ABSTRACT
I picture you as you were during our last visit, almost a year ago, shortly after your twenty-fifth birthday and before my forty-second. I see you with your best friend negotiating the streets of Hermosa Beach. You're in little pressed white shorts and a sleeveless white blouse, your golden brown toes with nails painted red sticking out of leather sandles. Behind big sunglasses, your glowing face is perfect except for those charmingly crooked front teeth of yours you're so self-conscious about—a reminder that there was no one to put thousands of dollars into orthodontia so you could have a Regulation California Smile. We talked a little over lunch that afternoon. You wanted to know why your mom turned out as she did, and why I'm so different from her. I'm not, Betsy. The next day, you drove me south to meet up with a friend of mine—brash East Coast, Jewish, “dykey,” loud, fat and dark. As I introduced you, I watched two worlds collide and held my breath, feeling at that moment that she'd become the stand-in for the me you'd rather not see. And you didn't: you waved at me, flashed a toothy smile in the general direction of my friend, and had your car back onto the Pacific Coast Highway in record time.
