"Well, I thought it was a good idea," Vera says, defending herself. "But okay. We'll scratch that and move on to our own tradition."

"You're kidding. This I've got to hear." As long as I've known her, Vera has always been one of those religion-is-the-opiate-of-the-people types. Desperate times call for desperate measures, I suppose.

"Didn't some famous rabbi or other say that we should be kind to everyone we meet because anyone could be the Messiah?" Vera wonders out loud.

I groan and fling aside the blankets. "Vera, if my mother's the Messiah, not only am I in trouble, we're all in trouble. Nice try, though." I get out of bed, cross the room, and step out onto the balcony again to stare into the darkness.

"Okay, here's my last suggestion," Vera offers. "Lydia, I want you to think of one good memory from your childhood that involves your mother."

"There aren't any."

"Well, I want you to come up with one anyway. Just humor me, okay?" Vera waits until I agree before she goes on. "You're going to be sitting around with a lot of time to think. That's one thing hospitals are good for. So that's your homework. And rest a.s.sured, there will be a test."

"Vera, let's change tacks here," I say, being less than thrilled with my a.s.signment. "What if you were lying in a hospital bed about to die-"

"G.o.d forbid."

"G.o.d forbid," I agree, "and Serena came to see you? What would you want her to say to you?"

Vera doesn't hesitate. "I'd want her to tell me that she was happy."

"Really?" This gives me pause. "That's it?"

"Yes. I think so." Vera mulls over her answer, then adds to it. "I'd want to know that she was happy, and that she was loved. And that there would be people around to take care of her after I was gone."

"Wow." My eyes focus on the lights of an airplane as it streaks across the sky. "You wouldn't want her to tell you how much she loves you, how much she was going to miss you?"

"No," Vera says matter-of-factly. "I know all that already. And besides, I'm her mother, Lydia. Her welfare comes before mine."

"Even on your deathbed?"

"Especially on my deathbed."

"Vera, you're a really great parent," I tell her, not for the first time. "Does Serena know how lucky she is?"

"I think so. Though I wish she would show her grat.i.tude by keeping an extra carton of cream in the house when her old mother comes to visit. She knows I go through it like water. Whoever invented two-percent milk is no hero of mine. But enough about me." I hear Vera close the refrigerator. "Back to you."

"What about me?"

"Was this useful at all? Do you have a better idea about what you want to tell your mother?"

"Frankly, no."

Vera sighs. "I'm sorry I wasn't more helpful, Lydia."

"You have nothing to apologize for, Vera. You tried. I'm just a hopeless case."

"No, you're not. You're just attached to the idea of being a hopeless case." Vera pauses and clears her throat. "How would your life be different if you resolved your issues with your mother, Lydia? Who would you be?"

"I can't imagine." The idea seems as far out of reach as the stars twinkling overhead in the dark California sky.

"Well, think about it. And think fast. Your mother is on life support. I hate to be the one to say it, but that means she could die at any moment. Which means there's no time like the present."

"I know." I close my eyes and once again the image of my mother in her hospital bed all hooked up to machines rises to the surface of my mind. "I'll talk to her, Vera. Today. This morning. But I think I'm going to have to play it by ear. Like you said, be here now. Trust that whatever words fly out of my mouth are exactly the ones I need her to hear."

"Do you think that's wise?" Vera asks, not unkindly.

"I don't know," I answer truthfully. "But right now it's about the best that I can do."

"LADIES AND JELLYBEANS. Please get up, get washed, get dressed, and come to the children's dining room." This is how my father woke me every weekday morning when I was growing up, and I hear his voice in my head now as I dash around my hotel room getting ready to go to the hospital. If there's one thing my father hates, it's tardiness. Lucky for him, I inherited his punctuality gene; I am showered, dressed, made up, and out the door at exactly seven-nineteen, giving me a full eleven minutes to ride the elevator down from the seventh floor to the first floor, which is a good ten minutes more than necessary.

Stepping into the hotel lobby, I glance around and immediately catch sight of my father standing in front of the reception desk engaged in a lively conversation with Melissa, who is staring up at him with her big blue eyes and nodding continuously, like one of those toy dogs with the bobbing heads people keep on their dashboards. Today Melissa's nails are painted a glittery hot pink and her long shiny hair is fixed in a heavy-looking braid draped over her shoulder. The tip of her braid resembles a paintbrush and rests on the counter between her and my father. He keeps glancing down at it with interest, as though he were trying to figure out a way to grab it and tuck it away for safekeeping like a lucky rabbit's foot shoved deep inside his pocket.

"Dad?" I approach him cautiously, as though I am barging in on something I have no business interrupting.

"Lydia, there you are. Let's go, let's go." My father snaps to attention, spinning around and looking pointedly at his watch to show me how annoyed he is that I am only ten minutes early, which in his book is the equivalent of being twenty minutes late. "C'mon, the van is waiting for us. You have everything?" He looks me over quickly and gives a short nod of approval at what he sees: his adult daughter who is trying her best to feel and act like an adult, dressed neatly in a white jersey and gray slacks with a yellow sweater draped over her arm and her pocketbook slung over her shoulder.

"Thank you, doll. I appreciate it," my father calls to Melissa as he hustles me through the lobby. I wonder what Melissa has done to warrant his grat.i.tude but decide it's probably best not to ask.

"Nice girl, that Melissa," my father says as he puts his hand on my waist and steers me toward the exit. "Very pretty, too."

I ignore my father's appraisal of Melissa as a bellhop steps back with a little bow and pulls open the gla.s.s door for us. My father takes my elbow as though he owns it and propels me outside into sunlight so bright it makes us raise our hands to our foreheads in unison as though we are saluting an invisible superior officer standing in front of us instead of merely shielding our eyes.

"Where's the van?" my father asks, as if I am responsible for its absence.

"Beats me." I shrug, draping my sweater across my shoulders. Despite the bright sunshine, the early morning air is still a bit cool. I glance up the street but Eduardo's vehicle is nowhere in sight. My father searches the traffic coming toward us from both directions, his head swiveling back and forth on his scrawny neck quickly as though he is watching a professional tennis match. "Oh for G.o.d's sake," he finally yells, throwing up his hands in disgust. "I told them seven-thirty. Is that too much to ask? Bunch of momsers . Why is it so difficult for people to be on time?"

"Relax, Dad," I say, suggesting he do something the man finds impossible. "It's just about seven-thirty now." I look down at my wrist and the sight of my small rhinestonedecorated watch snuggled up to Allie's larger timepiece fills me with so much longing I fear I might collapse on the spot. Instead, I lean back against a large concrete planter filled with various flowering shrubs and look up the street again. "I'm sure it'll be here any minute now. And besides," I add, "Jack's not down yet anyway."

"Jack's meeting us later," my father says, beginning to pace.

"He is?" I ask, surprised. "Why?"

"He had a rough night. He's still sleeping."

I almost laugh. "Sleeping? Or sleeping it off?"

My question stops my father in his tracks. "Don't be nasty, Lydia. This is very hard on Jack."

"Oh really?" I wrinkle my brow and nod slightly as if I am pondering this. "As opposed to this being very easy on me?"

"Lydia, don't start with me, all right?" My father looks me full in the face for the first time all morning. "I was up for most of the night myself. Jack cried out in his sleep practically every hour on the hour and I had to keep waking him up and calming him down."

"Really?" I ask again, my voice curious, not cynical this time. "What does he cry out?"

My father shakes his head to signal he doesn't want to tell me, and glances back toward the hotel. I know he is just about at the end of his rope-according to my West Coast watch it is now seven-thirty-three-and that he is seriously considering storming back inside and giving the concierge a piece of his mind. And a scene like that is just about the last thing I need.

"Dad," I say, trying to distract him. "What does Jack cry out in his sleep?"

"Lydia-" My father hesitates, looks back toward the hotel once more, and then for some reason decides to tell me. "Sometimes he calls out, 'Mommy.' Sometimes he just yells, 'No.' And sometimes he whimpers like a baby." My father looks away from me, as if he is embarra.s.sed on Jack's behalf for his non-macho behavior. "All this is very difficult for Jack," my father informs me again. "You know your mother and your aunt Beatrice were very close. Not to mention identical. To the freckle. I'm sure Jack hasn't stopped thinking about his own mother since the minute he got here. And dreaming about her, too. Considering how much Jack hates hospitals it was very nice of him to come at all. And now that you've finally arrived, I thought I'd let him get a little extra rest. Believe me, he needs it."

As my father resumes his manic pacing, I study my shoes and think about Jack. It's easy for me to forget that underneath that extremely annoying exterior lies someone who hasn't had a mother for a very long time. And before my aunt Beatrice died, she lay curled in a coma for close to a year. I stare down at my feet picturing the young Jack before he had a long gray ponytail and a beer belly, vegging out in front of the television set at our house, where he spent a great deal of time trying to deny that his mother was in the hospital clinging to life and his father was off somewhere clinging to the woman whom he would run off with several months before Jack's mother died. If it's this difficult for me to contemplate losing my mother at the ripe old age of forty-nine, I imagine it must have been a hundred times harder for the teenaged Jack to face losing his. For the first time ever, I feel something that resembles compa.s.sion toward my cousin, and I vow to be nicer to him. Or at least to try.

"Here he is. Come on." My father grabs my arm and pushes me toward Eduardo's glistening white van, which has just appeared at the curb. Eduardo, looking very dapper in his freshly pressed clothes and wrap-around sungla.s.ses, gets out and comes around to the pa.s.senger side, his step stool in hand, his lips curved upward into a charming grin. I smile back at him, inwardly bracing myself for the onslaught of my father's famous temper, which I am sure is about to be unleashed at the poor guy just because he committed the unforgivable crime of being a few minutes late.

"Hey, Eddie," my father calls, all smiles. "Buenos dias."

I am shocked at my father's pleasantness, and at the same time mortified at his condescending words. I can't believe he has the gall to give Eduardo an anglicized nickname, and on top of that, add insult to injury by tossing a Spanish phrase out to him as though he knows the language.

"Dad," I say, tapping his arm to get his attention. "You really shouldn't-"

" Hola, Senor Pinkowitz." Eduardo calls back before I can finish my sentence. "Como esta usted?"

"Muy bien, muy bien." My father nods, and then, since this is about the extent of his Spanish vocabulary, he switches to English to introduce us. "Have you met my daughter, Lydia?"

"Yes, I drove her yesterday." Eduardo places his stool at my feet and slides open the van's door. "Good morning."

"Good morning," I say, allowing him to help me up. He makes sure my father gets in all right and then slides the door closed and goes around to the driver's side of the van.

"You are going to the hospital?" Eduardo asks, once he is back behind the wheel.

"Si," says my father, removing his wallet from his back pocket. He pulls out a five dollar bill-Eduardo's tip, I presume-and folds it into his hand before leaning back against the seat.

"Where is the young senor this morning?" Eduardo wonders out loud as he steers us into traffic.

"Taking a siesta, " my father answers, pleased that he has remembered another Spanish word.

"And how is the senora?"

"Oy," my father sighs deeply, and then brightens. "You know what oy means, Eddie?"

"No, senor. What does it mean?" I can't tell if Eduardo thinks humoring my father is part of his job description or if he's just an extraordinarily nice person. Maybe both.

" Oy means..." My father pauses, thinking. "Well, first of all, it's a Yiddish word. Yiddish is the language the Jews of Eastern Europe spoke many years ago. My parents both spoke it. They were from Russia, from Odessa, which is right near the sea."

I am stunned that my father is speaking to Eduardo like this. He never talks about his parents, both of whom died before I was born. I didn't even know they were from Odessa.

" Oy is a very hard word to translate," my father continues. "It means..." He hesitates and stares out the window as we come to the stop sign that lets me know we are almost at the hospital. "I'll use it in a sentence," he says, leaning forward. " Oy, am I happy. Oy, am I sad. Oy, am I hungry. Oy, was that close. Oy, now what am I going to do?"

"Ah." Eduardo pulls into the circular driveway of the hospital and turns around to face us. "In Spanish, we say, ay. Ay, what is the matter? Ay, I am not feeling well. Ay, what did you do? Sometimes we say, Ay, ay, ay ."

My father chuckles. "Sometimes we say oy, oy, oy . You see, Lydia," he turns to me as if this whole lesson in linguistics was solely for my benefit, "people are the same all over. Wherever you go, you meet nice people, you meet not-so-nice people..." He reaches over the front seat to give Eduardo the five-spot folded in his hand. " Por favor . Here you go, Eddie. Gracias ."

" De nada, Senor Pinkowitz. It is always a pleasure." Eduardo gets out of the van and slides open the pa.s.senger door so we can disembark. My father steps down on the stool Eduardo provides and moves aside so I can do the same. Eduardo closes the door with a rushing noise and bids us farewell. "Maybe the senora will be better today," he says. "I hope so."

My father blinks his eyes rapidly, then pulls out a long white handkerchief from his back pocket and brings it up to his face to loudly blow his nose. " Que sera, sera, Eddie," he says, his voice so full of sorrow my heart turns over. "Whatever will be, will be."

A PROMISE IS a promise, and since I promised Allie I would eat a good breakfast this morning, I follow my father past the reception desk where he makes the elderly volunteer blush like a schoolgirl just by saying h.e.l.lo to her, down the hallway and into the hospital cafeteria.

"Here, Lydia." He hands me a warm, wet brown plastic tray, takes one for himself, and leads me to the food line. "Hey, Malika." My father greets the woman standing behind the steam tables with a warm smile, as if they have known each other for years. "What's cooking this morning?"

Malika grins widely, revealing a large gap between her two front teeth. "Good morning, Mr. Pinkowitz. Look what I have for you." She waves the metal serving spoon she is holding in her dark hand toward the bins of food in front of her. "Scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, pancakes, oatmeal, home fries. Whatever you like."

"How about some bacon and eggs?"

"Very good." Malika nods her approval as she heaps some food onto a white china plate. She holds it out toward my father but when he bends forward to grab it, she s.n.a.t.c.hes it back. "What's wrong with my pancakes this morning?" she asks, insulted by his small breakfast order. "What's the matter with my oatmeal, my home fries, my nice fresh sausage?"

"I'm in training, Malika. I told you. I need to get down to my fighting weight." My father pats his flat belly and reaches for his food again but Malika whips it away from him.

"One pancake, Mr. Pinkowitz. Just a small one. Or else Malika will worry about you all morning." She adds a pancake that could hardly be called small to his plate and only then allows my father to take it from her.

"All right, you win again, Malika." He lowers the dish onto his tray, starts moving down the line, and then stops. "Come on, Lydia," he says, the impatience in his voice trying to mask the fact that he'd momentarily forgotten all about me. "Malika," he says, almost as an afterthought, "this is my daughter, Lydia."

"Nice to meet you, Malika," I say, studying the ID badge clipped to her white uniform. "Your name is so pretty. Does it mean something?"

Malika stands up tall and proud. "It is African," she says. "It means queen."

"Oh, just like my middle name," I tell her, continuing my father's early morning language lesson. "In English, my middle name is Marilyn, but in Hebrew it's Malka. And Malka means queen."

Malika steps back into a slight curtsey and bows her head in respect. "What can Queen Malika get Queen Lydia to eat this morning?"

"Do you have some toast or a bagel or something like that?" I ask. "It all looks very good," I hastily add, not wanting to hurt her feelings. "I'm just not a big breakfast eater."

Malika places her hands on her abundant hips and frowns in disapproval. "No eggs? No oatmeal?" She clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth and shakes her head as if she is my mother and doesn't know what to do with me. "You don't want to lose that nice figure of yours," she says, nodding her chin in my direction. "It is no good for a queen to be skinny, right, Mr. Pinkowitz? Over there." She points her spoon toward a self-service station. "Toast, bagels, juice, coffee, tea. If you don't see what you want, you come and tell me. Malika will get it for you."

"Thank you," I tell her, lifting my tray.

"Have a nice day, Your Highness." She bows again before turning to wait on her next customer.

My father and I take our trays over to the far corner where carafes of coffee and bags of bread products await us. I place the two halves of a pre-sliced English m.u.f.fin onto the wire racks of an industrial toaster and nod when my father tells me he'll pay for our meals and meet me at a table. While I wait for my m.u.f.fin to toast, I glance around the cafeteria, which looks similar to the one Vera and I ate our meals in during the conference we attended last October. But instead of dozens of Women's Studies scholars cl.u.s.tered around tables waving their arms around with excitement and expounding with great pa.s.sion about their latest research projects, I see various configurations of diners eating their food gravely, hardly a word exchanged among them. Medical personnel wearing white lab coats, orderlies in green uniforms, nurses in pastel-colored smocks and pants, all with ID badges pinned to their pockets, chew quietly, all deep in thought.

And then there are the families. People dressed in civilian clothes like my father and me, all bleary-eyed and looking worn out and resigned as they gaze woodenly at the plates of food or coffee cups in front of them. Over by the window a dark-haired woman wrapped in a bright yellow sari sits alone at a table, dunking a tea bag into a cup of hot water over and over. I wonder if her husband is a patient here. Or perhaps it's one of her parents, or her sibling, or her child. At the table behind her, a man cuts up a waffle for the small girl hunched across from him. The child sits perfectly still and stares straight ahead, her face set in an expression much too serious for someone so young.

Isn't there anyone here for a happy occasion? Isn't anybody's wife having a baby? Isn't someone here to take home a loved one who's had a miraculous recovery? As my English m.u.f.fin drops off the wire toaster rack and slides onto the metal tray beneath it, I study the ID tag of the nurse standing next to me pouring herself a cup of coffee and come up with a brilliant idea: visitors should be given ID badges, too. "Sister going through chemo." "Spouse having heart surgery." "Brother getting a new knee." "Child with meningitis." If I'd been wearing a badge that said "Mother on life support" when I got off the plane yesterday, that man with the camera never would have bothered me. At least here in the hospital we're all in the same boat, so I don't have to worry about someone trying to get me to smile. Which makes me wish that somebody would. Where's the little nun I saw yesterday, I wonder as I spread b.u.t.ter on my m.u.f.fin and add cream to my coffee. Seeing her kind old face again would surely lift my spirits. I pick up my tray and do another quick scan of the room but do not catch sight of her. Instead I see my father sitting alone at a table in the corner, so I carry my meager breakfast-a meal hardly fit for a queen-across the cafeteria to join him.

"Sit down, Lydia," he says when I approach, as though I need an invitation. I place my tray across from his and drop into a seat. My father downs his coffee in two large gulps and digs into his scrambled eggs with gusto while I chew a small bite of English m.u.f.fin and force myself to swallow. We don't have much to say to each other and I'm surprised to find myself wishing Jack were here eating with us. Unlike me, Jack knows how to converse with my father. If Jack were here, I'm sure the two of them would be easily holding forth about things that interest them: money, sports, business, politics. I, on the other hand, haven't a clue as to how to make small talk with my father, and while this isn't news to me, the longer we sit here in silence, the sadder I become. I have to say something-anything-to alleviate the feeling that I am sharing the table with a virtual stranger. Though if my father were a stranger, there wouldn't be any problem. I know how to talk to strangers. It's easy for me to strike up a conversation with just about anyone: the supermarket cashier who admires the picture of Mishmosh I carry in my wallet as she rings up a dozen cans of cat food; a patient sitting in the waiting room of my doctor's office who tells me more than I ever wanted to know about his recurring kidney stones; a woman in the drugstore who confirms my opinion on waterproof versus water-based mascara; my new friend Edith, who sat next to me on the airplane yesterday, sobbing over the loss of her beloved Walter. If my father were an actual stranger, I could ask him where he was from, what kind of work he does, whom he was here to see. Obviously I know the answers to all those questions, and try as I might, I can't think of any others to ask.

But being the habladora that Allie knows and loves, having nothing to say rarely stops me from chattering away. Surely if I just start talking, my father and I will stumble across some common ground. "So, Dad," I begin, but before I can think of another word to utter, a loud crackling noise fills the air.

"Shh, Lydia." My father holds one finger against his lips and then points it up toward the ceiling.

"Good morning," a male voice booms above our heads. Who can it be, G.o.d? More static rustles, as if someone is crumpling a paper bag right up against a microphone. The noise reminds me of my high school days when the princ.i.p.al's voice came over the crackly public address system during homeroom every morning in order to make the day's announcements and ask several students who were in trouble-usually including me-to immediately report to his office.

"This is Father O'Connor," says the voice, followed by a piercing shriek of feedback that makes me and several other breakfast eaters cringe and cover our ears. "Today is Wednesday, January 11th, 2006. Here is the thought of the day." All around me diners pat their mouths with their napkins and put down their plastic knives and forks, so out of respect, I do the same. Father O'Connor continues. "Do to no one what is distasteful to yourself. Give to the hungry some of your bread, and to the naked some of your clothing. Seek counsel from every wise man. At all times bless the Lord..."