I don’t think anyone else at our table noticed when the woman walked by the first time. She must have been heading to the restroom since there wasn’t anything else in that direction. Then suddenly she materialized like a hazy apparition, her layers of clothes hanging in great folds. A faded purple paisley scarf barely contained her hair.           

            The woman stood a little behind and to the side of my husband who was across the table from me at our favorite Greek restaurant. We were having dinner with some of his colleagues and a visiting writer. They were deep in conversation but suddenly stopped, surprised. They looked at the woman, then quickly turned back to their conversation and plates of dolmathes and spanakopita lifting their forks tentatively as if weighing each bite.

             When the woman asked for gas money she did so quietly and to no one in particular. She must be accustomed to the air granting her wishes, I thought. I’m not one to make quick judgments, but there was no ambiguity. The woman was homeless, car-less.

            I looked at my husband and motioned with my head to his right. “Give her some money,” I whispered, not to disturb the conversation at the table. 

            My husband’s look told me he was surprised by my request. Years ago I would give money to anyone who asked. I fell for every hard luck line. But I lost my hopefulness, or naïveté. I’ve gotten stingy.                  

            My sister always needs money. Her disability checks and food stamps are barely enough to live on. There’s not much “pocket money” as she likes to say. Too often the money to pay bills somehow disappears, she says her aides take her food and a neighbor steals her pain medication. She needs money to buy more.

            She tries to make a little money. At the laundromat there’s a yard sale table. Every week she buys glass knick-knacks for a quarter or a dollar then resells them from her apartment to her aides or neighbors. She displays her menagerie on an antique étagère, a remnant from our childhood home and another life. But sometimes there aren’t any buyers and she’s left with a pile of junk and no money. Then she tells me she’s hungry. The city is going to turn off her water. She doesn’t have cigarettes. She needs something. It’s someone else’s fault. It’s always the same.

            “How’d she get here?” one of our dinner companions whispers as my husband reaches for his wallet. He knows I never have cash. No one else at the table moves their eyes from their plates. The woman is still standing slightly behind my husband.

            “You never know,” I say quietly, furtively glancing at the woman then at our companions. “Mental illness, a brain that produces too much of one chemical and not enough of another. Messed-up family. Drugs. Bad choices. It happens.”

            They look up, stare at me.  I sense that something is wrong and realize I’ve misunderstood. They want to know how she got in the restaurant; I’m thinking about other things.

            I’m thinking about my sister. She doesn’t ask strangers for money, not like this woman. Not yet. Her methods differ. She knows how to work the system, move from one church or nonprofit organization to another once they’re wise to the stories and lies. But it’s getting harder for her. She’s facing eviction and no one will rent to her. They know about the drug use, the dealer-friends who sleep on the floor, the steady stream of police and ambulances.

            My big sister, the hippie, druggie, free-love child who never grew up.  Of course, there’s more to the story. There always is. But even she won’t talk about it. And then a stroke in her mid-fifties left one arm shriveled, a leg that won’t always obey her commands, and a mean streak a mile wide. Her heart is failing. She’s losing weight.

            I look at my husband. He’s still talking to our friends at the table. I watch him shift his weight and slide his wallet into his back pocket.  I don’t ask how much he gave. It’s the same with my sister. He tells me to do what I feel I should. Sometimes I don’t feel like doing anything. I used to help with her bills and “pocket money.” Then I filled in the blanks for every conversation that began with “If only I had” and ended with, “then everything would be alright.” But it was never enough. I tell her I love her but I’ve given all I can.

     The guy that hangs out at my sister’s apartment says he’ll help her move. He’s an addict and, I suspect, taking her money. She says she loves him and who can argue with that?  But with each move the places she lives get shabbier and the neighborhoods more dangerous. And with each move fewer of her things make the transition. I know it won’t be long before there’s nothing to move and nowhere to go.     

     The woman in the restaurant stares at me. Really, her gaze is just beyond my left shoulder, an unfocused look that makes me think the muscles in one of her eyes has gone slack or maybe there’s something on my shoulder only she can see. Then I remember I’ve seen that look before in my sister, a look that means she’s somewhere else, somewhere deep in a memory of a different time.  When I look up, the woman is gone.