I left the hospital and drove home at midnight. The streets were clean and half-empty. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, uptown, the big green sweeper came through, attacking one side one night, the other side the other night, so people had to mark their calendars and remember to switch.

I needed a shower, to wash my hair and put on some soft clothes, my terrycloth slippers. I'd been in high heels all day, black suede pumps shoes I wore to show customers that people really did walk in three-inch heels, but they hurt like hell and I rubbed the cramp out of my foot.

Leftover tuna casserole was in the fridge and I microwaved some in a cup and sat on the sofa to watch CNN. I'd substituted Special K on the top for Cornflakes and it tasted okay. Scotty's dirty socks from his last baseball game were right where he'd left them balled up in the arm chair. I missed him. He'd been an accident, if there were such things. A baby on my shoulder wasn't something I imagined for myself and I wasn't sure why other women could be so single-minded about having a kid. But when the strip turned out positive, all I wanted was to be pregnant. Bay had already had a boy. She did everything first and I usually wanted what she'd just had even if it meant taking it away from her, but you couldn't steal people's kids, although I'd tried this in junior high when I was a babysitter. The little one might cling to you for a while, but she always went back to her mother, which felt like betrayal and relief. What was a 12-year-old girl going to do with a stolen baby? When I was old enough to be a mother, the idea of having my own child frightened me. I'd been such a sneaky babysitter. So I stole men instead. It seemed more fair because you could only hurt the wife/girlfriend who had taken her eye off the ball. I didn't realize that maybe trust was what allowed the cheat, not the inattention.

I opened my flute case and screwed the pieces together. I'd taken lessons when we lived in Canada, had been driven once a week by one of my parents who then waited in Mr. Vanderhoven's kitchen and listened through the door. They'd gotten angry with Bay and me for not practicing enough, had labelled us dilettantes, and we'd both quit playing music in junior high. But I'd kept my flute and I still played in my apartment. No scales, no warm-ups or practicing of difficult passages. This wasn't Carnegie Hall, it was just me walking around my little place in my flannel robe, playing to the windows, to the fridge door to see when Scotty had his next baseball game. This was what my father would have called masturbation. Exactly! I liked slow pieces, things that required plenty of reason to use my vibrato. I'd make it waver slow but with purpose, like the phrase had all the time in the world and no one was stepping on its neck, making it nervous about getting to its conclusion. I hated endings because what would I do when it was over? After I left my parents house I did this: Played the passages I loved over and over again, which felt good. And again.