I watch my mother apply makeup in her mirror, her blond hair swept back in a scarf. Even in her dressing gown she has an air of elegance and glamour. “Should I marry William,” she asks me, “or go back to your father?”
I am eight. William, who my mother met in a supermarket after she and my father separated, is a doctor and likes to go to the racetrack. My father can ride a horse like a cowboy, speaks French, and knows the capital of every state.
“I don’t know,” I say to her.
My mother taps rouge onto her sharp cheekbones. “I don’t think I love your father anymore,” she says. “He doesn’t like grilled cheese sandwiches the way we do.”
