Lying back on her bed, Annie stared up through the crocheted canopy. It had been a present on her fourteenth birthday. Her mother had thrown a party for her, complete with friends from school, ballet, and gymnastics. The house had been full that day. Her mother had made sure her present was opened last, then proceeded to tell everyone how she'd seen the canopy covering in a home-design magazine and called the publisher, who put her in contact with the company. "It came all the way from Belgium."

Everyone had oohed and aahed over it. One friend had even leaned over to whisper, "I wish my mother would buy something like that for me."

Annie remembered wishing she could throw it back into its big professionally wrapped box with the massive silk ribbons and flowers and hand it to the girl with her best wishes. She wanted to scream, "I didn't ask for it! She's going to use it against me. The next time I dare disagree with her, she's going to say, 'How can you be so ungrateful? I bought you that beautiful canopy. I had to call long distance to that magazine and then stay on hold forever just to find out where it came from. And then I had to write to the company in Belgium. Do you have any idea how much that canopy cost? I would have died to have something so beautiful in my drab little room when I was a child. And now you won't do the simplest thing I ask of you.'"

Something shifted within Annie, a subtle warmth, the barest flicker of light. Just a spark, but it was like a match lit in a dark room. She could see clearly, and a chill went through her.

Oh, God . . . oh, God. I'm lying here on my bed the same way Mom is lying on her chaise longue downstairs. I'm nursing my grievances the same way she nurses hers. I despise what she does, and I'm becoming just like her.

Annie sat up, heart pounding. I can't stay here. I can't go on like this. If I do, I'm going to end up hating my mother the same way she hates hers. Lord, I can't live like that.

Slipping off her bed, Annie headed for her closet. Sliding the mirrored doors open, she reached to the high shelf and pulled down her suitcase. Opening her dresser drawers, she took out only what she needed, packing hastily. She had enough to get by until she was settled with Susan. She took her Bible from her nightstand and put it on top of her clothes. Closing the suitcase, she locked it.

Should she speak with her mother? No, she didn't dare risk it. She knew the scene that would come if she confronted her. Sitting down at her desk, she opened a side drawer and took out a box with pretty stationery inside. She sat for a long moment, thinking. No matter what she said, it wasn't going to change her mother's mind. Wiping her eyes and rubbing her nose, Annie pressed her lips together. Lord . . . Lord . . . She didn't know what to pray. She didn't know if she was doing right or wrong.

Honor.

What did it mean anyway?

Mom, she wrote, I'm grateful for everything you've done for me. She sat for a long time, trying to think what else to say to make the blow easier on her mother. Nothing came to her. Nothing would help. All she could imagine was the anger. I love you, she wrote finally and signed it simply, Annie.

She placed the note in the middle of her bed.

Nora heard the stairs creak once and knew Annie was coming down. That's good. She's had time to think things over. Nora relaxed on the chaise longue, pressed the warming compress over her eyes, and waited for her daughter to come and apologize.

The front door opened and closed.

Surprised and irritated, Nora sat up.

"Annie?"

Growing angry, she threw the compress down and rose. She went into the family room and called out to her again. Annie was probably just going out for a walk to sulk. She'd come back in a more pliable mood. She always did. But it was aggravating to be made to wait. Patience wasn't one of Nora's virtues. She liked to have things settled as quickly as possible-and she didn't like to worry and wonder about what Annie was thinking and doing. She liked to know where she was and what was running through her mind.

Why is she being so difficult? I'm only doing what's best for her!

As she entered the living room, she saw Annie through the satin sheers of the front plate-glass windows. Her daughter was tossing a suitcase into the trunk of the new car her father had given her as a graduation gift. Shocked, Nora stood staring as Annie slammed the trunk, walked around to the driver's side, unlocked it, and slid in.

Where does she think she's going? She's never to leave without asking permission.

As Annie drove down the street, two emotions struck Nora at once. White-hot rage and cold panic. She ran for the door, throwing it open and hurrying outside. "Annie!"

Nora Gaines stood on her manicured front lawn and watched the taillights of her daughter's car flash once as she stopped briefly at the corner and then turned right and drove out of sight.

Chapter 2.

Leota Reinhardt washed and rinsed her cheese glass, green Fiesta plate, fork and knife and set them to air-dry in the plastic stand on the sink counter. The house was silent, the windows closed. She used to leave them open all through springtime, loving the sound of the birds and the smell of clean, flower-scented air drifting in from her backyard garden. But her garden had gone to seed over the past few years, her arthritis keeping her a prisoner inside. Pulling the sink plug, she looked at her gnarled hands as the warm, sudsy water drained away.

Just as time is draining away. At eighty-four, she knew she didn't have much left. Sadness filled her, a loneliness that seemed to deepen with the long days and nights of waiting.

A door slammed, and Leota raised her head and watched as three children appeared just beyond her west-side, paint-chipped white fence. The house next door was close, so close she could talk to her neighbors if she knew them, which she didn't anymore. All the neighbors she had known were gone. They'd moved away or died long ago. The house west of hers was now occupied by a young black woman with three children, a boy of about nine and two little girls perhaps seven and five. Leota was the last one from the original families that had purchased these houses just before World War II. Her husband's parents had bought this house when it was new. She thought back briefly to those troubled times when Bernard had gone off to war and she had moved in with "Mama and Papa," bringing her two babies with her. George had just turned three, and Eleanor was a toddler and into everything.

When Bernard came back home a changed man, Mama and Papa insisted they remain with them. They saw his brokenness, and Leota faced her lack of options. For a time they all lived together civilly, if not happily, until the garage was lengthened and converted by Papa and Bernard into a one-bedroom unit with a living area and windows that looked out into the garden. Oh, the bitterness of those years.

Things were better when Mama and Papa left the "big" house to them and lived in the smaller unit. Then Papa died a few weeks later of a heart attack, and Mama lived on thirteen more years. It wasn't until the last few years of Mama's life that Leota felt they had finally made peace.

"I misjudged you." Mama's accent was still evident, even after so many years in America. She had tried hard to lose it, but it had returned as death approached, as though, perhaps, her mind was wandering back to her childhood in Europe. When Leota had leaned down to tuck the quilt around her, Mama had touched her cheek, her blue eyes rheumy with tears. "You've been good to my family, Leota." Kind words after so many years of misunderstandings. Mama died a week later.

Leota found it odd that she should remember those words now while watching the three neighbor children file solemnly down their back steps and across the yard. The boy carried a small shovel, the older girl a shoe box. The smaller girl was crying in abject misery. No one spoke as the boy dug a hole. He had just set his shovel aside when their mother came out the back door. She went to them and spoke to them briefly, holding out a square of pretty, flowered cotton. The older girl took it and knelt down on the ground as her sister took something limp from the box. A dead sparrow. The mother took up the empty box and walked back to the garbage can, tossing it in while the youngest girl folded the pretty cotton around the tiny bird, then placed it tenderly in its small grave. They sang a hymn, one that touched off Leota's memories of church services long ago: "Rock of Ages" . . .

But what were they doing to the song, adding notes and warbles? Why couldn't they just sing it as it was written?

As the first small scoop of dirt was carefully shaken into the hole, the little girl jumped up and fled to her mother, clinging to her long, zebra-print skirt. The woman lifted her and held her close, turning away to the house as the boy finished the burial.

So much pomp and ceremony, so many tears for a single sparrow.

Oh, Lord of mercy, will anyone care when I'm gone? Will anyone shed a single tear? Or will I lie dead in this house for so many days until the stench of my decaying body brings someone to check on me? She had tried so hard to keep her family together and had failed in all attempts.

The older girl stuck a hand through Leota's fence and broke off a few daffodils, volunteers that had naturalized from long-ago plantings. Leota wanted to slide the window up and shout at the child to keep her thieving hands off the few remaining flowers in her garden, but just as quickly as the anger came, it dissipated. What did it matter? Could the child reattach them to the broken stems? She watched the little girl place the flowers on the fresh grave, a last offering of love to the departed bird. As the child turned, she spotted Leota framed in her kitchen window. Uttering a startled cry, the child fled across the backyard, leaped up the few steps and disappeared inside, the door slamming behind her.

Leota blinked, hurt deeply. The look on that child's face had been like a slap on her own. It hadn't been guilt at being caught stealing two daffodils that had made that child run so fast. It had been fear.

Have I become the witch in a child's fairy tale? Why else would such a look come into a child's face unless the poor dear thought she'd seen an ugly old crone who meant to do her harm?

Tears prickled Leota's eyes, blurring her vision. Her heart ached.

God, what did I do to bring things to this sad end? I always loved children. I loved my children best. I love them still.

Yet Eleanor called infrequently and managed to visit only a couple of times a year. She never stayed longer than an hour or so and would spend most of it looking out the front window, fearing some hooligan would steal the hubcaps from her Lincoln. Or was it a Lexus? And George was just too busy to visit, too busy to call, too busy to write.

Turning away from the kitchen sink, Leota took a few steps to the table by the back window. Bracing herself, she sat down slowly, wincing at the pain in her knees. The glass was stained from years of rain pouring down, trailing dust and grime from the clogged roof gutters. The last time she'd climbed the ladder to clean them out was ten years ago; the last time she washed her windows was last spring. It rained the day after, and she hadn't done it again since.

Beyond that cloudy window was her long-abandoned garden, her place of retreat and renewal. She merely glanced at it now-it hurt too much to see the scraggly roses growing in a tangle, the undisciplined bushes that had once been so carefully shaped. Weeds poked up everywhere, choking out the flowers. The lawn was dead in some places and overgrown in others. Pots still lined the brick restraining wall, but the precious plants she had purchased with hard-earned money were dead, some from thirst through the summer months and others drowned by winter rains. The cherries that had dropped last year had rotted on the small patio, leaving stains like drops of dried blood. Oh, and her lovely lavender-purple wisteria . . .

Leota closed her eyes against the grief. Her wisteria had gone wild, shoots twisting, twining, and thickening until they broke the overburdened lattice now sagging and blocking the gate to the vegetable garden-a garden that once yielded enough to feed her family and the neighbors. Now it produced nothing but mustard flowers and milkweed-and tiny apricot trees from the fruit that had dropped and rotted into the ground.

Flexing her fingers slowly, Leota reached for the newspaper, sliding the blue rubber band off and putting it into an empty plastic margarine container. All those silly rubber bands, one for every day of every year she'd been reading the Oakland Tribune. What was she going to do with all of them? What was she going to do with the dozens of plastic margarine containers stored in the pantry? Or the pie tins? Or the magazines? Thank the Lord the magazine subscriptions had run out and no more were coming. Now there was a bane from Satan called junk mail.

Though inclined to read the paper, Leota decided a glance was enough. What good would it do her to read the details of how the world at large was going to hell in a handbasket? Iraq and its madman. Soviet splinter countries with their nuclear weapons and hot tempers. Japan and China with their ancient grudges. As for the local news, she already knew Oakland had more than its share of murder and mayhem and government corruption. Editorials? The same old stuff year after year. Why read about it? The last time she read the whole page, they were firing pros and cons about teaching inner-city children ebonics! What happened to learning proper English? She thought of how hard Mama Reinhardt had practiced the language, even though she never intended to work outside the home. And Papa, who did manage to learn English well, only worked until the war years; then fear and suspicion kept him unemployed.

No, she didn't need to read the front page to see that the world hadn't changed much in her lifetime. If she wanted details, she could watch them in living color on one of the news shows that ran between four in the afternoon and eleven at night. She had watched from time to time and seen the same carnage repeated hour after hour. No need for people to go out and rubberneck anymore. They could see actual footage from a police car window if they liked. As for wars, take a good long look at CNN. And nothing was too disgusting or perverse to be discussed openly on any number of talk shows.

"Don't even get me started on the sitcoms," she muttered to the silence. Politically correct was just another way of saying anything goes, no matter how deviant. And all this hoop-tee-la about celebrities, most of whom she didn't know.

Lord, why don't You just take me home? I'm tired. I hurt. I'm sick of seeing what's happening in the world. It's getting worse. I'm no good to anyone. I've become a cranky old hag who scares neighbor children half to death. Those I love have their own lives to live. Isn't that the name of a soap opera?

That was something she swore she would never do. Watch soap operas. But she was getting desperate. Sometimes she turned the television on for no other reason than to hear the sound of another human voice.

She found the newspaper sections she wanted: the comics and Dear Abby. She had read the advice columns for so long she knew exactly what kind of advice would be dispensed. She'd read all the problems anyone could imagine and quite a few she was sure people had made up.

There's nothing new under the sun. Sometimes she felt like a Peeping Tom or a voyeur getting a glimpse into the private lives of other people. Well, why not? She didn't have much of a life of her own anymore. Anyone looking through her window would be bored to death. She chuckled. She could just hear them now. "What's that old woman doing? Sitting at her nook table, sitting in front of her television, sitting in the bathroom, lying in bed sleepless because she slept most of the day in her chair?"

She'd heard on some talk show that people should exercise their minds. Since she couldn't exercise her body anymore, she figured she might as well try rolling the marbles around in her head. So she'd taken to working crossword puzzles and studying German from a book Bernard had bought for her shortly after they married. A pity she hadn't started earlier. It might have helped build a bridge between her and Mama Reinhardt. Anyway, she was still keeping her mind busy. The last thing she wanted was to develop senile dementia or Alzheimer's. Heaven help her if she wandered out her door one day and took off in Oakland, looking for who knew what. She'd get lost on the streets. End up sleeping in a doorway. Poor Eleanor and George would get a call that their crazy old mother had been found sleeping on a park bench.

Maybe that'd get their attention.

A friend of hers from working days had been moved by her children to Chicago. Cosma Lundstrom had written that she had gone out for a nice walk one bright, sunny day and had almost frozen to death in a doorway before her frantic children found her. She'd written Leota all about it.

The sun was out, but then the wind came up. They'd told me about the wind, of course-this being the "Windy City"-but I never expected it to get that cold. I sat down and couldn't get up. That stoop was so chilly it might as well have been a brass bench on the South Pole. I think my backside froze to the blasted thing. And then my false teeth stuck together so I couldn't even ask for help. I suppose everyone who passed thought I was having a gay old time, sitting there and smiling when all the while the fact was my lips were frozen to my gums!

How she'd laughed over that letter. Cosma always wrote funny things. She'd taken a trip once to Arizona with some senior citizens and written back that it was 117 degrees with a windchill factor of 10.

They said it was cheaper going in the summertime. Now I know why! I was so hot I bought a bathing suit and didn't care who saw my ancient wrinkly legs. A lot of good it did me. Why in the blazes would anyone heat a pool in Arizona?

One year, the Christmas card Leota sent Cosma had come back with a line drawn through the address. Someone had written Deceased in bold letters and ink-stamped a hand pointing back to the return address.

Deceased.

A fifty-year friendship was over. Just like that.

Deceased.

What a cold, unfeeling word. It just didn't fit the woman who had been so full of life and laughter and keen observations. Cosma had been a God-sent gift all those years ago when Leota was working and Mama and Papa were still alive. She and Cosma had the same boss, a kindly man who had two sons serving in the Pacific. He made a point of hiring the wives of servicemen. Both young, both with husbands off to war, Leota and her new friend had had much in common. Cosma had always been the one to listen to her woes and offer sound, often-followed advice concerning Mama Reinhardt.

Leota's eyes teared up. Oh, Lord, how I miss Cosma. I've no one anymore. Emphysema must have gotten her. I always told her smoking wasn't good for anyone. But she had to start, thought it made her look so elegant. She shook her head. Cosma hadn't been in Chicago more than a year when her children had to move her into a rest home. "Me and my oxygen bottle have new digs," she'd joked in a letter. "Remember how we used to walk around Lake Merritt after work and we'd be as fresh as daisies when we finished? Now, it's all I can do to walk from my chair to the bathroom. The most exercise I can manage is writing letters. As long as my fingers do the walking and talking, I can manage."

Oh, the fun they had had when they were young, going to movies together. Several times they'd gone to the downtown USO and swung to Glenn Miller and Harry James with soldiers on liberty, crying on the way home because it seemed as though the war would never end and their own husbands would never come home.

And yet, while Leota had worried about what might happen if Bernard were killed in battle, Cosma took on life like a bullfighter. And life had gored her badly when soldiers came to her door with the news that her first husband, Jeremy, had been killed in action on Guadalcanal.

Cosma met her second husband, Alfred Lundstrom, a handsome, blue-eyed Marine from Minnesota, when he was back in the States recuperating from a wound he'd gotten in the South Pacific. He and Cosma married within a month of their first date, shortly before he rejoined his unit. Al returned in one piece. He packed up Cosma and moved her northeast to Minnesota. "This city girl is milking cows!" she had written. They had remained long enough to have their first child, a boy, and then moved back to California.

When Leota had heard their plans, she'd been filled with hope that they would end up living in the Bay Area. She'd longed to have her friend back. She'd been desperately unhappy then, working long hours, at odds with her mother-in-law, with whom her children were bonding in her place. Anytime she told them to do something, Mama stepped in and said they didn't have to do it. And then there was Bernard, still at war within himself.

But her hopes didn't materialize. Al saw a lucrative future in the Southland, and, as it turned out, he was right. He arrived in time for the boom years of building and did so well in construction that he eventually opened his own business.

"This man lives to work," Cosma had grumbled once on the phone. Al died of a heart attack when he was sixty-five.

"I'm ashamed to say I'm mad at him," Cosma had written. "He just retired. We had all these plans of how we were going to enjoy our golden years together, and off he goes without me. Just like a man. Can't take time to meander. Just a straight shot to where he's going."

Thankfully, Al had been well insured and the sons had been trained in the family business. Cosma had gotten over being mad within a few months, but she mourned for several years. It was her daughter who blasted her out of the house with a cruise to Mexico. After that, Cosma started traveling on her own.

Leota had loved Cosma's letters and lived vicariously through her adventures, for no two lives could have been more different.

Bernard had never been ambitious or particularly industrious. He'd come home whole in body but wounded in heart and mind. He wasn't the beau she'd fallen in love with and married at twenty. He was like a tired old man, sitting in his easy chair and closing his eyes, not to sleep, but to shut the world out. She had tried all kinds of ways to bring him out of his depression, but he was mired in it. Then he started to drink to deaden the ache in his heart and drown the consuming guilt. He never allowed himself to get too drunk. He would drink just enough to make himself drowsy. Only once did he overdo it to the point of losing control. She managed then, briefly, to get past his barriers and close enough to his tormented thoughts to glimpse the pit he was in. He told her everything, and she had felt the darkness surround her, too. For a time afterward, he tried to keep her down there with him, but she fought free, finding the ways and means to climb out. Oh, God, oh, God! she'd cried out, and the Lord had put His hand down to her and drawn her up.

"It wasn't your fault, Bernard. It wasn't your doing!"

"You don't understand!" He was angry, frustrated. "How can you understand? You're not German!"

"Nor are you! For God's sake-and the sake of your children-rise above it!"

He was determined to remain where circumstances had placed him. He couldn't climb over them or go around them; he couldn't break out of the prison of his mind. After a while, he wouldn't listen to her.

Mama and Papa had asked him a few pointed questions when he first returned home from the war. "Were you able to find out anything?" Papa had asked, while Mama waited tensely.

"The city was destroyed," Bernard had said. "There was nothing left. Nothing." His voice was so hard and cold, it was clear the door on his wartime experiences had been slammed shut and locked from the inside. Mama and Papa never asked him anything about the war again.

It was left to her to pick up the pieces and try to put Bernard back together again.

Mama and Papa Reinhardt had waited for that to happen. They'd watched and noticed her every failure. Only Papa occasionally seemed to understand how hard she was trying; Mama understood nothing.

"A wife should be able to make her husband happy," Mama had said, and Leota had felt the full weight of blame for Bernard's unhappiness placed upon her shoulders. She had wanted so badly to lash out in self-defense, but she knew what would happen if she did. Knowing what Bernard had seen had been a trap. Leota possessed the terrible power to silence her tormentor at any time she wanted. All she had to do was tell the truth and watch the sword of it hack Helene Reinhardt down to size. Mama would never dare to look at her with that superior disdain and contempt again. At times the temptation was so great she had to leave the house, because Leota knew she could never speak of it-not without breaking trust with her husband. And that was something she would not do. She had promised never to tell his parents what he had told her that wine-soaked night.

How many evenings had she escaped into the garden, working by herself until night fell? She would sit in the darkness and weep, anger and frustration mingling with the wrenching love and grief she felt for Bernard. A desperate hope held Leota silent and where she was. She still loved him. If she used what she knew to defend herself, it would be at great cost.

Tears burned Leota's eyes as she stared down at the newspaper, remembering how hard she had struggled and how many years it had been before an angle of repose had been reached between her and Mama Helene. In the end, she had loved the old woman and been glad she had kept silent. Better that it had come from Papa and not her.

I kept the promise, Bernard. I never said a word, my darling.

Sadness gripped her. Bernard had died a few years after Al. Not from a heart attack but from complications brought on by alcoholism. Over the years, he'd stayed home while she went to church. "Why should I go? There's no God," he'd say. "How could there be a God with the world the way it is?" But she knew better. Without God, she would not have had the strength to stay. It wasn't until the end that he repented and wept for the wasted years.

And still she clung to hope. And waited.

She picked up her pencil, staring at the crossword puzzle. What was a four-letter word for gateway? Arch. What was a five-letter word for excellence-worth? Merit. She penciled in the letters carefully. A Keats creation-poetry; wet spot-swamp; assumed name-alias.

The wall clock bonged softly from the living room. She'd been sitting at the table working on the puzzle for over an hour. Leaving her pencil on the newspaper, she pushed herself up. Her joints were so stiff and painful these days. Entering the small laundry room that had once been a back porch, she put a few clothes into the washing machine. She had only a little detergent left. Sprinkling a tablespoon of it over the clothes, she turned the dial to "small load." She stood for a moment, watching the water pour down. It was an old machine, like her, and it could be temperamental at times. Today it was working fine.

Thirsty for a glass of milk, she went to the refrigerator. There was enough milk left to fill half a cheese glass. She supposed she would have to go shopping again. She couldn't put it off much longer. She had two eggs left, half a loaf of bread, and canned goods. No meat. No fresh vegetables or fruit. No cookies either, though she supposed she had enough fixings to make some.

It was only a few blocks to the Dimond District, where she had shopped for more than sixty years. Up until a few weeks ago, she had had no problems walking and carrying back the few items she purchased at the supermarket. But the last time she went, a teenage boy on a skateboard had bumped into her. She had been crossing the parking lot when suddenly he was there.

In a frantic effort to keep from falling down, she had dropped her grocery bag, scattering things every which way. You'd think she was to blame, the way the boy glared at her. Never in her life had she heard such cursing as came from that boy. Without shame, he spewed out a stream of four-letter words that brought heat surging into Leota's face. Then he jumped back onto his skateboard and rattled off, leaving her shaken, mortified, and flustered. It only took a minute for her temper to rise. What was the matter with young people today? Maybe that boy's parents had spared the rod and spoiled the child. And now he was a savage bent on running down little old ladies.

One of the supermarket baggers bringing carts back in from the parking lot happened to notice her gathering her scattered groceries and paused to help. "Looks like a heavy bag, ma'am. You want a taxi? I call 'em for a lot of old folks living round here all the time. Doesn't take more than fifteen minutes for one to get here."

Leota bristled. Maybe it was the way the girl said "old folks" that got her dander up even more. "I didn't drop these things! Some little hooligan on one of those roller boards almost knocked me down!" She straightened her dress and squared her shoulders with as much dignity as she could muster. "Customers aren't even safe in your parking lot anymore."

"He's got no business skating cross the lot. We got signs posted."

"Maybe he can't read." Considering the public education system, it wouldn't surprise her in the least.