Questions in the Night

I WISH I could tell you. An alcoholic might be a professional man who sleeps in a door way on skid row; it might be a truck driver, who crashes his rig over a cliff; it might be an executive who plans his appointments at lunch or the cocktail hour in order to give an acceptable aspect to his compulsion; it might be that lawyer who jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge a month or so ago--and it might be that housewife, like me, who, in the dark watches of the night when her husband and children are asleep, and the house is still, is possessed by that loneliness she has held at bay all day.