It is not hard for Sylvia to come up with reasons not to go. Her breakdown ten years ago was the clearest indictment of her compulsive dependence: to chase the bait of her mother’s acceptance, to earn love, to be good. She cannot go back to her mother’s womb: crawling in, crawling back defeated, no better than when she was twenty. But it is harder to isolate her reasons, now, to stay. Her body and mind push outward, down the street, past the warning chorus of screaming, running children, toward the terraces of shops milling with customers on the other side. The bakery with its iced cakes and plump fragrant loaves, the sweet shop, the hairdresser. The dairy that handcarts bottles to her doorstep at dawn. The whistling butcher in his stained apron mopping the footpath in front of his shop. The news agent’s, the post office, the draper’s, iridescent silks pouring over their bolts in the plate-glass window. Real bread, flesh, real milk. She takes a whiff of self-preservation. The deep breath freezes her lungs.

“But, Mother, the whole purpose of my move to London is to work,” she begins. “My future and the children’s depend on my success here. I told you, I’ve already gotten a commission from the BBC—they’ve asked me to write about my childhood landscape.” Here, Mother. Here’s your gift, the return on investment that left you bankrupt of self, ready to cash in on mine. She takes a breath and continues the recital of her current triumphs, thin as it feels in the December air. “A producer in Norway has asked to translate ‘Three Women’ for the radio there, and he never would have heard the program if it weren’t for the BBC. There’s simply nothing to compare in America. And I’ve been submitting to more magazines—I’m selling lots of reviews and articles, too, and now these poems, and this little novel coming out. I need to find an au pair so that I can get back to writing right away. I’ve got to finish assembling my new poetry manuscript as well and send it out to publishers.”

“That’s all wonderful, darling, but precisely the argument for your coming home,” Aurelia counters, tenacious. “Save the money on the au pair for another month. I’ll take care of the children while you work. You can write right here—what better place to evoke your childhood? I could drive you out to Winthrop for your research; you could interview me. You can put me to work—I’ll edit your manuscript for you. I did it for Daddy, remember. You know I’m an excellent editor.”

Sylvia doesn’t answer, feeling for a way out of her mother’s enveloping altruism.