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worthwhile. Why is it all right for him to throw away a thousand dollars on a pair of handmade loafers from Italy, or to live in a hotel suite that costs a fortune, but I’m not supposed to want Stella to have adorable tennis shoes?”
    Livie could have answered that Wal-Mart sold adorable tennis shoes for a lot less than Prada. She could also say that Tim could have rented a room from Holiday Inn, too.
    Livie brought Kat a tissue and she blew her nose.
    “Once Stella outgrows them, those shoes will be worn by a dozen other children. Carmella’s whole family, her entire neighborhood, benefits from the things I pass along.”
    Livie smoothed circles on Kat’s back, feeling the knobs of her spine, the bump of her breath. She wondered if Kat ever thought of how shamed she’d been when she’d been on the receiving end of such largesse.
    “He makes me feel like it’s a sin to want beautiful things.”
    “I wish he’d let you work, let you earn your own money,” Livie murmured.
    Kat was a licensed cosmetician and hair stylist like their mom. Gus had bought Helen out when she retired several years ago and Gus and Kat had run the House of Hair together. Tim had found Kat there. Rescued her , he liked to joke. She’d done his nails. Livie tried not to mind, but it bothered her that a man would have his nails done, that he would go in for regular facials. Tim required a lot of pampering, a lot of high maintenance; he and Kat both did for all that he wanted to call himself a practical man.
    “I’m not like you,” Kat said.
    “Of course not.” Livie sat on her stool.
    “I never wanted to be all homey and domestic and June Cleaverish.”
    June Cleaverish? Did Livie appear that matronly? Maybe she did. Wasn’t it the perfect cover? No one would ever suspect June of acting the harlot either.  
    Kat sniffed and dabbed her eyes. “It’s not as if either of us would even know a good man if we saw one. It’s not as if we ever had a decent father figure.”
    “What about Dan Moser?” Livie sipped her coffee. “He encouraged us to call him Daddy.”
    “Hah! Daddy Dan the pick up man. What about that other one. What’s his name--”
    “You’ll have to be more specific, Cookie.”
    “The one with the big hairy belly, Ed--Ed--?” Kat frowned.
    “McPherson,” Livie supplied.
    “McPervert is more like it. He always went around in his under shorts rubbing that hair on his fat stomach like it was an animal. Remember?”
    No, Livie thought. I don’t want to. But even before her protest was fully joined, she was transported back into the kitchen of her childhood, watching their mother perform the before-school routine dressed in nothing more than a diaphanous drift of pale chiffon that scarcely concealed the curve of her bare buttocks as she bent into the refrigerator, or covered the dark wedge of her pubic hair when she faced Livie to ask whether Livie preferred peanut butter or bologna in her lunch box that day, while the man of the hour panted in her shadow, his hardness thrust like a fist against his boxers. Livie had never known where to look, but at the same time she had felt herself drawn to look, drawn inexplicably over the ledge of some inner craving she hardly understood and she had despised herself for it. She had hated her body for responding.
    When her mom had caught Livie squirming, she’d laughed and called her a prude. Objections to her behavior brought on the “I work hard and deserve to relax” lecture. If Livie complained about getting slapped on the butt, or tickled unmercifully, Gus rolled her eyes. As if she’d ever let a fox loose in the hen house, she’d say. And it was true to a degree. Once on overhearing one of her lovers make suggestive remarks to Livie, Gus had gotten out the baseball bat she kept in her closet, and while Kat and Livie had looked on, wide-eyed, she’d backed the man straight through the house and off the porch. They’d never seen him again.
    “Now we have Phillip,”