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experience! I have never worked so hard, learned so much! Are you both all right? I’ll be home before you know it. Now I’ve got to run, put on my makeup. Good-bye, good-bye, my darlings!” She blew kisses into the phone and hung up.
    Slowly Jenny replaced the receiver. I didn’t open my mouth, she thought sadly. I didn’t say a word. She picked up the phone again, thinking she’d hung up too fast; maybe her mother was still on the other end. But the sound of an empty line hummed back at her. I didn’t open it, not once. I should’ve told her I want her to come home.
    â€œDidn’t you think she sounded funny?” Mary said.
    â€œNo, she sounded all right. Don’t you think so, Daddy?”
    â€œI imagine she’s worn out. That’s tough going, driving from one place to the next, always on the move,” he said. “How’s that for timing? We walked in the door and there she was. Pretty good going, I’d say.”
    They kissed him and went up to bed. It was very hot in their room. A foul-tempered mosquito kept zooming in on them every time they turned off the light. Finally, after about an hour, they nailed him and hurled the corpse out the window.
    The darkness in the room was so dense that when Mary closed her eyes, then opened them, she couldn’t tell the difference. There were no outlines of windows or furniture. The dark was total. She opened and closed her eyes several times, testing.
    â€œMay I just ask you one thing?” Jenny’s voice came from a great distance. “What I want to know is, how come it’s O.K. for a mother to be young for her age, but it’s not O.K. for a kid to be. Just answer me that.”
    â€œThey didn’t mean anything,” Mary said.
    â€œAsses.”
    Mary opened and closed her eyes a few more times. The room filled with the clicking sound of Jenny sucking her thumb. Followed by snuffling sounds.
    â€œWhat’s the matter now?” said Mary. “She’s coming home soon, isn’t she? What more do you want?”
    â€œShe left, didn’t she?”
    Mary lay rigid, speechless.
    After a bit Jenny said, “I bet those asses never even heard of Peter Pan, either.”
    Mary swallowed, then said in a falsetto, “Alice who?”
    Their laughter came in a rush, then stopped as suddenly as it had begun, and they both dropped, like stones, into the deep well of sleep.

CHAPTER EIGHT
    Sometimes it seemed their mother had always been away. Her going left a huge hole in their lives. She was always planning things for them to do, spontaneous things—trips, picnics, the more spontaneous the better. “I hate plans!” she told them. “The more spur-of-the-moment something is, the more fun!”
    One day last fall, the first really crisp day of September, she’d said, “Let’s go pick apples!”
    They piled into the car and wandered over back roads, looking for Abernathy’s Orchard, where you could “Pick Ur Own,” the signs said.
    â€œLook at that! Will you just look at that!” Their mother jammed on the brakes. “Let’s go to the top and see what we can see.”
    â€œThat” was a spectacular hilltop, which, they found when they climbed to its top, afforded a wonderful view of Long Island Sound sparkling in the distance.
    â€œIt’s like the ocean!” they cried. Their mother pointed in her dramatic way and said, “Across there lies Portugal.”
    Portugal!
    Their mother shielded her eyes with her hand as she scanned the horizon. “Is that a pirate ship I see?” she asked them. “I do believe it is.” So they shielded their eyes with their hands in an exact imitation of her, and, sure enough, they too swore they could see a pirate ship, the one she meant.
    â€œIt’s probably filled with gold and spices, and Tyrone Power’s jumping around on the deck brandishing his sword, and Maureen