The day my sister Gillian decided to start pronouncing her name with a hard "g" was, coincidentally, the same day my mother returned, early and alone, from her honeymoon. Neither of these things surprised me. Gillian, who was between her third and fourth years at Barnard, was dating a linguistics professor named Rainer Maria Schultz and had consequently become a bit of linguistic zealot. She had begun ranting about something called "pure" language, of which Gillian with a hard "g" was supposedly an example. My mother, on the other hand, had rather rashly decided to marry a man named Barry Angelosanto, and both me and Gillian — Gillian — had suspected that this marriage, which was my mother's third, would not last very long, but we both assumed it would survive its honeymoon, although when we heard they were planning a honeymoon in Las Vegas our skepticism grew.

My mother, who has spent her entire life avoiding places such as Las Vegas and merrily disdaining anyone who visited, or even contemplated visiting, such places, had announced, in that disturbing brain-washy way people who stumbled a bit too quickly into love often have, that a honeymoon in Las Vegas would be "fun" and a nice change from her previous honeymoons (Venice with my father, and the Galapagos Islands with her second husband).

Whenever my mother said anything was, or would be, "fun" you could take it as a warning that said thing was not or would not be at all fun, and when I reminded my mother of this — I used the example of her telling me that the sailing camp she had forced me to attend the summer of my twelfth year would be "fun" — my mother admitted that sailing camp had not been fun for me but that was no reason why a honeymoon in Las Vegas would not be fun for her. Such is the ability adults — well, my mother, at least — have to deceive themselves.

Gillian and I were eating lunch, or some meal approximate to lunch, when my mother made her untimely return. It was about two o'clock in the afternoon; fortunately Rainer Maria Schultz, who had spent the night at our apartment had departed (he had his own apartment in Washington Heights, but I knew Gillian liked the idea of fucking a Teutonic linguist in her childhood bed). Gillian sat at the kitchen table doing The New York Times' crossword, which we were not allowed to do when my mother was home because, as she often told us, it was the only dependable pleasure in her life. I was eating a fried-egg sandwich.

I was supposed to have been working at the gallery my mother owned but which was effectively run by a young man named John Webster, but John had sensibly decided that since my mother was safely out of town preoccupied with whatever unthinkable activities preoccupy a fifty-three-year-old woman on her third honeymoon in Las Vegas, and since it was July, and no one had stepped foot in the gallery for several days, he would close the gallery until my mother's return and go and stay with friends in Amagansett, and I could do whatever I wanted for the rest of the week. I was not, of course, to tell my mother about this hiatus, for she believed that at any moment anyone might walk in off the street and buy a garbage can decoupaged with pages torn out of varied editions of the Bible, the Torah, and the Koran (for $60,000).

My mother opened the gallery about three years ago with the money she inherited after the death of her second husband, because she wanted to "do" something, which you might have thought meant work, but did not. 

My mother had had a fairly successful career editing art books until she married her second husband, and apparently once you stop working legitimately it is impossible to start again. "Oh, I could never go back to that work, it's so dreary and the last thing the world needs is another coffee-table book," I had heard her say more than once. I asked her if she thought the world needed an aluminum garbage can decoupaged with pages torn from the King James Bible or whatever equivalent horror she was exhibiting and she said, no, the world didn't need that, which is exactly what made it art. And then I said, well, if the world doesn't need coffee-table books then they must be art, too — what was the difference? My mother said the difference was the world thought it needed coffee-table books, the world valued coffee-table books, but the world didn't think it needed decoupaged garbage cans.

And so Gillian and I were sitting in the kitchen, she intent on the crossword and I enjoying my fried-egg sandwich, when we heard the front door unlocking — or actually locking, for we had carelessly left it unlocked, so it was first locked and then unlocked — which took a moment during which my sister and I just looked at each other and said nothing, for we instinctually knew who was opening the door. My father has keys to our apartment, and it would have made sense — well, more sense — that it was he arriving, seeing as how my mother was supposed to be honeymooning in Las Vegas, but for some reason both Gillian and I both knew immediately it was my mother.

We heard her drag her huge rolling suitcase over the threshold (my mother does not travel lightly, especially on a honeymoon) and then we heard the suitcase topple over (kicked?), and then we heard her chucking the books and magazines and other debris that had accumulated on the couch in her absence to the floor, and then we heard her collapse on the couch, and say, rather quietly and poignantly, "Shit."

We sat there for a moment in stunned silence. It was almost as if we thought if we remained silent and undetected, she might reverse herself, get off the couch, replace the debris, right her suitcase and toddle it out the door, lock it behind her, and fly back to Las Vegas and resume her honeymoon. But of course, that did not happen. After a moment we heard her get up and walk toward the kitchen. We continued to sit there, dumbly, as if by sitting dumbly we might remain undetected.

"Oh good Lord," my mother said, when she entered the kitchen and saw us. "What are you two doing here?"

"What are you doing here?" asked Gillian.

My mother went to the sink and scowled disapprovingly at the dirty dishes and glasses ensconced therein. She opened the cupboard that housed glasses, but it was empty, for Gillian and I had been favoring the technique of rinsing and reusing glasses rather than washing, storing, and reusing.

"My God," my mother said, "all I want is a drink of water. A simple drink of water! And that, like everything else I have ever wanted, appears to be denied me."

Gillian arose and found a fairly clean glass in the sink. She rinsed it, then filled it with water from the tap. "Here," she said, and handed it to our mother. "Bless you," my mother said. My mother is not a religious person and her use of this language disquieted me. Or further disquieted me, as her unexpected arrival had already achieved that effect. "Whatever," Gillian said, and sat back down.