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faded label and threatened to take it to a lab. Jim knew we had nothing to hide and was unflappable. He told him, in his polite Southern drawl, that he understood the officer's concern and that he was welcome to test the stuff if it would set him at ease. The cop stared him down, then shrugged and let us drive on.
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    It was midsummer when we made our way through the Southwest. Even with both sliding doors open, the van heated up like a toaster oven. We drove over the Sierras at about fifteen miles an hour, nursing the water pump, stopping often to savor the mountains—jagged granite laced with snow. We were following the route of the great wagon trains, and barely making better time.
    Once we reached California, we headed toward the Santa Cruz mountains to look up an old friend. Franny London and Mother had met in Boston back in 1969, and had lived together for a while after my father and mother split up. Back then, Franny wore slim leather skirts and high heels, and drove her convertible along the bank of the Charles River, turning heads. She came from old money and didn't need to work a day in her life, but not long after my mother took off in the mail truck, Franny traded her pumps for rope sandals, quit bleaching her hair, and moved out to Santa Cruz to start a knife-making business with her lover. Apparently, in those halcyon days, you could make a living selling antler-handled bowie knives.
    We rumbled down Franny's rain-gutted driveway, passing a vegetable patch in a sun-filled clearing, and pulled into the shade of a redwood grove. She and her lover lived in a yellow slant-roofed house, set under the trees like a wedge of cheese. I was bowled over by the place: the mulchy sweetness of tree bark and needles, the green light, and the quiet—broken only by the patter of the creek, which wound down the narrow canyon, its banks undercut and riotous with ferns. I had come a long way from the brick walk-ups and steaming manholes of our city days.
    My mother jumped out of the truck and threw her arms around her old friend. Even in the dim light Franny was radiant: long, honey-colored hair and a liquid grace. She led us into her living room, an enormous space with windows giving onto the creek. Old couches and tapestry-covered pillows surrounded a potbelly stove, and against one wall was a long table covered with heaps of leather. The windowsill was lined with jars of stain and sealant, X-Acto knives and wire brushes gathered in coffee cans.
    Franny made us licorice tea and set me up at the workbench. "You can make your mother a change purse," she said, handing me a scrap of cowhide. She showed me how to decorate the surface, using stamps that looked like dental tools. On the ends were stars and sunbursts, comets and half-moons. You set the design in place and then whacked the handle with a rubber mallet. I pounded a whole galaxy into my scrap, while Franny and my mother caught up on things.
    "God, was I uptight back then," I heard Franny tell my mother, recalling their Cambridge days. "Remember how I flipped out if somebody borrowed my coffee cup? The woods have really mellowed me."
    The next morning, I went into Franny's room. The walls were covered with mandalas and Mexican weavings. The top of her dresser was covered with jars of what looked to me like vitamins, but which I now know must have been spirulina and bee jelly and brewer's yeast. I curled up in her covers and watched as Franny dangled a crystal over the jar lids, closing her eyes and humming to herself.
    "What are you doing?" I asked.
    "The crystal taps into my body's needs," she told me. "If I feel it vibrate over one of these, then I know that's what I need to take."
    My mother didn't truck with the spiritual, but Franny's allure was her ability to immerse herself in something and at once give off the air that she found her own immersion amusing. She talked of reflexology and chakras, but seemed to keep some of the irony of the Boston society girl