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good enough for me. But shit, man, I don’t know—like, for instance, right now, if the phone rang here, at your house, I’d have this rush of adrenaline, I’d start having palpitations, I’d think he’d tracked me down somehow....” Rae threw back her head and laughed.
    Elizabeth smiled. She liked Rae, a lot. God, what she would give to be jolly.
    â€œSo where are your folks?”
    â€œDead. I’m an orphan. What about you?”
    â€œMy dad died in Korea. My mom’s in Los Angeles, same house I grew up in.”
    â€œDo you like her?”
    â€œI adore her. She’s a sweetheart. I just can’t stand to be in the same room with her for more than ten minutes.”
    â€œYeah?”
    â€œOh, yeah, man, I start climbing the walls. Then I end up hating myself for being such a shit. But I swear to God, she’s afraid of everything: she’s afraid of men, mice, cars, food poisoning; she’s afraid of losing her hand in the washing machine; she’s afraid of escalators; she’s afraid when she buys toilet paper the clerk will think she’s going to use it to wipe herself; she’s afraid of drowning; she’s afraid of planes—when I flew up here to look for a place, she called the airlines and asked if the pilot’s biorhythm chart was available.”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œI swear to God. What did your mother die of?”
    â€œOld age. At forty. Cirrhosis.”
    â€œOh.”
    â€œReady for another?”
    â€œSure.” Rae gave Elizabeth her empty glass, smiling.
    Rae was smoking again when Elizabeth returned with the drinks. “Did your dad drink too?”
    â€œYeah. They both drank like there was no tomorrow. He left my mother for another lady when I was ten.”
    â€œWhat a wipe-out. For your mother.”
    â€œYeah. She went nuts. A week after he left she went out and started buying animals. A beagle, two cats, two white doves and two diamond doves, a guinea pig, a rabbit, and a tankful of tropical fish. It gave her something to do, something to take care of. It made her feel needed. But the house stank. I’d never liked animals all that much. My dad said he ought to buy me a boa constrictor.”
    Rae laughed.
    â€œAnd a parrot, that he’d train to say, ‘Daddy loves Elizabeth, he’ll explain it all someday!’”
    Rae looked suddenly mournful, like Stan Laurel. Elizabeth shrugged, took a sip, sighed.
    â€œWere you and he close?”
    â€œOh, yeah, like that.” Elizabeth crossed her fingers. “I used to cut his hair, rub his feet.... I was the apple of his eye. And I thought my mother was pitiful for not being able to compete successfully.”
    â€œGod—mothers. Where would we be without them?”
    â€œI don’t know. My mother only loved me when I was doing something she could brag about.”
    â€œMy mother brags about stuff like—well, for instance, she says to this boyfriend of mine, ‘Rae had the talent to be a concert pianist’—which I didn’t—’only she was lazy. I pushed her and pushed her to practice, I’d beat the stuffing out of her trying to get her to practice,’ like, you know, it speaks of her devotion and wisdom, only to me and the boyfriend it’s like she’s bragging about having stolen money from orphans—no offense—to pay for my lessons.”
    They shook their heads, smiled at each other.
    â€œI wonder what Rosie will tell her psychiatrist about me when she’s twenty, all this lurid, compelling, rewritten stuff about my lovers and neuroses and clothes and mannerisms”
    â€œNah. I bet you’re a great mother.”
    â€œWhat does that have to do with anything?”
    â€œA lot.”
    â€œI don’t know. I find myself doing all these things that my mother used to do, things I swore I’d never do.”
    â€œLike what?”
    â€œI don’t know.” Like