THEY MAY NOT MEAN TO, BUT THEY DO
Fiction Joyful in New York THEY MAY NOT MEAN TO, BUT THEY DO By Cathleen Schine 290 pp. Picador Reviewed by Marty Carlock Joy Bergman is a New Yorker and never intends to be anything else. She never intends to leave the apartment where she and her husband Aaron have lived so long. No matter what her children think. No matter how difficult it gets. And it is difficult. She cares for her husband Aaron, who is all but bedridden, sometimes lucid and charming and sometimes demented. She has a PhD, works three days a week as curator of a tiny museum of New York Jewish memorabilia. Her friends, her children all urge her to put Aaron in a nursing home, or at least get help. “I know you all think he should probably go to a place,” she said, “but he would be miserable. He needs landmarks, needs familiar things, needs his schedule. “What about what you need –” they all asked. “But what she needed was so obvious. She needed Aaron.” Their son Daniel, wife Cora and two precocious pre-tee...