The mother-to-be moved along, after wishing us a good day. A young man, tall with ruddy skin and blue eyes, met up with her and draped his arm around her shoulders. I suddenly felt a twist of jealousy, and self-pity threatened to sweep over me.

“Miss? How much are these baskets?”

The person speaking to me had a gentle voice, articulate, enunciating her letters exactly.

“Thirty,” I replied, looking more closely at her. She had snowy hair and soft, liquidy brown eyes, but her cheeks were smooth, soft.

“That’s what my husband said, I think,” she said, nodding as if we’d just agreed on something of significance. “He sent me over here to look at them.”

“The man with the golf clubs?”

She grinned, her eyes crinkling at the corners. “That’s my Bob.” She picked up the straw-colored basket with the dark-brown edging and examined it carefully. “He said one of them would match the colors of my kitchen, so it must be this one. I just got new cabinets and new butcher-block counters in exactly this color. This would work well as a fruit basket for the main counter.”

“It is pretty,” said the young woman with the glasses, who knelt herself to look at my baskets.

Within five minutes, I had made sixty dollars. I called Aliyah at the house—“Pack up Michael and bring me all the baskets on my table in the basement—quick, quick!”

“Breast milk and baskets,” she muttered. “You need a freaking secretary.”

In June, Michael turned three months old, and I drove him to South Philadelphia to meet his grandparents.

I had finally broken down—the day before Father’s Day—and called my parents’ house. I actually had to look up the phone number in my cell phone log since I had not dialed it in over a year. Baba answered, thankfully, and I was so relieved to hear his voice that I realized I must have been afraid I’d have to speak to my mother.

“Yes, please come,” Baba said. “I cannot wait to see my grandson.”

“His name is … it’s Michael.”

“I know,” he said quietly. “I heard. Thank you.”

When I pulled up in front of my parents’ house, I noticed Joey and Sammy, the neighbor’s two young sons, lounging on their stoop, exchanging bubble gum pack cards. When they saw me, they shouted at me to stop and scurried to move two folding chairs that were marking a parking space in front of my parents’ house. “Your dad told us to save the spot,” Joey shouted, as I backed my SUV and slid in.

“Jeez—that’s a huge truck!” Sammy exclaimed. “Did your guy give it to you when he dumped you?” He was stunned into silence when his older brother promptly whacked his arm.

“That’s OK, Sammy. Wanna meet my boy?” I got out and opened the back door, unbuckling a sleepy Michael out of his seat.