Leora’s mother had once told Leora that a person remains a child until his parents die. During her sleepless nights since seeing the picture of Jake with his mother, she had begun to see what her mother had meant. On nights when she couldn’t sleep, she sometimes went into the living room and read one of Lauren’s or Melanie’s women’s magazines, hoping to bore herself to sleep. When she was younger, she used to assume that these magazines were describing what her life might be like in the near future, when she was just a little bit older than she was while she was reading them. Now, though, she noticed a peculiar pattern: the magazines seemed to be written for children. One billed itself as “the magazine for your years of YOU,” years when, according to the “From the Editor” section, “you no longer live with your parents, but you still aren’t tied down . . . years when you are free to be YOU.” Another, following the theme, had a section called “You, yes, you!” while a third had a similar section, this time called “Me, yes, me!” Leora read these magazines endlessly on her long, sleepless nights, rolling her eyes through the same cycle of articles about shoes, men, sex, men, and shoes, expecting to feel some sort of inspiration from these people who were telling her that she was now a free woman, free to use her time and salary to choose whatever shoes she wanted to fill. But the more she read, the more she felt like a child, her world circumscribed by what she could grab in her tight pudgy fists, the things she could point to and say, “Me, yes, me!” And then she really couldn’t sleep.