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a game we played called “Gross out,” in which we tried to outdo each other in imagining doing the nastiest possible things in the name of love; the winner so far: “Would you eat your lover’s used dental floss?” Kathleen had come up with that one. She was also very interested in my father’s lupus, which her mother had told her about. At one point she’d asked if I thought I had it, too.
    “I don’t know,” I said. “Apparently they can’t test for lupus.” Then I’d told her I didn’t want to talk any more about it, and she’d said she understood.
    “So what did you get for your birthday?” She sat on the floor, unplaiting her hair.
    “These new clothes,” I reminded her. “And shoes.” I lifted my pants leg and extended my ankle.
    “Converse All-Stars!” Kathleen picked up one of her penny loafers and threw it in my direction. “You’re cooler than me now.” She pretended to sob into her arms, then looked up and said, “Not really.”
    I tossed a bed pillow at her.
    “And what else?” she asked.
    “What else did I get? Um, a book.”
    “About?”
    I hesitated, because I suspected that her mother was behind the book. “It’s sort of a guide to womanhood.” I said it fast to get it over with.
    “Not On Becoming a Woman ?” I nodded, and she let out a yip of laughter. “Oh, poor Ari. Poor us.”
    I’d already skimmed the book, a paperback with an aqua cover published by a manufacturer of “women’s hygiene products” (a free sample of which came in a plastic bag taped to its cover). It had sentences like this one: “Your body is very unique, a real miracle, deserving to be treasured and protected every day.” And this: “You are about to enter the sacred realm of Womanhood!” Its tone, relentlessly cheerful, worried me. Would I have to assume a similar attitude in order to enter the sacred realm?
    “So have you started yet?” Kathleen peered at me through a curtain of hair.
    “Not yet.” I didn’t say it, but I couldn’t imagine experiencing the monthly ordeal that the book tried to make sound so worthwhile. What with the cramps and the general mess, I felt I’d rather avoid the whole business.
    “I started five or six months ago.” Kathleen pushed her hair back, and suddenly she seemed older to me. “It’s not so bad. The cramps are the worst. Mom told me what to expect, and she was a lot more honest than that dumb book.”
    I thought of my mother, and Kathleen looked closely at me. “Do you miss your mom?”
    “I never knew her,” I said. “But I miss her anyway. She disappeared when I was born.”
    “Mom told us,” Kathleen said. “She said she went into the hospital and never came out again. You know, Ari, sometimes women go a little crazy after they have babies.”
    This was news to me. “Are you saying my mother went mad?”
    Kathleen came over and touched my arm. “No, no. I have no idea if that’s what happened. But it’s a possibility. It happened to Mrs. Sullivan down the street. She had a baby and a few days later they took her away to Marcy. You know, the mental asylum. Once you go in, you never come out.”
    Mrs. McG shouted for us to come to dinner, and I felt more than ready. But Kathleen had given me a new image of my mother, a most unwelcome one: a faceless woman wrapped in a straitjacket, locked in a padded cell.

    They’d laid the table in a special way, setting at my place a cream-colored plate painted with tiny green leaves, instead of the chipped white china the others had. And next to the plate were presents: five or six small wrapped packages with foil bows on top. Several of the bows had been chewed slightly by Wally the dog.
    I’d never expected anything like this. At home we had no gift-wrap, no special china. Even at Christmas (which Dennis made us celebrate, with indifferent participation by my father and Root), we didn’t bother to wrap gifts, and each person received one thing, always practical.
    “Open them now,”