Nola swooped Lulu up in her arms and danced with her around the room. “It’s time. Wade’s been consumed with work all his life.” Deanna, his first wife, had wanted to start a family. Wade, always on the road and obsessed with Nola's career—on which his own depended—had objected. Things were different now, and she, who had been the one scared of a mother role, was taking the risk. She trumpeted into Lulu's belly, “Yesss!”

Leslie finished mixing wax-based foundation for her nose, strong enough to hold through repeated makeup applications. “How will the Italian Didonatos react when their lapsed-Jewish daughter-in-law presents them with a Chinese bambino their pretend-WASP son doesn’t yet acknowledge?” he asked.

Nola laughed. But as Leslie approached her with a small sponge, she felt the question mark that curled in the darkness of her guts. She stared into space. Wade's avoiding a confrontation notwithstanding, he had no room for Lulu in his life.

CHAPTER 4 (1977 – 1980)

“Nola, sing for us,” Mom said, and Nola was happy for the attention even though that evening, yet another sandaled, scruffy-looking couple with rolled sleeping bags had appeared at their door, colorful stickers from Istanbul, Berkeley and Tibet covering their backpacks. The visitors stretched out their smelly feet and complained that Smithtown was two hours out on Long Island—nowhere near New York City—and hitchhiking further up to Nissequogue was a bitch in a suburb full of stuck-up middle-class capitalists.

Nola sang “Knowing Me, Knowing You,” even though she wished these friends of friends would stop dropping in like this. It wasn’t a generous thought, because Mom always said they should all love one another, and if everybody was full of love for their fellow humans, the world would be a better place. Nola didn’t know who the “fellow humans” were, so how was she supposed to love them?

She said nothing. She had already ruined Mom’s singing career seven years before by “being born when no one was looking.” Nola never dared ask where had someone finally seen her? In the woods? On the beach? Or in the middle of a concert, like that one in Woodstock where Mom had met Dad when he played guitar with Bob Dylan?