We called the pink-tiled powder room with the floral wallpaper “Mom’s bathroom.” There, she sat on a white cushioned stool to put on her make-up and style her hair. She lined her perfume, hair spray, and jewelry box along the counter. Inside the built-in drawers she stored brushes, spikey-edged hot rollers, lipstick, mascara, face creams, mud masks, and dozens of other tubes and pots filled with creams and potions. I watched her sigh at her reflection, heard her wishing for dewier skin, and felt the mist from dozens of spurts of hairspray that never quite did the trick of keeping her hair in place. So much of it seemed to make her so unhappy, yet I longed to get my hands on all of them, the tubes, the jars, the creams. But I had to be patient: in fifth grade I would be allowed to hot-roll my hair, and in high school I’d have permission to wear make up outside the house.

I imagine my mother must have felt frightened of all of the deaths she’d have to share with us in the future, the ways she’d have to deliver the news. Our future griefs that she couldn’t protect.

By the time I was seven I knew I was cursed. Lee genetics, it was explained time and again, ensured a certain spasmodic promise, but this was coupled with an alcoholism so severe that a single bottle could destroy whole lives, families—worlds, even. Booze was beyond our comprehension; it was a devil capable of anything and required a veritable exorcism to be expunged.

There’s a dock that stretches out over the reservoir, a straight path that doesn’t quite touch the low-hanging crater moon. It’s beautiful and eerie. I could crane up my neck and let out a lonely howl. That would freak Daniel out, I think, although I’m not the oddest one on this date.