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the front door, a line of three little boys behind her. Beneath her tutu she wore blue jeans and one of Dan's T-shirts. Naturally, it swam on her, but Tessa loved wearing her father's T-shirts because, as she once told Helen, they left room for things. “What things?” Helen asked, and Tessa whispered, “You can't see them.”
    On that day Tessa's feet were bare and muddy, and strands of hair, escaped from the ponytail she'd insisted on making herself, hung in her face. She carried a long stick under her arm and used it to point to a blueberry pie Helen had made earlier that morning and now was cooling on top of the stove. “That's what we're having for dinner,” she announced, and the boys stared wordlessly, admiringly, really, Helen thought. Then Tessa slapped the stick against her thigh as though she were General Patton with his riding crop and said, “Let's go!” and they all filed back outside. Immediately afterward, Helen heard Tessa yell, “Mom! Mom! Hey, Mom!” When Helen came to the door, she said, “Do you want to play with us?” Helen smiled and declined, even though she wanted nothing more than to abandon her housework and go outside with that group of free little beings. She regrets to this day the fact that she didn't do it.
    Helen drives slowly, looking at all the Christmas decorations this city so enthusiastically puts up, the little trains laden with gifts atop the subway entrances, the tiny white lights on red branches in the medians of the streets, the glitzy displays in the store windows, the red bows on the evergreen wreaths around the necks of the lions that flank the entrance to the Art Institute. She almost regrets that the traffic is moving as well as it is. But when she reaches the entrance to the freeway, she sees that she has waited too long to leave downtown after all; the cars are going no more than twenty-five miles an hour and she knows it will only get worse. She loosens the muffler around her neck, turns on the station that plays only Christmas carols, and starts to sing along. But then she is ambushed by the thought of the holiday without Dan, and she turns on the CD that Tessa gave her last year and listens instead to Pink Martini, wishing she were drinking a clear white one.
    A horn blares and a man next to her gives her the finger; she has strayed from her lane. “Sorry,” she mouths, but the man misinterprets her, and from behind his closed window she can see him yelling so loud his neck cords stand out.
    She slows down to let the man get ahead of her, and now the driver behind her begins to blare his horn. She blinks away tears and reflexively whispers, “Dan.” She knows he would be able to make her laugh at this. It starts to snow, tiny flakes. She watches them drift down, touch her windshield and disappear. Here comes Joni Mitchell on the CD, singing, “I wish I had a river I could skate away on …” Just before her exit, Helen sees that she is even with the man who yelled at her. She taps her horn, and when he looks over at her she smiles gloriously and waves. He, having forgotten who she is, waves back, looking confused, but smiling.

three
    A T THREE IN THE AFTERNOON, HELEN IS NAPPING WHEN SHE IS awakened by what sounds like footsteps on the stairs. She sits up quickly, leaving behind a dream of a snow tunnel, of being in a hollowed-out, white place tinted with blue, where she had hunkered down for warmth and found it. She listens; nothing, now. She lies back down, wondering whether or not to try to recapture sleep, that little blessing. She remembers red mittens in the dream, black boots, the clarity of those colors. She closes her eyes, but she's wide awake; she'll get up.
    She goes to the bathroom and washes off her face, then looks at herself in the mirror. Her expression is as blank as her life these days. She feels as though mostly what she does is eat, sleep, and eliminate, eat, sleep, and eliminate, like some basic life-form one step up from a paramecium.