After a few minutes’ determined dabbing, re-dabbing and some dabbing after that with a cotton pad, my face is covered with a comically uneven layer of Milk of Magnesia, whitening as it dries. This is good for the pores. Two layers of Healthy Hoof Hoof Lacquer are drying on my fingernails because it’s the only base coat that keeps my nails from flaking off in layers like mica. My hair’s pulled back in a hairband and I live in fear of passing my reflection in a mirror and wailing, You are working for the weekend!

This morning, my student worker, whose name reminds us that movie angels start out on training wheels, asked a series of carefully considered questions in a language that is not her first.

She: When we see purchase orders like these, we close them?
Tata: If we wait a few weeks, the money will be real. If we close them now, not so much!
She: The money is not real now?
Tata: No. Not until it becomes real in a few weeks. It looks real, doesn’t it?
She: It does.
Tata: It’s not though. Excuse me.

I dial Sharkey’s work number. His voicemail picks up.

Tata: I LOOOOOOVE CAULIFLOWER!

I hang up.

Tata: So we might wait a few weeks and close the orders then.

From the other side of the cubicle wall comes the amused voice of my co-worker. He and I talk through this wall all day, everyday. We’ve considered cutting holes in the wall and installing a puppet theater.

Him: What is it that you love about cauliflower?
Tata: Sharkey listens to his messages on speakerphone. He hears my voice and sprints across his office to slap the OH NO, IT’S TA! button. I like to think I’m responsible for elevating his heart rate to an aerobically challenging level.
Him: That’s just like you! Always thinking of others!

On cue, the co-worker will tell people I’m brilliant and throw food, so I do not velcro his sneakers together. The office walls are decorated with pictures of Elvis, Richard Nixon and Chairman Mao standing next to xeroxed and taped-together him. Also: he spent a whole day not speaking any words containing the letter E. His pranks interest me. I make a genuine effort not to give him concussions.

My nails have now received two slender coats of cheap, startling electric blue polish. St. Ives Apricot Radiance Deep Cleaning Cream Cleanser did a nice job of unchalking my face. It’s important to exfoliate lips because they don’t shed cells the same way the rest of the epidermis does – or so I’ve read. It’s Wednesday; I’ve Naired my face. The first time Mamie turned a corner and found me doing what Grandma called “my Santa Claus impression” Mamie screamed like she’d caught Coco Chanel dead in a tube top.

Mamie: Oh my God! Is it rabies?
Tata: No, it’s cosmetology and you’ve read about it in Hairless Girl Weekly.
Mamie: What? Are you deriding my long, luxurious crimson tresses?
Tata: Never. I’m guessing we find your arm hair with Jimmy Hoffa.

It’s true. Mamie has no arm hair. She also shaves her legs once a month to spite me – because she doesn’t have to – and she cackles the whole time. It’s like millions of voices suddenly cry out in terror and are suddenly silenced. Then she moisturizes.

Gunning the engine on the milk truck of human kindness, Sharkey emails.

Sharkey: And you know where you can shove your cauliflower!
Tata: Of course, dahhhhhhhling. Call me and tell me how much you admire me!
Sharkey: I’ll call you and tell you to kiss my ass!
Tata: And you admire me! It makes you sound taller.

To paraphrase Gene Kelly: gotta tweeze! Then slather. There must be goo. And two layers of top coat forming a chitinous shell. Displays of softness are for cosmetic purposes only. Smoothness is the way to go.

Thank you.

This week, civil right erode as transit police in the NYC subway stop riders randomly and search them. Officials interviewed in the newspaper admit this deters no one from blowing you up but the officials are very concerned they appear to be doing something. I hate to mention the obvious but chances are very, very good that unless you’re a special human being with a fascinating story or were in the English class under the chem lab in Franklin High School when I poured hydrochloric acid down the pipes, you have probably never been blown up. Since you’ve never gone BOOM!, you, my friend, should get yourself a refreshing beverage, a lawn chair and a front row seat on the Minimally Air Conditioned Life.

Sure, I sleep with the air conditioner on, but I’m old now, thoroughly employed and you try getting up before six a.m. without at least a few hours’ uninterrupted sleep. In the summer of 1982, I was 19, living with the teen boyfriend in some rock and roll radio, blisteringly hot fantasy life – which of course crashes and burns in contact with any kind of reality – in an airless attic room without actual walls in a Manchester, Connecticut four-family house with a bunch of rent boys and landscapers. Some nights, it was so hot in the attic we could barely breathe but we were young, supple and crazy in love. To this day, breaking a sweat reminds me of flesh against flesh, and I sweat just a little more.

Time passes. I love and will miss the apartment when I move; I like my windows wide open. Blocks away, drums beat the sweltering air. One afternoon, Paulie Gonzalez and I have pretty spectacular sex, which if you’re a member of my family you should put right OUT of your mind, and if you’re Sharkey, who is completely immune to my overwhelming animal magentism, you should not hurt yourself guffawing. So afterwards, Paulie and I sprawl all over the bed, the floor, the wall, the printer shelf – which has kind of sharp corners and naked, sweaty you should in my opinion avoid finding yourself pressed up against it even briefly so you don’t later find the blurry words “Hewlett Packard” pressed into your ass – panting and sweating like marathon runners at the twenty-fifth mile and trying to catch our breath.

Paulie: This may sound stupid but do you hear music?
Tata: You’re busy saving the world from hackers yearround so you don’t know in the summer we’re infested with a high school marching band.

Today, my living room is festooned with a gorgeous bouquet of succulent green basil. New Brunswick sweats under a soporific haze and a carmine volcanic dust sunset, the result of Mount Saint Helens’ ash-producing events. Hearty smells of grilled meats, pungent sauces and afternoon heat waft over a city helpless to resist them. Yesterday, as I parked my car after the baptismal visit to church, a smooth, vibrant man with a generous head of curly black hair and without a shirt passed me with a huge lizard casually held over his head as one would carry a tray of creme brulee through a packed Manattan bistro. I thought, ‘Ta, that is a reason to live.’

I hope you’ll turn off the TV or computer and go outside into sun- or moonlight, even in a soaking rain. Jump in puddles; it’s great fun to squish mud between your toes. Now is no time to cower in your air conditioned nightmares. Work up a divine sweat. Go outside and fall in love with your life.

Sharkey quits admiring his hair long enough to write me:

Two nights ago I had a dream I actually remembered (partially). You weren’t in the dream, but in the dream, I thought of you. I don’t remember what was happening in my dream at the time, but I remember reaching into my pocket and finding two large desiccant packets. As I was about to throw them out, I thought, “I should save these for Tata.” Then I thought, “Oh, screw that, I’m not going to carry these things around until I see her!” So I threw them away.

Actually, I’ve had the same thoughts awake. I come across the desiccant packets and think you’d want them, but then think, “Screw that, I have too much crap around here already. I don’t need those things piling up.”

Given the color, texture and ridiculous healthy sheen of his hair, I feel honored to have crossed his screwy mind at all.

I collect three things of varying usefulness:

1. Ex-lovers;
2. Interesting motherboards;
3. Desiccant packets.

Okay, I admit I have a few other collections.

4. Mardi Gras beads;
5. Pieces of broken windshield glass;
6. Watches that stopped on my wrist;
7. Antique accessories;
8. Rusty metal objects.

In my closets, I’m carefully preserving a completely useless array of Little Old Lady purses. Fifteen years ago, my friends’ grandmoms died off in what must’ve been a wave of Lower East Side rent-controlled chaos. It turned out that grandmoms were all my size and took excellent care of their garments. My friends, sensing an opportunity to saddle me with amusing stuff, gave me piles and piles of clothing. We never figured out how to wear some items but I wore lots of these things on stage. My favorite object was a black and white halter bathing suit my friends called “the cigars! cigarettes! dress.” If anyone remembered whose grandmom left us that treasure we might learn some spicy family history.

I dislike meaningless objects. When I don’t remember where something came from, what purpose it served or can’t think of a use for it in the future, I throw or give it away. I am thinking now of giving away things I no longer need and acquiring things I fill with my own meaning. This I have not really done before. Maybe. Maybe not. I’m an inadequate consumer by American standards. It is amusing that when I appear off-stage in a dream I turn up as my silliest, homemade self. I wonder if I came to say goodbye.

Daria calls my house from the road. Her baby’s baptism is Sunday morning at 8 a.m. for which I plan to forgive her no time soon. Our thirteen year old sister Dara is riding shotgun and handling the Q & A.

Dara: Daria says she’s getting sushi for Sunday.
Tata: She is? Tell her I like her SO MUCH BETTER.
Dara: (To Daria) She likes you SO MUCH BETTER.
Daria: I knew she would.
Dara: (To me) She knew you would.
Tata: Because I’m shallow that way.
Dara: (To Daria) Because she’s shallow that way.
Daria: I know she is. GIVE ME THAT PHONE!
Tata: I hope you know you’re violating state laws.
Daria: Yeah yeah, I’m a menace. Whatcha doin’?
Tata: Standing around naked with half an appliance next to my head.
Daria: No really. What are you doing?
Tata: Trying to get into the shower while my unemployed sisters make small talk.
Daria: Look what time it is! You better haul it!
Tata: Watch me hang up on you.
Click!

Daria calls me at the store. She doesn’t say hello.
Daria: What do you do when people call and want information?
Tata: If I know it I consider telling them. If I don’t know it I say my sisters will be back after August 1.
Daria: I have to talk to your ex-husband about bagels. What’s his phone number at work?
Tata: I don’t know, but my sisters will be back after August 1.

The store’s open door, lovely toys and free air conditioning attract all sorts. Yesterday, I felt a rustle in the air and scanned the room for a customer I couldn’t see. Less than eight feet away stood a man who may have been there for quite some time, and he was staring at me. I jumped, then apologized for keeping him waiting. He’s an artist with work on display in the store; I recognized him immediately. An hour later, he was still talking to me.

Bill: Why do I always do all the talking? Tell me about yourself.
Tata: I lost my memory years ago and now I can’t pick myself out of a lineup.
Bill: How do you get dressed in the morning if you can’t remember which one is you?
Tata: I’m pretty sure the cold, flat one is my reflection. And I’m lefthanded.

Okay, so I exaggerated a bit. Though I’m no raving beauty I’ve had my share – and possibly yours – of stalkers; I’m very cautious around strangers who seem to have picked up my scent on the breeze. When I look up today and he’s walking though the store to apologize for something imaginary I am pleased to see Mom sashay across the floor behind him.

Some people walk. Some amble. Some stride. Mom has two modes: sashay and scurry. If Mom’s scurrying, look out: somebody’s gonna get it, if by it we mean a thorough talking-to on this subject and every other and in the name of all that is holy RUN AWAY! Mom has a penetrating gaze. When she’s listening she’s really listening, so much so that sometimes you want to slide a mirror under her chin to check if she’s breathing. I should probably feel bad about what I’m about to do, but I do it anyway.

Tata: Mom, this is Bill. His giant painting is in the window but Bill also comes in card form.

Then I shut up for forty-five minutes.

My stepsisters – those fools with excellent taste! – left the jurisdiction and me the keys to their store. I’m sitting in a retail establishment filled with bright and shiny objects, jewel-tone yummy whatsises as far as the eye can see and bamboo cuttings of startling vigor. Lyle Lovett croons from the CD player above the counter. They wrote detailed instructions so I could do my part to increase the Gross National Product but neglected a few details:

1. Bring lunch and snacks;
2. Bring toilet paper.

Handmade clay fountains and wall-size water features burble. Mobiles and ceiling fans spin in languid circles. Wind chimes whisper every once in a while. Customers stroll in now and then to escape the heat. As the afternoon shadows lengthen, I’ve tried on every ring on the jewelry stand and fallen in love with a lamp. I’ve never fallen in love with a lamp in my life. I’ve just never been that kind of girl. In my advanced old age apparently I’m capable of becoming some different kind of girl, and this one loves a lamp.

Minding a little shop on the main drag of a town where people actually walk around and talk to one another is miles outside of my current comfort zone. Perhaps it shouldn’t be but my current life is carefully circumscribed. I used to live in this town and loved living here. I was sorry to leave when I moved across the river, which I’d forgotten until this morning but remember now like a favorite song I hadn’t heard in nearly ten years. And my job in the library’s basement seldom brings me into contact with the public, so when the public marched in and treated me like a servant – well, I’m nobody’s servant. When an annoying pair kept me hopping for forty-five minutes and bought nothing, I was pleased I hadn’t blurted out what hideous taste they had because – as Jenny Diver sang – you never know to who you’re talking. They didn’t. For all I know, they might’ve been nice people.

Naturally, between moments when I wasn’t saying, “The striking earrings and more demure necklace draw attention to the face and away from neckline,” while thinking, “Sweet Mother of Pearl, don’t make me look at her tits,” I’ve had plenty of time to think. I wonder about me. I think about you. I’m a one-to-one, in-person person. When I was doing full-contact poetry somewhere different every night, I broke down the fourth wall with a sledge hammer delivery my audience often found disturbing – which was what I wanted. I was very confrontational then. Now I’d rather brew Phyllis Schlafly a pot of tea, sit knee to knee with her, and politely discuss why she should be gently poached in a white wine sauce for the hardships and suffering she’s created, overlooked and blandly endorsed. I would like to sit at a lovely table for two with Karl Rove, pour him a glass of chilled green tea and talk about simple justice and compassion, possibly explaining that he should spend the rest of his earthly existence taking care of destitute, institutionalized Alzheimers patients if he wishes to avoid a truly nasty karmic zap – if I feel especially compassionate myself. And I would like to sit with you in a room for just the two of us, beautiful in its own right and for us both. We don’t know one another – unless we do. You are more than I can know, I suppose, without a lifetime of comparison shopping. But I do imagine you. Are we wearing straw hats and sitting on a shady porch with tall glasses of tart lemonade? Are we wearing black Ramones tshirts and sitting at the end of the bar in a room so dark we can’t study the face of our bartender? We can talk about anything you like, you know. I am not afraid to know you now.

On the Discovery Channel, it’s Shark Week. Horoscopically speaking, Saturn transited between Cancer and Leo but is spending a week tormenting each and every one of us. Until Saturday, you should regard everyone you meet as armed and dangerous; expect to find your face on the Post Office wall. It should come as no surprise my entire family can’t decide who to punch first. One of my favorite funky modern mystics, Rob Breszny at freewillastrology.com, says that starting tomorrow, “it’s essential that you give off warm, engaging, intimate vibes in the coming weeks.” Coincidentally, my sisters went on vacation and left me the keys to the family business. I’m going to spend the next four days dabbling in retail and smiling over a New Age soundtrack. So, maybe that’ll be my face on the Post Office wall. And…we’re back to panoramas of teeth.

I feel warmer already.

I’ll never leave you alone,
I’ll never leave just a memory.
I’ll never leave you alone in the garden
Where nothing grows.

Harry Nilsson, I’ll Never Leave You

Over the weekend, the enormous blended family threw a surprise birthday party for our stepfather Tom. He joined our story in the mid-seventies and brought with him our two then-tiny stepsisters. At the time, we were up to our necks in hippies; shorthand for this is that we were commune kids. Yes, I know how to milk a goat. No, I’m not going to milk your goat. What are you doing with a goat, huh? Anyway, one night Daria, our brother Todd and I were introduced to Tom in the alley behind the mostly organic restaurant where Mom worked. We did the only thing undersized kids in an an awkward outdoor social situation could: we climbed the tall man. Soon, it was like the tide went out, the hippies moved away and we were surrounded by Quakers, Jews and Unitarians. Absolutely everyone could sing. There was a bluegrass band. We went to a lot of weddings in backyards. I was the oldest kid of a couple dozen. Fast-forward thirty years – we do a lot of fast-forwarding at Poor Impulse Control so no skimping on the Dramamine, please! – and the kids have kids. The adults get to do things like spend a month working at a clinic in Kenya with a determined teenaged granddaughter.

Here we are at the surprise party and the reunited bluegrass band – including Tom – is playing John Prine’s “Paradise” and Steve Goodman’s “City of New Orleans.” We hand him a beer and plug in his bass. Guests have brought lox platters and grilled chicken salads and marinated shrimp and hummus and artichoke quiche and three different kinds of brownies and cakes and fresh fruit salads and every bite is fantastic. My sisters run in circles to greet old friends, refill bread baskets, count their children and put husbands to work. I drink a lot of coffee, wash dishes and talk to about a thousand people – unless we’re talking about actual people and I’d guess about sixty. Finally, I sit down on the lawn with three of my sisters, two cousins, my niece Lois. Behind us, all the little nephews wrestle and color with crayons until periodically adult intervention is required: just about every five minutes. Hey, they’re healthy. Earlier in the day, one of the two-year-olds fell face first into a wooden chair, got up and ran after his older brother without a whimper. Unless someone holds up a bloody stump, there’s no need to get excited.

Our cousin Monday on my father’s side, who couldn’t be more marvelous if doves alighted on her shoulders during the cocktail hour, is engaged to Cory. Monday is 6′ tall, wildly attractive and beloved by smart children. Fortunately, she’s a teacher and telling children, “We don’t say ‘ass'” is her job. Her equally marvelous and entirely different sister Sandy is on a mission now.

Sandy: Tell her, Monday.
Monday: Weeelllllllll –

I sit back in my folding chair to brace myself and nearly go over backwards.

Monday: I’m getting married next year in June when his family told me I could.
Tata: They what?
Monday: I was told if the wedding was in April or May, the family would be planting. September and October were also out because of harvest time.
Tata: Okay…farmers…can’t screw around with their livelihood…got it…
Monday: Also: they don’t drink or swear.
Tata: Oh, fuck them. Have they MET YOU?
Sandy: They don’t drink or swear!
Tata: I’m bringing strippers to your wedding.
Sandy: And there’s one more thing…
Tata: Drunken strippers, about six of them. I recommend we issue one to every member of your family. Like party favors!
Sandy: Like fucking party favors.
Tata: I will truly enjoy this – what little I’ll remember of it.
Auntie InExcelsisDeo: At your age? You should be ashamed!
Tata: Well, sure. I could go in handcuffs.

The best part of the afternoon and evening comes as I make the rounds to say goodbye. Mom has dashed off after her grandsons. Tom and his friends are sitting in a circle on the lawn and everyone has a drink in hand. I take a deep breath to speak when someone tells us loudly –

She 1: If I’ve learned anything in life it’s that you should never paint naked.
She 2: Did you paint naked?
She 1: No, he did!

He bursts out laughing. He is one of Tom’s oldest friends and he was painting his kitchen naked and standing one foot on a counter and the other on a ladder when a young friend brought over his first, impressionable girlfriend to meet him. They walked in and found his various parts dangling, as he says now, “like mistletoe.”

She 1: Remember those parties where – when the kids got up in the morning – they’d step over the bodies sprawled everywhere?

Daria, who’s holding a sleeping baby, has sidled up next to me from nowhere. She raises her hand now and says, “Hey! Hey!” We were those kids. The people sitting in the circle were some of the sprawled bodies. It’s still funny. One thing I like about these people is they’re not rewriting and sanitizing their histories.

I thank them for a front-row seat on their glorious antics. Then I drive over to St. Peter’s Hospital to visit a friend recovering from his. Daria says it’s from our parents’ friends that we learned to function as part of a small, responsive group: if you need a car, you call somebody and they lend you a car. If someone needs you to take care of their kids, you go pick up the kids. Give and take. From these same people we learned the – as we know now – rather natural idea that men and women can be friends and friends with their Exes. Maybe your parents’ friends didn’t walk around naked. Trust me, it would’ve been funnier if they had.

Weeks ago, a friend asked me to be patient about a Difficult Situation(tm). Strangely, I agreed, since we’d been friends for eight years and I was a mere bystander, not some imperiled participant. I don’t know what possessed me to think this wouldn’t happen.

Tata: Okay, I’ll keep my trap shut. [Pause] I can’t take it anymore!

While I was actually attempting to stifle myself, my friend was doing everything in his power to undermine his own efforts to deal with the Difficult Situation(tm) and lying about it. To put this vague description into urban guinea terms you definitely understand: it was like the time your junkie cousin borrowed your car to go to a job interview, then called you to bail him out when your car went into the Hudson River. You sensed something was wrong but you hoped against hope that this time, this cucuz wouldn’t fuck you over. When he did, you said, “I feel like a chooch but at least I tried to help.” And that was the last time you tried to help, no matter how much Mama, Zia and Nonna cried, am I right?

Friend: You hate me, I can tell. That makes two of us.
Tata: Tell your story walking, fella. I’m too selfish to dedicate my next wrinkle to your dumb drama.

Yes, that’s what friends are for: to borrow your stuff and test your boundaries. No, wait, that’s not what friends are for after you wise up and quit schtupping each other’s assorted spouses – especially since what you want from your friends is a break from your damn family. (Do family members – by any chance – keep you in a cage, feed you cake and call you pet names like “Puddin'” and “Tasty”? You and Gretel should consider busting out of Gingerbread Death Row.) Though I have seen my friends make efficient car repairs using only an oak tree, steal potted plants from crowded restaurants and fling ice cream cakes from fifth floor balconies, I trust them with my life, by which I mean: to bury me in a shallow grave near a neighborhood with good schools to bring down property values. Trust is everything. I have one friend I trust to disappoint me and in that he is entirely trustworthy. Several friends have drug problems, arrest records, histories with cults, abuse, cruel spouses, and realtors. The one thing they have in common is they can be trusted to care about me.

The thing my lying, undermining, manipulating, spineless and self-destructive friend cannot be trusted to do is care about me, or the eight years of our lives he wasted before he showed me his true colors.

I wonder if he realizes he’s not my friend. I wonder if this makes me more or less open to new people, in some unfolding stage of life. No, I don’t hate him, but I’m not going to give him another chance to make me sorry I extended myself for him. There’s just one thing to say. Say it with me, sports fans: Go in peace, but keeeeep going.