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television,” he told my mother.
    â€œDon’t you want there to be a Santa Claus, Mayfair?” my mother asked.
    Of course, I did, but I just couldn’t believe in him.
    â€œYou can’t believe in something unless it’s true,” I said, and my father laughed again. He had such a wonderful laugh then, an infectious laugh that made anyone near him laugh along, including me.
    â€œYou poor dear,” my mother would say, embracing me. “I hope you can find something wonderful to believe in someday without worrying about whether it’s true or not.”
    â€œShe will,” my father promised her. “This kid will do it all.”
    He was so proud of me back then. If there was any possibility of taking me along with him when he visited someone involved with his public relations business or simply went shopping for something, he would. I knew even at age three that he was eager to show me off, almost the way Fish Face did, but I was eager to please him. And after my mother died, it was even more important to please him. In my mind, I was still pleasing her, too. It was as if part of her floated into him after her death. They were that close when she was alive, and that was as far as I would go in believing anything supernatural.
    I was just as eager to please him now, but it had become more difficult, maybe even impossible, because once he married Julie Dunbar, I felt that the part of my mother that was in him had left. She’d have been the first to tell him, “There’s not enough room in one heart for two lovers in your life, Roger.”
    She wouldn’t sound angry or upset. She would be smiling softly, her voice gentle and kind. I missed that voice and that smile. All the mirrors in our ten-room Bel Air hacienda-style home surely missed that smile as well. Everything lost its glitter and gleam when my mother died. This was so much her home, down to her choice of every color, every floor tile, every cabinet handle, and every light fixture. Almost without comment, my father had nodded and approved everything she planned or wanted. He had that much faith and trust in her judgment, but more important, he had that much of a desire to see her happy. She was as important to him as she was to me.
    Whenever I thought of myself becoming romantically involved with someone someday, I’d think of what my parents were to each other. The parents of so many girls I knew just seemed to be sharing a place to live. I’d overhear their daughters complaining about how much their parents argued. Doors were always slamming in their homes. Parents were often sulking, sometimes for days and even weeks. These girls hated to be home and looked for every opportunity to keep themselves away.
    I never felt this way about my home when my mother was alive, and I couldn’t remember any doors slamming, nor could I recall my parents being so angry at each other that one would sulk. If either upset the other, he or she became almost desperate to make it better. Love in our house wasn’t a goal; it was a reality, the status quo. I could feel it, and that feeling gave me a sense of security. I loved being with them. It was because of them that I was less skeptical about people actually loving each other, caring more for each other than they cared for themselves.
    I was always skeptical about almost everything in my life, from when I was an infant until now, but one thing I always trusted was my mother’s hand holding mine. I knew she would rather have her arm separate from her shoulder than let go if I needed her. After she died, life without her was like a bird without a voice, just something that glided silently along, jealous even of the screech of a cat.
    There were no birds singing now, and I knew a good part of the reason was my own fault. Julie wasn’t all wrong. Just because you were brilliant, that didn’t mean you couldn’t do something terribly wrong, something that