Sharon picks Dawn up on her way home from work. I wave to Dawn from the front porch. Sharon flicks her wrist in my direction, once, then backs out of the driveway. She's never liked me. I watch them disappear down Locust, then turn and return to my empty house.

I find Mom's photo albums and settle on the couch with them. I flip the pages carefully, searching for Mom's senior prom photos. The photos are toward the end of the album and Mom smiles at me from them – that younger, happier Mom I've never known. I recognize Gran's house by the sweeping staircase in the background, although the room itself is decorated much differently than I know it. In the photographs, Mom's hair hangs long and loose over her shoulders, curling in soft waves. She wears a pale green dress that rises just above her knees and a darker green sash encircles her torso, tying in a bow below her breasts. There's an enormous white rose corsage on her left wrist. Her date's face has been burned with a cigarette.

There's no writing on the page to identify him. I peel one of the pictures from the album page, flip it over, and all that's written on the back – in a girlish version of Mom's handwriting – is the name "Fay" and the date. She erased him completely, whoever he is.

Sighing, I toss the album underneath the coffee table. I drum my fingers on my knee, thinking. What to do, what to do. Where do I go from here?

I rise and go upstairs. I change into my school swimsuit and brush out my hair. The answering machine blinks on my nightstand, signaling a new message. I ignore it. I figure it's Gran.

I dive into the swimming pool, shoot through its length, tuck and roll, push off again. I swim at an alarming speed with strength I didn't realize I still had. And all the while I'm making plans.

I'm in the living room watching television when my parents clatter in at seven-thirty. I hear my mother first, of course, speaking in her loudest of voices, "I told you so, Harold," she says from the kitchen.

"Yes, I know, Fay. You've told me twenty times since leaving the office," comes Dad's tart reply. I glance toward the kitchen in interest. So rarely does my father's voice possess any kind of sharpness, especially directed at my mother. Dad comes out of the kitchen. He's wearing a dark suit, but has already removed his tie and unfastened the top buttons of his shirt. He wears a deep frown.

"Well, it bears repeating," says Mom, following him into the living room. "Alla has completely screwed you over this time."

"Can we drop the subject?" Dad asks, depositing his briefcase in the office. "Good evening, Grace."

"We both know what you need to do first thing in the morning," Mom continues. She steamrolls on. "Fire Alla. It's the only possible solution. Fire her and then tell them it was all her fault."

"She didn't do it on purpose."

"And that's even worse! It proves she's completely incompetent. Which, I might add, I've been telling you for years. It's time for you to fire her. It's long past due."

Dad comes out of the office. He has his gin and tonic in hand. Of course. "How do you expect me to run the department without Alla?" Dad asks, but doesn't wait for an answer. "Drop it, Fay. I'm going upstairs to take a shower." Dad starts toward the stairs. "Good evening, Grace," he says, apparently forgetting that he's already greeted me.

"Well, then, you can look forward to getting screamed at tomorrow. Don't expect me to help you!" Mom calls after him.

I watch him climb the stairs, then look back at my mother. She watches his retreat, too, briefcase still in hand, laptop bag still slung over her shoulder. She lets out an exasperated sigh and rolls her eyes. She strides into the office and dumps her things on her desk. I listen to her rattle bottles as she makes her drink. She comes out of the office with the glass pressed to her lips.

"Hello, Grace," she says, sounding like her normal self.

"What happened?" I ask.

Mom rolls her eyes again. "Stupid Alla being stupid," she replies.

"Is Dad in trouble?"

Mom waves her hand, dismissively. "He'll get screamed at for a few hours tomorrow, but he'll be fine. Don't worry about it, Grace." Mom turns away from me and walks over to the downstairs answering machine. She hits the play button. There are two messages from telemarketers and then the living room fills with the voice of Mrs. Mason, Cokie's mother. "Hello, Fay? This is Ginny Mason. Listen, this Saturday, Dot Wallingford and I are taking Joy Riverson out to lunch for her birthday and we – "

Mom hits the delete button before the message finishes.

Mom makes no comment as she heads back into the office to refill her drink. Secretly, I am pleased. Mom shouldn't get Mrs. Mason if I don't get Cokie. When Mom comes out of the office again she's shed her suit jacket. She doesn't seem too concerned about Dad, so I decide not to worry.

"What did you do today, Grace?" Mom asks and sips her drink.

I found out your mother watched your father die.

I shrug.

"You didn't do anything?" Mom asks.

"No."

"How thrilling. Perhaps, I should start leaving you with a list of chores. You could clean out the basement."

"We don't have a basement."

"You could dig one."

I eye my mother. She's in a good mood. A weird mood, but a good one nonetheless. I can put my new plan into action.

"I want to ask you something," I tell her and lean forward to grab the photo album from underneath the coffee table.

Mom looks at me curiously, if a bit apprehensively. I don't blame her. I have asked a lot of questions lately. But she walks toward me, slowly, bringing her drink with her, and sinks down onto the couch beside me. "This is mine," she says when she sees what I have open on my lap. She sets her drink on the coffee table. "I didn't know you still looked at this. You looked at it all the time when you were a little girl."

"I have a question," I say when I find the prom pictures again.

"Oh, my God," Mom curses and then laughs. "Look how young I am!" she exclaims. She pulls the album a little closer to her. "I must say, I was a knock out. Sue and I found that dress downtown at Bellair's, except it wasn't called Bellair's back then. It was something else. I loved that dress."

I wrinkle my nose.

"What's that look?" Mom laughs. "It was very fashionable back then. Of course, this was the Dark Ages."

"What happened to that ugly dress?"

Mom scoffs. "Margolo wanted it, so I took it to Smith with me. I wasn't going to let her fat ass stretch out my prom dress. I lost track of it at some point. I don't know, I probably gave it to a thrift store or something."

I look at Mom in surprise. She hardly ever willingly mentions Aunt Margolo. "You should have just let her have it then. If you were just going to give it away," I point out.

"Well, I wanted it at the time. Besides, it was mine. Margolo was always in my room, stealing my stuff. She couldn't have my prom dress, too." Mom turns the page to a photo taken at the prom. She's being crowned Prom Queen. There's a delicate diamond tiara nestled in her red hair, a bouquet of roses in her arms. Her date still doesn't have a face.

"Is this what you wanted to ask? About the dress? Did you want to borrow it?" Mom laughs again.

"No," I reply. Like I would ever be caught dead in that ugly thing. "I think I have another question – like, why does your date have a cigarette burn for a face?"

Mom screws up her face and leans back into the couch. She very much resembles a sulky teenager.

"Why did you burn his face?"

"Because he was a jerk," Mom replies.

I flip back several pages in the photo album. I find the Homecoming pictures. Mom's on the football field in another green dress – this one a deep forest green with long sleeves and a full skirt. She wears a crown with another bouquet of roses in her arms. She smiles brilliantly, her right arm lifted in a wave. The football player at her side has no face.

"He was a jerk then, too?" I ask her.

Mom finally sits up straight. She looks down at the Homecoming pictures, wrinkling her nose. "Yes, actually, he was. But I burned all the pictures at the same time. I did it after the prom."

"You ruined the pictures!"

"No, I improved them."

I look at Mom. I wait.

She turns the pages back to the prom pictures. She doesn't say anything.

"Who is he?" I finally ask. I need to know his name.

"Ted Kilbourne."

It's the name Elsa Matheson gave me. It's a name I've heard before, I am sure, but I had forgotten.

There is nothing wrong with Elsa Matheson's memory.

"Are you going to tell me why you felt the need to burn his face with a cigarette?"

"I told you, he was a jerk," Mom answers, still gazing at her pictures, at her past self. She touches their edges lightly with her fingers. "After the prom, he tried to take my dress off in his car. I was the Prom Queen! I wasn't going to screw some guy in the backseat of a Cadillac!" Mom cries, indignantly. "So, I beat him up."

"You beat him up?" I repeat.

"Yes!" Mom replies with the same indignation. "We had been dating all year. It was the prom, we were about to graduate. I'd had enough. So, I beat him up." Mom looks down at the album again, pursing her lips. "And I mean, I really beat him up. I had to drive him to the hospital afterward. His parents were furious. They thought I'd rendered him sterile."

"You're making this up," I tell her.

"I am not! You can ask your grandmother! She got an earful from his parents about it. Like she cared." Mom rolls her eyes. "Ted was so dumb. I think he took one too many blows to the head during football practice." Mom shuts the album and tosses it on the coffee table. She leans back and props her black and gray-checkered stilettos on the tabe.

I regard my mother. In her gray dress and stilettos, I can't imagine her ever beating anyone up. She looks so professional, so corporate. But I know better. I remember how she went after Bryce.

"You dated this person all senior year?" I ask Mom.

"Yes."

"Why would you date a dumb person for a whole year?"

I catch something in my mother's face that I rarely see. Embarrassment. It's vague, but it's there, flushing her cheeks slightly, pinking them slightly beneath the blush. "Oh, well…" she says, at a loss, another rarity for my mother. "Well…" she says again, fumbling for her words. "I don't think I care to talk about it."

I give my mother an exasperated look.

"Oh, all right," she relents with a sigh. "When Russ Black dumped me, I was very upset. He was my first real boyfriend and I thought I was in love with him. I was seventeen and very melodramatic. Russ dumped me for another girl, a cheerleader," Mom says, edgily. "Russ hated Ted, so I thought I could make him jealous. Plus, he dumped me for Ted's little sister."

"I guess it didn't work."

"No, it didn't," Mom says, bitterly. "Russ dated me for six months, he dated her for six years. He didn't care what I did. He was never in love with me. I was never really in love with him either. I was seventeen, I didn't know anything about love."

"Then why did you keep dating Ted?" I ask. "Your plan didn't work."

That flush returns to her cheeks, that embarrassment. It's almost unsettling. But I think I like it, as much as it unsettles me, this realness in my mother. "Well…" says Mom. "It didn't work with Russ, but…it had other benefits." Mom stops and glances at me. "You have to remember that I was seventeen."

"You've mentioned that a few times."

Mom regards me, pursing her lips into a thin line. She relents again. "Your grandmother hated Ted. Hated him. She would actually leave the room when he came over. If he walked into the living room, she would go to a completely different floor. Absolutely hated him."

"So, you dated him to piss Gran off?"

"Well, I was only seventeen," Mom reminds me, yet again. "And my entire life, your grandmother had never taken any interest in anything I did. And then, all of a sudden, I was getting a reaction. You know how she is, how she wanders around with the personality of a slug. Well, she wasn't very slug-like when it came to Ted. In seventeen years, we'd never fought because she couldn't bother to rise to the occasion. But Ted made her irate. She wanted me to break it off. We got into epic shouting matches about him. I told you, I was very melodramatic. I loved it."

"The two of you fight all the time now."

"I'm not seventeen anymore."

"So, that's it? You wasted your senior year dating someone you couldn't stand just because Gran also couldn't stand him? Mom, that's the stupidest thing I ever heard!"

"You can see why I've never told you that story," Mom replies. She reaches for her glass and takes a mighty drink. She almost drains it. She's going to be done with me soon, so she can pour another. "And need I remind you that we all do stupid things when we're teenagers."

Mom doesn't need to give me any sort of look for me to get her meaning. I've done a whole laundry list of stupid things.

I don't think about that.

"What did Gran find so offensive about him?" I ask Mom. It doesn't sound like Gran to become that irate over someone just because he's a jerk and kind of dumb. Of course, I don't really know Gran. I realize that. I realize it with a sinking feeling in my stomach. I cannot predict anything about her.

"He reminded her of your grandfather," Mom answers and drains the glass.

I look at Mom in surprise. "Really? Was he like Grandfather?"

"No," Mom scoffs. "I don't know what she was talking about. Ted was an idiot, but he was hardly anything like my father. And my father was a lot of things, but he wasn't an idiot. Your grandmother was a few cards short of a full deck even back then." Mom stands and leaves me. She goes to the office for another drink.

I wish she wouldn't run away from me. She's always running. It's nice to sit on the couch with my mother and talk. It's nice when she's candid.

But she always ends it.

Mom returns with her freshened drink and glances at her wristwatch. "It's after eight o' clock!" she exclaims, more to herself than to me. She casts a look up the stairs. "I suppose Hal has no intention of coming back down! He can pout all he likes. He knows I'm right." Mom takes a drink. "Did you eat already?"

"Hours ago, Mom."

"Hm," says Mom and she wanders into the kitchen.

I follow her. That's what I do best.

But I'm tracking her with a purpose now.

Mom stands at the refrigerator with the freezer door wide open, rifling through the many appetizing microwave dinners that crowd the shelves. Mom selects one and rips the box open. I take a pineapple soda from the refrigerator and sit down at the table while watching Mom stab the plastic cover on her dinner. She tosses the plate into the microwave and punches a couple buttons. I sip my soda while the dinner turns in the microwave.

Mom brings her dinner to the table and sits across from me. Meatloaf with mashed potatoes and green beans. Disgusting. I sip my soda again.

"I don't know how you can drink that stuff." Mom comments with a nod toward my soda.

"I don't know how you can drink that stuff," I counter with a nod toward her rum.

Mom gives me an odd look, then turns her attention to her delicious meal. She stirs her mashed potatoes then takes a small bite. "I hope you don't want to talk about Ted Kilbourne anymore," she says once she's swallowed.

"I don't. He doesn't sound that interesting."

"He wasn't. And it took me four years at Smith to recover from him." Mom spears a green bean, pops it in her mouth, and chews. She goes for another one. "And it's not because I became a lesbian like I'm certain your grandmother's told you."

"She mentioned it."

Mom rolls her eyes and mutters something that sounds like "crazy".

I watch Mom cut into the meatloaf. She takes a couple bites. She washes it down with rum. She seems to be in a fair mood still, even after the lesbian comment. I watch her awhile longer. Then I plunge in.

"Were you ever pregnant before me?"

Mom chokes on her meatloaf. She beats her fist against her chest and coughs. She sputters and coughs and I watch her. She hits her chest again and grabs her glass. She drinks and coughs again.

"What?" she cries.

I don't reply.

She sits back in her chair and stares at me. "What has your grandmother been telling you about me?" she demands.

"She hasn't told me anything."

Mom continues to stare at me, incredulously. "Grace, I don't know where you come up with this stuff," she finally says. "No, I'd never been pregnant before. I'm sorry to break it to you, Grace, but you are very much an only child. Why would you ask me such a thing?"

I shrug.

Mom looks at me like I've just sprouted a second head. "You watch too many soap operas, Grace," Mom informs me. She rises from the table and throws her dinner in the trashcan. "I don't know what your grandmother's told you, but I didn't spend my youth whoring around. Although, I'd rather not discuss my sexual history with you."

I wrinkle my nose. "I'd rather you not either," I say. "And it was just a question."

Mom returns to the table for her drink. There are a few drips left. "Perhaps next time you could wait until I've swallowed before springing a question on me."

"All right," I agree. I wait for her to swallow the drips. "Was Aunt Margolo ever pregnant?"

Mom stares at me like a third head just emerged from the second. "What?" she asks.

"I waited for you to swallow," I point out.

"Grace, I have no idea what you're talking about. Are you on drugs?"

"No, I'm not on drugs!"

"Well, then who's filling your head with this nonsense? Who told you that Margolo was pregnant?"

"No one. I have a mind of my own, you know."

"Yes, I know and I think it's been addled by too much sun and too much General Hospital."

"You didn't answer my question. Was she?"

"No!" Mom replies, still looking at me like I'm psychotic.

"How can you be certain? You were away at school."

"I think I would have noticed if Margolo was pregnant," Mom informs me. "Or at least, someone else would have pointed it out." Mom watches me a moment. "I don't know what's going on here," she says. "But I think I can guess. And I don't want you hanging around your grandmother's house anymore. She's purposely filling your head with nonsense. I've dealt with her crap my entire life. I don't need her making up lies about me." Mom pauses, waiting for me to react. I don't. "I'm going upstairs to check on Hal," she tells me and moves toward the door. It swings open and she charges through it, calling back, "And I was not a slut!"

I watch Mom's retreat until the door shuts behind her. I turn back to the table and run a finger along the rim of my pineapple soda. I think. I think a long time. And I decide whether or not to believe.