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take on boarders, Lottie’s mother sold off many things around the house. Her washing machine went, her mangler, the radio, the record player. She even gathered
up all the books in the house – their father’s lawbooks too – loaded them into her wire shopping cart, and lugged them down in repeated trips to the Harvard Coop to see what she
could get for them.
    But there was never a question about the TV. It was as permanent a part of the living room as the fireplace itself. When the afternoon shows were on, sometimes nine or ten kids from up and down
the street would crowd into the darkened room to watch Howdy Doody, or Hopalong Cassidy, or Tom Corbett – or, later, the Mickey Mouse Club. Lottie’s mother was always there too,
smoking, drinking; beer usually; she didn’t start on the hard stuff until after dinner. And she seemed fully as absorbed in what was passing on the screen as the children did. Sometimes
she’d get up during a commercial to do some more ironing or fiddle in the kitchen, but she always came back in and sat once more in the sagging armchair that faced the television. No one else
ever sat in that chair.
    Often she would wordlessly place a bowl of small candies – Mary Janes, still in their yellow wrappers, or malted milk balls – on the coffee table. She never cared about the number of
kids in her house, as long as they were quiet; she never said they ought to be outside on a beautiful day like this, as Elizabeth’s mother did. Absentmindedly, she called everyone
‘dear.’ ‘You’re so lucky,’ the other kids would say. Lottie felt, then, only that she was. ‘Your mother’s so nice,’ they said. And she was, nearly
all the time.
    Her anger, when it came, was quick and violent, and almost always directed at Cameron, so Lottie felt free to ignore it, to pretend it wasn’t part of her life or who her mother was. It
wasn’t until much later, after she’d escaped, that she could afford to think about it; and then the shameful memories came flooding back: the time when her mother locked Cameron in his
room overnight and she and Lottie had supper downstairs and talked about the kind of hairstyle that might work best on Lottie, just as if he weren’t upstairs hungry and scared, as if he were
out at a friend’s house. The time when her mother was slapping Cameron, banging his head against the wall in the dining room and shouting, ‘What’s wrong with you! What’s
wrong! with! you!’; while Lottie and Elizabeth sat in front of the television in the shadowy living room and watched those cute boys, Spin and Marty. When their eyes occasionally slid toward
each other, Lottie smiled at Elizabeth, a smile meant to say,
It’s nothing; it’ll be over soon. You don’t need to pay any attention to it.
    Years later, Lottie wrote a story about her mother. She was taking a creative writing course, trying to accumulate credits for a college degree at night school while she worked in the day. She
and her first husband had recently bought a television set because it seemed so important to follow the news of the Vietnam War; and somehow its steady drone in the daytime, the way they existed in
front of it, not speaking to each other, brought her childhood memories intensely back to her. Late one night, in a concentrated burst of energy, she wrote the entire story out. It was very
minimal, very depressing, and the point of it was, as Lottie remembers it now, that after she’s gone up to bed, the mother in the story can’t recall whether her children are still awake
watching television or whether they, too, have gone to bed at some point – she confuses them with the characters in a program she’s been watching. But somehow she finally decides it
doesn’t really matter; and then she sleeps.
    Lottie showed it to her husband. He was impressed and pleased with her. Their marriage had been a rocky one from the start, and the story offered them a way to feel a momentary affection for