She stood up and, facing the window now so that she was reflected in profile, she began taking the dress off, pulling it over her head. She was wearing a short pink slip underneath.

Sometimes in my life I have wondered how it must feel to inject pure heroin into a vein. I think the pleasure would be electric in its intensity. I felt that now, looking at Mother through the eyes of both youth and age. There was, too, the sense of danger and of power that comes with seeing another intimately without being seen. There was the erotic joy of seeing a woman so beautiful, so self-absorbed, take off her clothes. And it was such a forbidden thing to see my mother expose her body. I could not take my eyes away—not while this heroin was in my blood.

She continued, as I knew by now she would. She pulled the slip slowly over her head, shook her lovely black hair back into order, and laid the slip on the bed by her hose. She was wearing pink silk step-ins and a lacy pink brassiere. Her figure was perfect and her skin perfectly white. I sat transfixed. The feelings in me were like a hurricane, and my soul was in the eye of it. I felt frozen in the moment. I wanted to stay in it forever.

And then I heard her voice again as from a distance. It was softer now and a bit throaty. What she said was, “Now be sure you don’t peek, dear.” Then as I watched she bent and took off her panties. I saw the jet black of her pubic hair, so flawlessly seated in that charismatic V. I could see the tiny lips of her vagina, as pink as the coverlet on the bed, as pink as the wallpaper, as her slip, her panties. My heart pounded like a mallet in my chest and then as she removed her brassiere and stood there naked by the bed, still smiling, smiling now toward where I sat upright in my little chair, I felt a swooning inside myself. The heroin had me. My vision blurred and I was back in Limbo.

***

I sat stunned for several moments. And then I felt a brief flash of anger shake my body. I felt had, in some fundamental way, felt pinned down and tormented by the tableau I had just lived through.

But the anger left me soon. I was washed out, vaguely guilty, empty. I slept. I dreamed of Mother in her black wool coat in autumn when I was in the first grade. She would walk me carefully to school, helping me with the intersections. I dreamed of the way she would hold my right hand tightly in her left and I could feel the firm, metallic pressure of her engagement ring and her wedding ring. She would talk to me aimlessly of this and that—the weather, the new dresses she was going to buy—and I would hang on every word. I loved her terribly.