Ed was in love with a cocktail waitress,
but Ed’s family, and his friends,
didn’t approve. So he broke it off.
He married a respectable woman
who played the piano. She played well enough
to have been a professional.
Ed’s wife left him . . .
Years later, at a family gathering
Ed got drunk and made a fool of himself.
He said, “I should have married Doreen.”
“Well,” they said, “why didn’t you?”
— Louis Simpson