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circled the dates with a red highlighter.
“But I thought I should see you, Mom, on your birth- day.”
Deciding for the moment to play along with her cha- rade, I took a seat at the kitchen counter and patient- ly smiled as she sang to me. My daughter has a lovely voice, a sort of warbling contralto that resonated through the loft. It’s still hard to believe that, only few years ago, she was a member of the high school chorus. For the annual spring concert, the music director always singled her out to perform a solo. My husband and I encouraged her to train with a pro- fessional music instructor, but our daughter had no interest in pursuing music. Eventually, she dropped choir altogether and enrolled in shop. She enjoyed working with her hands, but as the weeks went by, my husband and I grew uneasy with her strange creations—an elaborately carved coffin keychain, a large picture frame on which she’d chiseled grinning skulls and a scythe-wielding reaper. At night, while husband slept soundly beside me, I often heard dis- turbing choral music rumbling from our daughter’s bedroom in the basement. I crept downstairs, and when I pressed my ear to her door, I thought I heard her chanting a refrain in a language that sounded ancient, almost ceremonial. Latin? Sanskrit?
Now, after finishing a flat rendition of “Happy Birth- day,” she pushed the tray of cupcakes across the counter and told me to make a wish. I leaned for- ward, but before blowing out the candles, I thought deeply about the nature of my wish. An ordinary divorcee might, I suppose, wish for the restoration
of her family, a reconciliation with those friends and neighbors who’d been forced to take sides and to whom she was now estranged, but in the year leading up to my abrupt departure from suburbia, I secretly wished for the opposite of these things and—wonder of wonders!—my wish had been granted. But granted by whom or by what? The universe? God? A carnival of imps and devils? To wish now for the invalidation of my first wish seemed like ingratitude, and from what I could tell the universe was already growing impatient with me. I decided to play it safe and wish for an uneventful conclusion to this evening’s im- promptu party.
My daughter, after gobbling two cupcakes and with- out bothering to wipe the chocolate from her finger- tips, reached into her handbag, a great big unwieldy thing that looked like it had been dragged along a boiler room floor, and produced a crumpled pack of menthol cigarettes. With her unvarnished thumb she expertly flicked open a butane lighter the size of her
fist and said, “Like my new flamethrower? Oh, you don’t mind if I smoke, do you? I’ll crack a window, okay? They help relax me, Mom.”
It seemed pointless to argue with her, so I leaned back in my seat and asked how she’d managed to gain entry to the apartment. I hadn’t given her a key. She exhaled two jets of smoke from her nostrils and rolled her eyes.
“Duh,” she said, “your maid let me in.”
I nodded, slowly removing the foil liner from a cup- cake and snapping off hardened bits of wax from
the frosting. Under absolutely no circumstances was the housekeeper allowed to let guests, especially uninvited guests claiming to be my daughter, into
this apartment. Had the woman at least asked to see some form of identification? A social security card? A driver’s license? My daughter, who is uninsured and can no longer drive, doesn’t carry a photo ID. And what if a few of my daughter’s friends had tagged along tonight? Would the housekeeper have let those shop goblins in, too, with all of their tattoos and body piercings and animal odors?
The more I thought about this, the more agitated I became. What if, over the past several months, the housekeeper had allowed my ex-husband into the apartment? Or that strange woman from across the hall who keeps asking me to join her bowling team, the Bipolar Rollers? And then there’s the mysteri- ous man I met last summer at the corner cafe. Every morning, before catching the bus, we would chat in line and order our lattes. With those mischievously arched eyebrows, distinguished French fork beard, and that head of thick white hair, he struck me as a devilishly handsome older gentleman. One Friday morning, after the barista confused our orders, he asked if I might like to join him for dinner. Enchanted by his vaguely continental accent, I reluctantly ac- cepted. That same night, at a trendy bistro with a view of the downtown skyline, we drank two bottles of red wine and then, instead of ordering coffee or an after-dinner liqueur, we uncorked a bottle of bubbly back at my apartment. He boldly suggested I lower the lights and put on some soft music. Somehow, he charmed his way into my bed, a clumsy and ultimate- ly regrettable affair on my part. Afterward, during
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