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down front. She wondered if she and the other kids would still be friends when they went to different schools, and she also wondered if she would miss any of them. Maybe two—the others she didn’t like at all. Suddenly the principal, Mrs. Wexler, swooped down on her, glaring from behind her bifocals, grabbed her by the arm, and dragged her into the girls’ bathroom.
    â€œWhat’s that on your face?” Mrs. Wexler demanded. But she already knew. She wet a harsh paper towel at the sink and scrubbed off all the makeup. “Does your mother know?”
    â€œShe did it,” Gara said. She felt relieved. She had always hated being different. She also felt humiliated and insulted because the principal, who should have treated her with respect on her graduation day, had manhandled her like an object. She also felt damp.
    â€œI can’t imagine how your mother could do such a thing,” Mrs. Wexler said, and pushed her back to where the others were already filing on stage to their places.
    Gara received her diploma and her award and felt happy again. She was on her way to becoming an adult. It didn’t matter that next semester she would be only a freshman, a beginner: right now she was at the top of her school, a graduate, and it was a heady feeling. She left the stage with the other kids who were all joining their proud families, who were showering them with joyful hugs, kisses, and congratulations.
    Her mother rushed up to her looking indignant. For a fat woman she could move very fast. “Who messed up your hair?” she cried.
    â€œMy hair?” Gara touched it. “I guess Mrs. Wexler.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œShe was mad because I had on makeup, and she washed it off.”
    â€œThat’s why you’re so pale. But she spoiled your
hair
,” her mother said. She smoothed it, pursing her lips.
    Say congratulations, Mom, Gara thought, but she didn’t say it. She had already learned that it was pointless to pick a fight she could never win, and she particularly didn’t feel like it today. She knew that both of her parents were proud of her academic record; congratulations were implicit. It was just that brains were not the important thing; physical appearance was. As she and her parents left the auditorium she began to wonder if she had looked really bad, and if it would show in the class picture, for ever and ever, that Gara Bernstein was the ghostly one with the terrible hair.
    * * *
    When she was little, Gara had adored her mother. They were inseparable. But by the time she was in high school she was ambivalent, which she read was natural, and by the time she went away to college she felt her home was an unacknowledged battlefield. Her father had abdicated his power over both her mother and herself long ago. Gara was still afraid of him though, in an odd way. She felt the anger in him, the hidden rage of the vanquished. She was sure he didn’t even know he felt like the side that had lost, but sometimes he seemed on the verge of hysteria. She supposed that was what happened to men who didn’t have sex. She knew he didn’t have a girlfriend. The very idea of being such an immoral person horrified him.
    Gara had already decided what kind of husband she herself would have. He would be charming and funny, he would never try to dominate her, but he would never let her push him around. She didn’t even want to try. They would have mutual respect. And although he would have to be the son-in-law, he would protect her from her mother.
    Her mother seemed to have an instinct about the kind of men who would protect Gara from her, and she hated them. It had taken until her daughter went away to college to allow her to have a key to the family apartment, because there was always someone there to let her in, wasn’t there? Now that Gara was dating, and it was embarrassing to have one’s mother waiting up to unlock the door, her mother hovered in the