My father smiled strangely at first as if I cracked a joke, then pierced me with a heavy, gloomy stare:

“You are a damn slacker and squanderer!” he finally managed to yell. “You are a disgrace to our family.”

“One day my novel will be published, and you will all be proud of me,” I objected.

“Stop lying! It would be better if you went back to your family, to your wife and child! Leave, I don’t want to see you.”

Dad got very agitated. I was afraid that his blood pressure would spike and I would need to call an ambulance.

“Fine!” I snapped back, and kicked the door on my way out.

I tried to take out a loan from a bank, but since I had no job no one would give one to me.

When Leah found out about everything, she pounced on me with thunder and lightning.

“You are fucking pig! You don’t have a drop of conscience!” She picked out two plots at an expensive cemetery and services for both our parents, and paid for everything out of her own pocket.

After this we stopped communicating. We did not want to know anything about each other.

I always knew that Leah was a stubborn and insensitive woman, who could not be persuaded in anything. I knew that the only thing that mattered to her was what people said about her—her colleagues at the tailor shop, her friends who lived in equally luxurious houses, her neighbors.

But in this case, Leah was right when she called me a “fucking pig.”

***

Our family was falling apart.