Early on, weren't you thinking about separating?

D: The first year was tough.

M: Daddy's mother was very intrusive. I wasn't used to that. Calls. A lot of calls.

D: Calling, yelling, and hanging up.

M: It was a horrible year. And then my father died, and we had to relocate my mother and my brother. That was the hardest. I remember saying to myself, "If you can get through this, you can get through anything." My father really loved me.

D: We were twenty-two, and we wound up inheriting a big responsibility, taking care of your family.

M: So that was the first year of our marriage.

Why didn't you get separated?

D: Couldn't afford to get a divorce.

Did you ever have a conversation where you said, "I don't want to be married to you?"

M: Many times.

But you literally couldn't afford it.

D: Well...

M: I think we also had an old-fashioned notion. Most of the people we know who got married at that time are still married. We never had friends who got divorced.

D: We tried to work it out, and I think we did. The second year was better than the first. Within a short time we decided to have a child together, your sister, Addie.