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weightless as the eyelash kisses my mother used to give. I felt a corresponding tug behind my navel. It could have just been a friendly gesture. He was a New Yorker, I told myself. People touched each other all the time in casual ways.
    “You must have really liked that painting.” I took a small step sideways.
    “I’m nuts about the painting.” He grinned, eyes creasing. “I’d like to see what else you’ve been painting, if not gothic water towers.” I dropped my gaze to his left hand, resting on the counter, unadorned save the tan.
    “The thing is,” I stammered, “you mean this Tuesday? I’m pretty sure I’m booked.” Emmie squirmed like a trapped gerbil, so I placed her on the wood floor. She instantly asked to be picked up again. “Go now, Mommy?” she said, as if sensing my apprehension.
    “Any Tuesday’s good for me,” Tai pronounced, running a hand over his beard. “Maybe I’ll buy another painting.” He wore a faded black T-shirt, snug over well-strung shoulders. We stood inches apart. I felt a chill creep along my arm, though the day was already sultry.
    The world seemed to pause and swell. My tongue tasted sweet and slightly charred, and I glanced around the market. I wasn’t sure what I expected to see, but it had occurred to me that the whole town might be watching, enraptured, to see what I’d do. Of course, no one was paying the slightest attention, not even the child on my hip, immersed again in her lollipop. It was a business opportunity, I told myself, a chance to make several hundred dollars, which we needed.
    And besides, I was not my mother.
    It must have been this last thought—of not allowing the residue of her mistakes to coat and complicate my every interaction—which brought me to the two simple phrases that would open a fissure. “Sure, let’s have coffee,” I said to Tai. “That sounds lovely.”

1974
     
    A FEW DAYS AFTER THE FIRES DIED DOWN, I GOT MY FIRST letter from Mr. Robert. Coming in from skateboarding one afternoon, I opened the mailbox and spied it atop a pile of junk mail and bills. It was addressed to Ms. Sylvie Sandon, Esq., in a bold, looping script. It began,
    Dear Little Twerp. I can’t tell you how great it was to see you again, the apple of your mother’s eye, after all these years. Remember how we used to eat chocolate ice cream sodas, after your mom picked you up from kindergarten? But Elaine doesn’t want us to talk about that time, so we’ll pretend we met just the other day, at Disneyland, how does that sound? Hope you enjoyed all the fudge! You seem like real cowgirl material to me, Sylvie, and I was thinking maybe we can take a trip to my log cabin up in Horse Country and go riding. A real trail ride into the mountains. We could even ride to one of the glacier lakes where the Nez Perce Indians used to make their camps…
     
    Here he’d drawn quite a good caricature of himself—I could tell it was him by the deep dimples and gap-toothed smile. He signed the letter, “Love Love, Kiss Kiss, Big Twerp.”
    I took the letter to my parents’ bathroom, where Mom was preparing for a hospital fundraiser. I adored watching her prepare for these functions with my father, loved to stare at her slim, clean body as she picked out her dress, slipped on bright, scented underthings. Sometimes she’d let me watch her bathe, telling me stories while she soaped her stomach and small breasts.
    Then I’d perch on the bathroom counter as Mom opened her mouth, applying eyeliner and mascara with the sketchy strokes of an artist. “You never want to apply blush right below your eyes,” she’d say, “and never on the chin! Just on the cheekbone….”
    She’d been talking about beauty lately, selling Mary Kay cosmetics in their pink plastic containers to Dad’s partners’ wives, or women from church and PTO functions—anyone who gave her the time of day ended up with a pink carton of Mary Kay. Many of these women got recruited to sales positions