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talking about?”
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    Mrs. Masicotte’s tenants paid their rents in cash, counting series of twenty-dollar bills into my father’s outstretched hand. On the best Saturdays, after Mrs. Masicotte’s leather zip bag was filled withmoney, Daddy would turn his attention to me. He liked the way television watching had made me a mimic.
    Â 
    I’m Chiquita Banana and I’ve come to say
    Bananas have to ripen in a certain way
    Â 
    Drive your CHEV-rolet
    Through the U-S.A.
    America’s the greatest land of all!
    Â 
    Over and over, I sang the jingles he liked best. Sometimes we played “wild ride” on the twisting roads that led out to Fisherman’s Cove. I sat in the backseat of the car, a sort of junior Mrs. Masicotte, and commanded my father to speed. “Okay, ma’am, you ready, ma’am? Here we go!” I’d grab the peach velvet cord strapped across the rear of the front seat rests as Daddy gunned the car around corners and lurched over rises in the road. “Feel those blue-blooded shock absorbers, Dolores? We could be sitting in our living room.” Or this, which he told me once: “This car is ours! I bought this showboat from the old lady.” I could smell Mrs. Masicotte’s perfumy smell embedded in the soft upholstery and knew it wasn’t true, even back then when I would fall for almost anything—when I thought that, like Lucy and Ricky Ricardo, my parents’ fights just meant they loved each other in a noisy way.
    The Saturday errands ended each week at the top of the long driveway on Jefferson Drive, where Mrs. Masicotte’s white wedding cake of a house looked down on Long Island Sound. We entered through the dark, cool cement garage, the Cadillac doors slamming louder than any before or since. We walked up the stairs and opened the door without knocking. On the other side was Mrs. Masicotte’s peach-colored kitchen, which made me squint. “Mind your manners, now,” Daddy never failed to warn me. “Say thank you.”
    It was in that kitchen where I waited for Daddy and Mrs. Masicotte to be finished with the weekly business, two rooms away.Though Mrs. Masicotte seemed as indifferent to me as her renters were, she provided richly for me while I waited. On hand were plates of bakery cookies, thick picture books with shiny pages, punch-out paper dolls. My companion during these vigils was Zahra, Mrs. Masicotte’s fat tan cocker spaniel, who sat at my feet and watched, unblinking, as cookies traveled mercilessly from the plate to my mouth.
    Mrs. Masicotte and my father laughed and talked loud during their meetings and sometimes played the radio. (Our radio at home was a plastic box; Mrs. Masicotte’s was a piece of furniture.) “Are we going soon?” I’d ask Daddy whenever he came out to the kitchen to check on me or get them another pair of Rheingolds. “A few minutes,” was what he always said, no matter how much longer they were going to be.
    I wanted my father to be at home laughing with Ma on Saturday afternoons, instead of with Mrs. Masicotte, who had yellowy white hair and a fat little body like Zahra’s. My father called Mrs. Masicotte by her first name, LuAnn; Ma called her, simply, “her.” “It’s her,” she’d tell Daddy whenever the telephone interrupted our dinner.
    Sometimes, when the meetings dragged on unreasonably or when they laughed too loud in there, I sat and dared myself to do naughty things, then did them. One time I scribbled on all the faces in the expensive storybooks. Another Saturday I waterlogged a sponge and threw it at Zahra’s face. Regularly, I tantalized the dog with the cookies I made sure stayed just out of her reach. My actions—each of which invited my father’s anger—shocked and pleased me.
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    I had long hair the year I was in second grade. Mornings before school,