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high-risk neighborhood. He had no interest in possessions—including his home—or in having fun. In Alexandra World, he was the perfect man.
    “The shrink part is a good thing if he’s going to marry me,” my mother told Pete and me with a grin. But then she blushed and her eyes filled with tears as she added, “I never thought I’d meet another man who wanted to give me a try. I’m so grateful to him. Isn’t that amazing?”
    Pete and I both nodded. But I wanted to ask where the hell she’d been keeping this dewy-eyed part of her personality all my life. I mean, while I was running around with boyfriends from the Dark Side it would have been nice if I could have had a chat with my mom about what to look for in a guy. But I’d met Jake, so it had all worked out in the end.
    Pete had news of his own. He’d fallen in love with an evolutionary biologist named Bonita who shared his commitment to the environment and the betterment of emerging nations, and since she was two months pregnant they were getting married.
    Mother, Pete, and I toasted one another, and I thanked God once more for Jake and Love, Max , because if my brilliant, handsome baby brother had found true love and was starting a family while I was still living at home and earning nada, running props at the Well of Loneliness Theater, I would have been suicidal. And yes, I do know how petty and immature that sounds.
    The day after Jake and I got engaged, I made a decision about something that had been nagging at me for a while. I hadn’t yet shown Love, Max to my mother, but now it was due to hit the stores in a couple of weeks. “I have to give Alexandra an advance copy to read,” I told Jake. And I could hear the marshmallow fluff coming into my voice.
    “What are you so afraid of?” Jake had read the book by then, and he said he thought it would sell big. Back in those days, Jake was all about being supportive.
    “I’m afraid she’ll think the story is inconsequential,” I told him.
    But that wasn’t my only reason for putting off showing it to mymother. I tried to explain my biggest fear to Nancy. “The story isn’t about my mother and my father. Not really. Not totally. But—”
    “But it’s based on them—loosely. And now you’re afraid your mother will recognize herself. Trust me, it’ll never happen. The only time people think you wrote about them is when you didn’t.”
    Nancy was right—and she wasn’t. I gave Alexandra a copy of the book on a Wednesday and, knowing her packed schedule, I didn’t expect to hear from her for weeks. On Sunday morning, she showed up at my doorstep carrying what looked like a duffel bag with holes in the side and my book. There were tears in her eyes. “Oh, Francesca, honey,” she said. “I’m so sorry.” She dropped the duffel bag and held out the book. “I never knew how you felt.”
    I promised myself that the next time I saw Nancy I was going to strangle her.
    “It was a long time ago,” I started to say, “and”—but my mother had gotten down on her knees and was unzipping the duffel bag.
    “I never knew how much you missed having a dog after ours went with your father to California,” said my mother, as a puppy with humongous feet emerged. “I know it’s a few years after the fact, but better late than never, right?” she asked hopefully. She beamed down at the puppy. “Lenny and I picked her up in a shelter on Long Island. I couldn’t call her Max, because she’s a girl, so I named her Annie, after my mother.”
    I need to take a moment to make it clear what this meant. My mother almost never mentioned her birth mother, but when she was a kid she’d had all these fantasies about Annie. Little Alexandra Karras’s dream mommy was a mix of Eleanor Roosevelt, Marie Curie, and Mother Teresa—with a little Wonder Woman thrown in. And although my mother had matured since then, I knew in her heart the dream still lived. In fact, I always thought mymother’s career as a