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daughter if she doesn’t tell you about your chin hairs?”
    She abandoned her eyebrows and started searching her chin, positioning it in front of the mirror and rolling her eyes down to try and look. Well, that just summed up our relationship. I wanted to let her suffer, but I also wanted her to look at me, instead of her chin, so I said, “No, Mom, of course you don’t have chin hairs . . . that I’ve noticed anyway.”
    I had to add that last.
    “Are you sure? Can you look? Because I was talking to Marge Holcomb today, and since she’s so tall, I was looking right at her chin, and you’ll never guess what I saw there.”
    “A chin hair?”
    “Haha. No. Three chin hairs. Three! That was all I could look at. I felt terrible for her.” She laughed, the sound of a breaking mirror. “I would die if anyone looked at me and saw chin hairs.” She laughed again.
    “You’re lucky you’re not that tall.”
    “I am . . . not.” Still, she searched her chin. “That’s not the point, Violet. The point is, I shouldn’t have any. Do you know how hard it is to see your chin? I hate getting old.”
    She still hadn’t looked at my face. Unbelievable. “I don’t think you have any. Want me to look?”
    “Would you?” She broke into a smile, and like when I was a kid, it made me happy, so happy. My mother was smiling at me.
    When I was little, I used to watch her get dressed to go on dates. She had the most beautiful clothes, nothing like other mothers. Silk blouses in jewel colors and strapless gowns like Vanna White on Wheel of Fortune. After she left, when the babysitter thought I was in bed, I’d sneak into my mother’s closet and try everything on, clothes,shoes, jewelry, makeup, always arranging it back very carefully as if it were a booby trap she’d set to catch me in the crime of pretending to be her.
    Sometimes, when she was home, I’d ask to try the things she used, the powders and creams that widened her eyes, blackened her lashes, and made her so pretty. I thought if I could look like her, she would love me, and maybe she would have—if I’d looked like her.
    But I never did.
    One thing she loved to do was watch pageants, Miss America, Miss USA, Miss Universe, Miss World. The girls in those pageants competed for scholarships, but their sparkly dresses and big hair probably cost more than they’d ever win. The contestants danced sexily onstage and then talked about ending world hunger. Some of the girls probably weren’t even pretty before they applied all the hair spray, false eyelashes, and goo, and they did stupid talents like ventriloquism and hula dancing.
    And yet, every time they crowned a new queen, the camera panned the audience, found their families. I knew those moms loved their daughters, loved them enough to take out a second mortgage to buy a case of hair spray. Which was more than my mother loved me.
    So I was cherishing this mother-daughter moment even if it did involve hunting for chin hairs. “Move into the light where I can see you better. Maybe by the window.”
    Where you can see me.
    “Oh, okay. Let me put on my contacts first. I always take them off when I pluck, to help me see close. But then I can’t see anything. I can’t even see your face.”
    “Sure.” I handed her the case. I would have stuffed the lenses into her eyes myself had it meant it would happen faster. Could she tell?
    Finally, they were in. She blinked at me. “Okay, then, where did you want me?”
    In my corner. She still didn’t seem to notice any difference. Was I so ugly that a little improvement didn’t help? No, she probably hadn’t adjusted to the contacts. “Come here.”
    The sun was close to setting, and the western-exposed window filled the room with strained light. I stood close. “Tilt your chin up.” She’d be looking right at my nose in that position.
    She obeyed. I held the tweezers, searching for hairs. None there. My perfect mother with a hair on her chinny-chin-chin?