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antiques, even though they’re uncomfortable and often appear to have no function whatsoever.
    Maybe I just haven’t given the modern enough time to make me feel at home. Maybe twenty years from now I’ll look at a Dansk vase on a shelf, and it will make me feel warm all over.Maybe there will be some new hip modern novel that will take me in its arms and make me part of it, give me a new best friend and a first sentence that will make me feel as good in the middle of the night as the sound of the person in the room above me turning over in his crib. After all, I came late to down comforters. In the meantime, Elizabeth and I are really worried about her sister Jane. She’s stuck on this guy named Bingley and things don’t look good. But trust me, we’ll work it all out in the end.

HALLOWEEN

    W hen I was a little girl, I loved Halloween because it was the only day of the year when I was beautiful. I had friends who went out dressed as hobos and clowns and witches, but I never would. I was always a princess or a ballet dancer, Sleeping Beauty or Cinderella. (One year I wanted to go as Barbie. “Out of the question,” said my mother flatly, and it occurs to me now that her reply worked on several levels.)
    It was the only day of the year when I wore satin or net or hoops, the only day of the year when my thin lips were carmine and full and the mole on my upper lip, blackened with eyebrow pencil, became a beauty mark. I remember one Halloween, when I wore my cousin Mary Jane’s flower-girl dress, blue net over blue chiffon over blue satin, with a skirt as big around at the bottom as a hula hoop, as one of the happiest nights of my life. I had a wand with a silver star on the end made of tinfoil, and a tiara that was borrowedfrom a girl down the street who was last year’s prom princess. My hair had been set in pin curls, and waves rose all over my head like a cross between Shirley Temple and Elsa Lanchester in
Bride of Frankenstein
. I looked in the mirror on the back of my closet door and saw someone I was not, and loved her. The night was sharp, as perfect Halloween nights always are, but I would not wear a coat. I caught cold, and didn’t care.
    I suppose one of the things that makes me saddest about modern life, right up there with the fact that most of the furniture is so cheesy, is that Halloween has fallen into some disrepute. The candy is not good for you. The store-bought costumes stink. And behind every door a mother is supposed to imagine that there’s a man with candied apples whose recipe for caramelization includes rat poison. My children don’t go far on Halloween, at least in part because they are city kids. They visit a few neighbors, get just enough stuff to make a kind of promising rustle in the bottom of their bags. They are amazed at even this much license; the rest of the year they live with a woman whose idea of a good time is a bag of yogurt raisins. They must think I’ve lost it when I stand before the jack-o’-lantern at the kitchen table, grinning maniacally at one of those miniature Mr. Goodbars. I have never in my life eaten a Mr. Goodbar, except in the aftermath of Halloween.
    In the way they do—must, I suppose—my children are galvanized by Halloween because I am, just as they make a big fuss about throwing autumn leaves up in the air and letting them tumble over their heads. They take their cue from me. The little one is still a bit confused, but the elder caught fire last year. “I want to be a clown,” he said. And even though, throughout the month, he ricocheted between wanting to be a bumblebee and a bunny, he always inevitably came back to wanting to be a clown. His cheeks were painted with red circles, the tip of his nose was blue, and although he was sick for four days beforehand he insisted on dragging himselfaround to a half-dozen houses in his satin clown costume with the pompons and the big ruffle around his reedy neck. A sensitive, thoughtful little boy, who loves to