"Have you had any problems with your right nipple?"

"No. Is something wrong?" Audra turned her face to look at me. Until now, she'd kept the usual demeanor of a woman having an intimate exam, studying the ceiling with the stillness of a mannequin. Concern now animated her face.

I glanced at the breast and back at Audra. "I notice a bit of a rash. Have you noticed it?"

"It's been a bit itchy, now that you mention it. Should I be worried?"

"You can leave the worrying to me," I said, meaning it. My co-workers accused me of continually searching for zebras in horse corrals. My terror of missing a diagnosis sent me down testing roads the Medicrats argued against repeatedly. "It's just a small rash. Have you changed detergent? Soap? Bought a new brand of bras?"

"I've been swimming at the Brighton Y. Could chlorine cause it?"

"Certainly possible," I said. "Chlorine's a strong irritant. But since you're due for a mammogram anyway, I'll add a few tests."

"Should I be worried?" she asked again.

We should always be worried. Every second of every day.

"You've had a history of eczema in the past, and you've been under nothing but stress, so it's likely you have eczema on your nipple."

"Oh, Lord, please don't let the eczema be coming back," Audra said.

Please let the eczema be coming back.

The popcorn bowl was almost empty. Merry and I took turns reaching in and scrabbling for popped kernels among the unopened, hard pellets. Why did some kernels have to be so obstinate?

"You worry about everything," Merry said. "One scratchy nipple and you have her dead and buried." I'd told her about Audra's exam and my fears.

"As though you don't do the death watch," I replied. Merry and I spent our lives waiting for loved ones to disappear or die. I couldn't imagine what I'd do when Ca.s.sandra and Ruby were old enough to leave the house without Drew or me.

"That's why I know you're nuts." She hit the remote b.u.t.ton to open the DVD player and retrieve Doctor Zhivago. "Mama would have liked this movie. She'd think Geraldine Chaplin's character was too good to be true, though. She'd like Julie Christie."

I didn't know where my sister got this baloney from, being she wasn't even six when Mama died. Merry had built a Mama from memory shreds, from pictures, and from what I had told her over the years.

"Who'd you like?" I wondered.

"I hated the way Geraldine Chaplin was good, good, good, and went around taking care of everyone. And what did she end up with?"

"She got away from it all."

"But Julie Christie got Omar Sharif." Merry refilled her winegla.s.s and put her feet up on the coffee table. It seemed impossible Merry would be thirty-seven in December. She still acted like a kid waiting for life to begin. Insubstantial, like her furniture, a cast-off desk from Drew, board-and-brick bookcases, and a coffee table made from a giant wire spool, which she probably got from a phone repairman she'd slept with.

"Omar Sharif never made anyone happy," I argued.

"Don't you think he made them happy for a little while?"

"Why did they want him anyway?" I asked. "He was so dismal."

"I thought he was romantic. He believed in everyone." She folded her legs under her and brushed her fingers over her chest. "I think Daddy believed in Mama for a long time. Too much."

"And that's why he did it? Is this his newest theory or yours?" I grabbed the empty pizza box, holding it so none of the crumbs fell out. "That's a horrible thing to say. Especially today."

"I'm just wondering. Why do you get so mad if I even just wonder and try to figure things out?" Merry picked up the greasy paper plates.

"Because Mama deserves this night from us, and she'd want us to leave him out of it."

20.

Lulu I crushed the unopened birthday card my father had sent. My fingers cramped up as I tried to obliterate the thick paper from my house, from my life. My daughters, Drew, and Merry waited in the dining room. Fifteen minutes earlier I'd left them, going noisily and with much ado to my study, giving them time to put out my "secret" birthday cake.

I threw down the rough prison-stock envelope and halfheartedly sorted the mound of mail on my desk. The correspondence lent an unwanted note of disorder to the room. The chaos gave me the jitters, but I felt too headachy to deal with bills. My urge to go upstairs, take a cool shower, and fall asleep chewed away at my responsibility to be celebration-happy, especially in front of the girls.

I grabbed the balled-up prison envelope and smoothed the paper, not wanting to let my father get the best of me. After slitting open the envelope, I pulled out the hand-drawn card covered with bright red and blue balloons.

Dear Lulu, Holy moly-if you've turned forty-one, then I'm almost sixty! I'm getting to be an old man in here-and trust me, cookie, this is not the place to get old. (Not that I ever expect you to end up in a place like this.) From what Merry tells me, you just get more successful each year. Pretty good, Cocoa Puff.

If I ever did write to my father, the reason would be to say, Never call me Cocoa Puff again. I could still hear him saying the words, throwing them through the bit of s.p.a.ce where I'd cracked open the door.

"Don't worry, Cocoa Puff. Mama won't get mad. I promise."

Mama didn't get mad. Mama died.

I closed my eyes for a moment, gathering strength to read the rest of the letter.

Your mother would be amazed. I can just hear her now: Where did Lulu get those brains? I think it must have been your grandpa on her side-I can't think of anyone else in our family with enough smarts to go to medical school.

I closed the card, thinking I might have a fury-induced stroke if I read any more. How did he manage to throw in that breezy reference to my mother, as though she were in Boca Raton rather than moldering in a coffin? Here's a news flash, Dad-we have no "our family."

Adults should be able to offer themselves up for adoption. I'd find a family who gathered at every holiday ever invented-quick, get out the Columbus Day tree!-offering ourselves immeasurable occasions to use our in-family jokes and us-only references. A family that celebrated birthdays in some way other than sending homemade birthday cards from prison.

I ached to say things like Oh, Jesus, I haven't called Aunt Mary in ages! I wanted to walk into a warm house and have worried people grab my arms and ask, "How bad were the roads, Lulu?" as I shook the snow out of my hair.

Adopting adults should be as desirable as rescuing beautiful little Chinese girls.

Maybe this would be the year I'd tell the prison to forbid him to send me mail. My daughters were both getting old enough to notice "Inmate Correspondence Program, Joseph Zachariah, 79--876" on the envelope flap and "Richmond County Prison" as part of the return address. He'd been banned from telephoning me ever since I had my first phone.

Our shredder groaned as it made confetti from my father's card, then the envelope.

I rotated my head to the right and the left, stretching away tension. I imagined my family secretly placing candles on my birthday cake. The girls had barely contained their excitement about the hush-hush dessert. Cake! Ice cream! Sugar, sugar, sugar!

Drew realized I hated this day, and like a good husband, he sympathized, but only to a point, the point when my neuroses poked into our daughters' need for normal family interaction. Given my druthers, I'd eschew all festivities, and until I became a parent, I had. However, decent motherhood demands everything in the world from you, including pretending happiness about your own birthday, and letting your children own a piece of that supposed joy.

I closed my eyes and tried to wish away the stress backache wrapping itself around my spine. I pushed my fingers deep into my lower back and rubbed. I grabbed two Excedrin and washed them down with cold coffee. Then I took a breath and opened the door to the impatient sounds of my daughters waiting for my gasp of delight at the pink-Ruby's choice-and purple-Ca.s.sandra's-helium-filled balloons floating around the ceiling like lost clouds, dangerously close to the fan blades spinning over the table.

"Mama!" Ruby barreled into my arms, shrieking. "Guess what we have, Mama!"

I hugged her hard, loving the feel of her perfect little body, the silk of her dark hair under my cheek. Ruby looked like my sister and husband more than she resembled me-as though Drew and Merry had mated and then snuck their embryo into my womb. Merry's eyes stared out from Ruby's face, miniature little chocolate Tootsie Pops, under Drew's sharply arched eyebrows and over his snubbed nose.

"Happy birthday, Mama." Ca.s.sandra's prim tone acknowledged the importance of the occasion.

Drew bent me backward for a Hollywood-style kiss to the shrieking delight of the girls, who loved watching him loosen me up. Merry pulled me to the table and seated me before a stack of presents. I shut my eyes for a moment and invoked the G.o.ds of false gaiety.

"First things first," Merry said. She sat across from me and lifted Ruby on her lap, the two of them looking like mother and daughter. If Mama were here, the picture would be complete, three generations of beauties. Ruby leaned against my sister's chest, the strands of their hair a perfect color match.

Ca.s.sandra stood at my side, her thin hand on my knee. She rested her head briefly on my shoulder, and I kissed her cool cheek. She presented pale, ethereal, and Lutheran-pretty, like Drew's mother, both with green eyes smudged with gold.

Just as in my childhood, I felt like the plain one, Drew's constant a.s.surances meaningless as I stared at my sister. Maybe I'd choose a homely family to adopt me-I'd like to try being the pretty one for a change. On the other hand, my no-nonsense looks offered approachability. My patients presented their secrets with the predictability of the tides. I drink at night, but no one knows, the bus driver told me. I cheated on my wife. Please, test me for everything, begged the history professor. I hide Dove chocolate bars in the bottom of the hamper, confessed the depressed nurse with uncontrolled diabetes.

Merry pressed a present into my hands, and I tugged at the opulence of curled ribbons circling the box. Finally, I took the scissors Drew offered and snipped them open. The girls watched with a hush.

"It's special!" Ruby said. "We got it from-"

"Shh!" Merry held a finger to Ruby's lips.

"Let Mommy be surprised," Drew said. He moved to sit next to me, pulling Ca.s.sandra onto his lap.

I ripped off the wrapping from the heavy-for-its-size package and lifted the top of a stiff silver box, the sort of box given by expensive stores. Merry saved boxes like this forever. Bright tissue paper-hot pink, neon blue, parakeet green-layers of it needed to be unpacked before I reached the present. "I can tell who wrapped this."

"Daddy made the package beautiful for you," Ruby declared. "But Aunt Merry-"

Again, Merry shushed Ruby. I pushed away the wrapping. Under the tissue, a glossy hexagon box shone. I recognized the object immediately. It had come from what my mother had deemed Grandpa's collection. Mama had decorated our living room with these exotic treasures. Mother-of-pearl triangles ornamented the polished surface, meeting at a circle of glittering green stone. It had been many years since I'd seen this box. The last time had been during my final visit to Aunt Cilla's house, when I'd realized my mother's sister had taken all my mother's belongings.

Mrs. Cohen had thought it important to put some sort of closure on our relationship with my aunt and uncle. She drove Merry and me over to Aunt Cilla's house in Brooklyn, leaving us alone there for a horrible half hour so we could "talk."

"What, what are you looking at?" Aunt Cilla had said when she saw me staring at the amethyst ring on her right hand. "Am I not supposed to have a memory of my sister?"

When she got no response from me, she'd turned to Merry. "And you, who's taking you to see the monster now?"

"How did you get this?" I asked Merry.

She grinned as though she'd pulled off quite a coup, too d.a.m.n excited to notice the warning in my voice.

Ca.s.sandra answered. "She got it from Aunt Cilla."

"Aunt Cilla had it in New York!" Ruby said. "Aunt Cilla!" Ruby repeated the words Aunt Cilla with relish, though she'd never met her. The girls had never met a soul from my side of the family except, of course, Merry. Ruby, our athletic girl, who played in the family-rich Cambridge Little League, came home with stories of teammates' grandparents, cousins, and uncles on a regular basis.

"She gave it to Aunt Merry. For you," Ruby made clear. "Aunt Cilla."

For me. Indeed. That would break tradition. My mother's sister hadn't done anything for us since she'd banished us from her house and sent us to the orphanage.

"I remembered how much you loved it," Merry said. "It was your favorite."

I started to remind Merry that she couldn't possibly remember anything from before Mama died, then stopped. "Thank you." I ran my fingers over the top, smooth and cold as I remembered.

Once a month, when Mama took them down from the shelf, Merry and I had made little worlds with the boxes. Mama had placed them carefully on the carpet and let us dust and shine them. Seven black onyx boxes in all different shapes and sizes, some inlaid with green and red stones along with the mother-of-pearl.

"It was your mother's," Ca.s.sandra said in whispery wonder. My mother, by her absence, by her rare mentioning, had been elevated, along with my father, to the status of a hovering saint. My children lived to the fullest our myth that a fatal car crash had taken both our parents. Only Drew, Merry, and I, and my tiny bit of family left back in New York-family we never saw, and never should-knew the truth.

"Right, it was my mother's." I ran my fingers through Ca.s.sandra's hair. I wanted to shove the box away, before my past tainted my daughters'. "I see another present. Is it for me?"

"Don't you miss your mother?" Ca.s.sandra asked for the millionth time. "Isn't it sad that she's dead? She died when you were little, right?" She bound her hands together as though showing respect.

"Not so very, very little," I a.s.sured her. "I was your age, and you're not so very little, are you?" I playfully clipped her chin.

Ruby clasped her hands together, imitating Ca.s.sandra's prayerful position. "Who took care of you?"

My daughters took every opportunity to pepper me with their questions.

"You remember, honey, Aunt Merry and I went to the special sleepover school."

"Why didn't you go live with Aunt Cilla?" Ca.s.sandra asked as though for the first time.

I repacked the box, covering it with the vibrant tissue. "You know the story already."

"Okay, girls, let Mommy open her other present." Drew reached for a small box and handed it to Ca.s.sandra. "You can give this to Mommy."

Ca.s.sandra took the box but didn't offer it to me. "But why?" she asked again. "Why didn't she take you? She's your aunt. You were all alone!"

Merry wrapped her arms tighter around Ruby. "She wasn't an aunt like me, sweetie. I'll always take care of you, no matter what. But Aunt Cilla had too many other responsibilities."

"And she was too sad from everyone dying, right?" Ruby said, repeating the family litany. "So she was too pressed. About the accident."

Drew took over. "De-pressed. Right, Aunt Cilla was depressed. Now give Mommy the present, Ca.s.sie."

I took the present Ca.s.sandra held out. Her ecologically correct wrapping, the Boston Sunday Globe's comic pages, covered a small velvet jewel box. Inside, sitting on a fluffy mound of cotton b.a.l.l.s sprinkled with tiny ribbon shavings, were a pair of macaroni sh.e.l.ls dipped in gold glitter. A shaky pink glitter L decorated each one.

"L for Lulu," Ruby explained.

"She knows," Ca.s.sandra said. "Do you like them?"

"We made them." Ruby's eyes sparkled. "They're earrings!"

I touched them carefully. Drew had applied some magic artist substance to render the macaroni jewels b.u.t.tery-slippery-smooth. "They look like real gold."

"I made the letters." Ruby picked the earrings up and handed them to me. "Aren't they pretty?"

"Do you like them?" Ca.s.sandra asked again.

"I love them." I unscrewed the plain gold studs I wore most days and put in the sh.e.l.ls.

"Oh, you look so beautiful, Mama!" Ruby gasped.