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“You look terrific, Mum.”

“I work at it. You look beat. And you’ve lost weight.”

I’d gone western for the day in a long riding skirt, concha belt, boots, and voluminous poet’s shirt, but my mother’s X-ray
vision cut right through the disguise.

“Some.”

“Well, we’ll fix that. Come here, you.”

We hugged stiffly, both holding our breath as we tried in vain to fit the points of our bodies together. Because of the bottles,
it was like being embraced by someone holding barbells.

“Where’s Dad?”

“It’s noon. Where else would he be? Getting dressed. You’re the first one here.”

I trailed her into the kitchen for want of an alternative. Immaculate white with butcher-block counters and the same stainless-steel
equipment she’d brought up from Chinatown, the room was either brilliantly light and breezy or sterile as a morgue. It varied
with my mother’s mood.

I picked up a paperweight from the counter. A solid crystal sphere filled to bursting with a real dandelion puff. I couldn’t
imagine how its maker had managed to keep all those feathery strands intact, encased. Each filament reached outward, pushing
against the curved surface, and every one was so perfectly poised and balanced that the whole seemed about to explode.

Think light and breezy, I told myself firmly.

She put the bottles in the freezer, tied on an apron, and began emptying the cabinets. Jars, boxes, shakers, funnels, cups,
and spoons soon filled the counter. Like a chemist, she proceeded to pour and measure ingredients into a huge mixing bowl.
She stood with her back to me, arms popping out at odd angles as she reached and whisked. I deduced she was making salad dressing,
but it looked like enough for the entire Upper West Side. She beat the concoction for three solid minutes by the Bauhaus wall
clock. Dad had found that clock at a Phoenix House thrift shop and given it to her for Christmas the year before I left. He
swore up and down it was brand-new, and she loved it so left it at that.

“Want some help?” I said at last.

She stopped, stock-still, then slowly turned, the whisk in her hand dripping perfect beads of oil onto her spotless floor.

“How long have you been here?”

“A few weeks.”

“A few weeks.”

She tossed the whisk in the sink and pulled off one large gold shell-shaped earring, rubbed the exposed lobe between her fingers.
Her face seemed to list with the weight of the opposite earring.

“If you’d let me know, Scott Sazaroff had the most fabulous place in the West Seventies. He would have—”

“That’s why.”

“Why what?”

“I’ve been living on my own for years. I don’t need you to find me an apartment.” My voice sounded as if I were being strangled.

She let go of her ear and clenched her fist, stared at it, flattened it on the counter. The gold shell skittered among the
salad dressing ingredients.

“I see. Well, in that case, I can hardly wait to see what splendid arrangement you’ve made for yourself.”

“I didn’t want to bother you and Dad.”

She turned to clean up the mess she’d made and spoke slowly, deliberately, over the shoulder as she worked. “You go off God
knows where—with whoever. You don’t even have the courtesy of letting us know if you’re dead or alive… but you didn’t want
to bother us.”

She whirled around, hugging her arms to her stomach. “Are you out of your goddamn mind?”

I counted to five before answering, and my voice almost didn’t shake. “I knew this would happen.”

“What? What would happen?”

“You’d get defensive.”

My mother replaced her earring and began pressing loose strands of hair into place. “Could we back up a little? Why, exactly,
have you moved back? Have they changed your—what do you call it?”

“Base.”

“Right. I’m to understand you’re based out of New York now?”

I shrugged.

“I said, is that right?”

I didn’t answer.

“Then you’ve left the airlines?”

“You’ll slip on this in a minute.” I took a sponge from the counter and reached down to wipe up the oil she’d spilled.

“Maibelle?”

I came up slowly so as not to get dizzy and turned the tap on over the sponge. The sun through the window caught the oil and
made streaks of rainbow going down the drain. When I turned and looked her in the eye, she stamped her foot and raised her
arms.

“At last you’ve come to your senses. I’m so glad, Maibelle. So glad!”

You’d think I’d just been freed from slavery. God almighty, free at last. Before she could hug me again, I told her to stay
put, I needed some air. Having scored her first victory, she didn’t object, but I could
feel her jubilant eyes on me through the window as I moved across the terrace.

I stayed to the back of her garden of pots, away from the edge and her view. Here the gravity of detail gave the terrace such
heft that it seemed inconceivable the real ground was twenty floors down. Detail. Like the Brown and Jordan garden furniture.
Planters with evergreens and blooming peach trees. Terra-cotta pavers. Every indication that this was Mum’s little slice of
heaven on earth. No one would guess what a stink she put up at first.

I was thirteen the year my father finally made the killing that enabled us to leave Chinatown. Unfortunately the patent sale
of his “micropore ziplock bottlecap” to a dairy distributor in New Jersey did not bring Upper East Side money, at least not
the Sutton Place- or Murray Hill-or Park Avenue-type Upper East Side that my mother had in mind. But Dad, pioneering the tactic
that later put me in touch with Marge Gramercy, found a lead in the obituaries. A photographer he’d known in his youth had
died in a plane crash in the Andes, leaving untenanted the penthouse of a rent-controlled building at Ninetieth and Central
Park West.

“Awfully close to Harlem, isn’t it?” Mum asked the first day we came for a viewing.

“It belonged to a
Life
photojournalist” Dad said. “You’ll love it.”

The elevator was broken. The service lift stank of rotting garbage. In the kitchen a herd of cockroaches was devouring the
remains of an ancient pack of pork rinds, and pea-colored paint dropped from the ceiling in chunks. Dad’s friend must have
been dead for some time, I thought, or else he’d been in the Andes for years without bothering to keep his cleaning lady.

“Joe,” said my mother, “we’re wasting our time.”

“Just look at those ceilings. Ten feet at least. You can’t find height like that anymore. Not for four hundred a month.”

“I sure hope they’ll throw in the roaches,” said Anna. (Already eighteen, on her way to college and the World, my sister never
did live with us uptown. Possibly my parents’ combat over the apartment gave her
the excuse she needed. Certainly her quest for celestial harmony became a constant in her life ever after.)

“Tommy Wah’s ma says roaches are good luck,” Henry said. At that time Tommy was still his best friend. “Every New Year she
has me and Tommy catch one for the kitchen god.”

“Maybe she’d like to move in here,” Mum said. “It’d save you and Tommy all that trouble.”

“How about this?” Dad led Mum outside. “Enough space for a
real
Alpine garden. Five bedrooms. Separate living and dining rooms, plus a powder room and full terrace overlooking Central Park.
Diana, we’ll never do better than this.”

The way she looked, I could tell she was ready to explode.

But Dad tried again. “This is a real bargain—”

“And I,” she shouted, “am sick of bargains! Just once in my life I’d like to forget about money. I don’t want something for
nothing, you see? I want to pay through the teeth—every penny, if need be—for something I absolutely love!”

Dad leaned against the balustrade and stared out over the park. “I thought you would love this.”

My mother froze. “And?”

“I’ve already signed the lease.”

Her voice, when she finally located the words, sounded like splitting wood. “You just don’t see it, do you, Joe? You don’t
see at all.”

She did not make him break the lease. She did not ask for a divorce. But she did exact retribution in decorator’s and contractor’s
fees. Every room but Dad’s workshop was transformed into Milan moderne. And, although Dad still combed the classifieds and
suburban shopper gazettes, he never so much as suggested that Mum furnish the new place at discount.

“Maibee?”

He waved from the doorway as if saying goodbye instead of hello, and I was struck at once by how much older he looked. His
hair was
grayer, his back more stooped than I remembered. I hurried across the terrace to save him the walk.

But his appearance was deceptive. He clamped me in a bear hug with the strength of a much younger man, rumpling my hair as
if I were five and surrounding me with those familiar masculine smells—tobacco, Brylcreem, the English Leather my brother
ritualistically gives him for his birthday every year. I could feel the ridges of his seersucker jacket making marks in my
skin. His paunch pressed against my stomach. His chest, which my arms easily encircled, felt as delicate and inviolable as
the bamboo armature of a birdcage.

Finally he released me, gave my ponytail one more sweep of the hand, and stood back for a look. “Well, well.” He reached into
his jacket pocket and pulled out a pack of Kents, fumbled with the wrapper as he stared at me. His eyes were smiling, but
his mouth worked awkwardly as if he had a candy he’d like to spit out.

“I missed you, Dad.”

He slid the cigarettes back in his pocket and reached around my shoulders for another squeeze. “We missed you, too.”

That was it, and about par for the course, as far as conversation with my father went. We walked back inside. I admired the
rolling waves of beige in which my mother had most recently done the living room. He took his designated position behind the
mahogany desk in the corner, hooked his glasses over his nose, and picked up his newspaper.

A minute or two later, he looked at me. “How have you been?”

“Fine. It’s good to be home.”

He nodded. “You look good.”

“I quit flying.”

He laid down the paper, his expression unreadable. “Mum just told me.”

I checked the hallway to see if she was watching, listening, but it appeared empty and I could hear the thump of cupboard
doors from the kitchen.

“I have an apartment in the Village.”

“Nice down there.”

“You should come visit. I’m working for a catalog company. Photographing gadgets. Some worth your taking a look at maybe.”

“Ideas, eh? I’m always looking for ideas.”

“Look alive, everybody!” called my mother. “Anna’s here.”

“I told you, it’s Aneela Prem.” And, with that, in strode my sister the vision in red.

Last time I saw her she wore orange, the time before mustard yellow. Now, from the scarlet ribbon in her hair right down through
the garnet worship beads, ankle-length coral print skirt, and pink high-top sneakers, the only contrasting color on my sister’s
body was the green of her eyes, which match mine. A cosmic dress code, I was sure, but my mother managed to rationalize.

As she watched Anna fold me in her arms and carefully kiss each cheek, she said, “Aren’t those colors smashing on her, Maibelle?”

“The Dhawon says they’re the colors of joy and love,” Anna said. “If everyone wore them, our combined auras would bring world
peace.”

My father made the soft, clucking noise at the back of his throat that he used to signal regret or disapproval. He came out
to give Anna the usual bear hug, but retreated quickly behind his desk again.

“Well,” said Mum, “the colors do wonders for your complexion.”

It was true. Scrubbed clean, no makeup, my sister looked positively cherubic. I could hardly see the acne scars that had earned
her the nickname Pockmark from her Chinatown classmates.

“It’s the vegetarian diet. Of course, my whole life now is grounded in meditation and love, but the Dhawon says the improvement
in my skin is a direct result of diet, helped by the colors. And frequency of sex, of course.”

My mother clamped her jaw shut so fast I heard her teeth.

“Anna—”

“Aneela Prem. Please.”

“It’s so good to have both you girls home.” My mother strode past us to the coffee table, laden with glasses and ice bucket,
and loudly began to undo the foil on the first bottle of champagne.

Anna pressed ahead with a well-rehearsed monologue about “spirituai
awareness,” “articulation of joy,” “knots of negativity,” and “vigilance of conscience.” She had just come from meditation
camp in Amsterdam and wanted to tell us what she’d learned.

I wanted to ask if she still made strawberry sodas with mint chip ice cream, or woke up at three in the morning from dreams
of giant toads and witches, or had the gold Chinese coin she’d unearthed long ago in Columbus Park. I wanted to ask if she
still would gladly give up that coin, along with every other possession she’d ever prized, in exchange for naturally blond
hair. I wanted to ask if she, by chance, knew what was wrong with me. But I didn’t ask any of these questions because I knew
that although the answers were probably all yes, she would tell me no—or, in the last case, that my problem was spiritual
confusion intensified by unsatisfactory sex.

I helped Mum pop the champagne, but Anna said she had stopped consuming substances that altered consciousness. She would fix
herself a cup of the herbal broth she’d brought with her.

“Oh, Maibelle,” Mum said a little too brightly as Anna drifted into the kitchen. She took a deep gulp from her glass and blinked
hard. “Someone’s been calling for you. I wrote it down here somewhere. Last fall he phoned and then again last month. That
boy Henry used to play with in Chinatown. Lived next door.”

I knocked the tray, nearly toppling the wine, and scanned her for telltale signals, but she wasn’t really paying attention.
As she rummaged through a drawer in the sideboard her rings tapped like a woodpecker. “His parents ran that poultry shop.
Remember?”