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that got his attention.” Clare spoke vehemently as one giving testimony on Court TV. The color was in her fleshy face from the wine she’d been drinking, and now the rapt attention of the table. “And all this while Mom is trailing behind me wringing her hands—‘Oh dear, oh dear! Don’t be hard on him, Clare.’ Lynch at least has the decency to be embarrassed when I confront him, he’s mumbling Nothin, ma’am, I ain’t doin nothin just finishin’ up here and I say, ‘That’s right, mister. You are doing nothing. You are finished working for my mother, you will leave this property immediately and not ever return or I will call the police and you’ll be back in Red Bank where you belong.’”
    Amid the laughter of her guests Mom tried feebly to protest. “But he meant well, I think. I mean, at first. I’d talked with him, he wasn’t a bad person, really—told me his ‘only trusted friend’ was his grandma. I know it looked suspicious how he was behaving, I’m sure Clare is right, but how can a parolee support himself, how can he avoid committing more crimes, unless someone gives him a chance…”
    Clare cried, “A chance to exploit you! A chance to rob you !”
    “But how could I know, Reverend Bewley said…”
    “So I called the Reverend. Oh boy did I call the Reverend and give him a piece of my mind. ‘No more charity cases! No more phony Christian ex-cons preying on my tender-hearted mother! Gwendolyn Eaton’s family takes care of her just fine, thank you.’ And the Reverend, too, had at least the decency to apologize.” Clare was breathless, triumphant. Each time she told the Lynch story it was becoming more embellished, crueller and funnier. In the earliest version which Clare had told me on the phone, on the very day of the episode, it hadn’t seemed so clear that lawn worker had been practicing a fall, only just behaving suspiciously in Clare’s eyes, in the vicinity of the garage. (While Dad was alive, the garage had been kept relatively clear, and he’d insisted that the car be parked inside every night. After Dad’s death, Mom tended to park the car in the driveway, and the garage was filling up as a kind of storage space.) This new version was such a success in the telling, even prim-faced Tabitha and Alyce Proxmire were reduced to fits of giggling, unable to resist the tale of another’s hard luck.
    Foster, who’d been watching TV in the other room, ran back to see what was going on with us, and there came languid Lilja, cell phone to her ear: “Mom? What’s so funny? Why’re you guys laughing so hard?”
    It took me a moment to register, Lilja’s “Mom” wasn’t Mom but Clare.
     
    In Mom’s guest bathroom where the predominant smell was sweet potpouri and “floral” soap. Where the hand towels were prissy little linens Mom had embroidered with rosebuds, you’d never dare soil with your actual hands.
    Nikki what have you done with my hair seeing my pale startled reflection in the mirror and the fright-wig dyed-maroon hair on my head that looked weirdly small. What have you done with my Nikki .
    “I’m thirty-one years old! I’m not your Nikki any longer, Mom.”
    Whose Nikki, then? I’d had a few glasses of wine and wasn’t thinking with my usual laser clarity.
    Ran cold water, splashed my feverish face. Winked and smiled flirtatiously at myself. “‘My specialty would be moths.’” Pursed my lips in a mock kiss trying not to see that I wasn’t so sexy/funky/glamorous close up. Was it seductive or silly, or sad, the way my puckered-tight black top had a tendency to ride up my midriff showing a swath of skin? No wonder Rob Chisholm, Gilbert Wexley, “Sonny” Danto snagged their eyes on me as I’d excused myself from the table.
    Lilja on her cell phone. She’d been bored out of her skull by her grandma’s Mother’s Day dinner.
    I’d brought my cell phone too. Arrived at the house by 6 P . M . and it was 8:35 P . M . now and I had refrained from making