To my former mother, Mrs. Callahan

after Eudora Welty's "Why I Live at the P.O."

I cannot explain how annoyed and mortitied I was to have you waking me up yesterday with that loud rapping, only to open my door and find you standing there with a vase full of carnations--green, no less, and how appropriate in a way I can't think of, with all those fairy fern leaves and baby-whatevers to boot. There's nothing I hate more than a holiday.

"Who the fuck are they for?" I said, and I apologize for the use of the word fuck to your face, but you have to understand my predicament, and also take into account I didn't get to sleep till after five in the morning and was standing there in my underwear feeling like I'd just been ripped from the womb.

Well, that smile fell right off your face and I could tell by your overcoat and makeup you were home for lunch, which just made me marvel at my rotten luck--once in a blue moon you eat at home, and that's just the moon these things arrive.

"They're for you," you said, handing them to me, as if I might've wanted any part of them.

"How could they be for me?"

"The woman said--"

"What woman?"

"Your name's on the--"

And yes, I was rude: I grabbed the vase from your hand, ripped the card off the tissue paper, and planted that mutant hellspray on my dresser. Again I apologize for my lack of whatever, but to be perfectly honest, at the moment I was wishing either you or the flowers would disappear, and you were both staying stubbornly present.

"Aren't you going to open the card?" you said, with your hand on your hip that way that makes me cringe.

"No, I'm not going to open the card, "I said, shoving it in a drawer.

"Don't you want to know who they're from?"

"I know who they're from."

"Oh?"

"Oh." And believe you me if that ... jerk had been standing in this drafty, one-windowed, converted-garage of a room, I would've strung him up by the toes and torn out both of his eyes for your viewing satisfaction--sending me flowers at my parents' house.

"Well, who?" you said.

And I was shocked. "What do you mean, who?"

"Who are they from?"

Now you had no right. Don't think I've forgotten the day you sat me down at the kitchen table and told me the whole drawn-out story about how Cousin Marybeth was living with some guy and she went and told Aunt Kathy right out, and how upset your poor sister was, and how the least Marybeth could've done was lie--no, you didn't say lie; the least she could've done was misrepresent the situation, was the gist of it, like whichever one of your friends' darling son who forbade his girlfriend to answer the phone and all other kinds of elaborate schemes, and you looked me wide in the eyes the whole time like there was something enormous behind your words you wanted to get across. And don't think, either, it was any mystery to me that from that moment on you stopped hounding me about when I was going to get a girlfriend, and I'm sure you noticed I stopped dropping all those glaring little hints, like the time I held up People magazine and said, "I can think of sexier men than Mel Gibson." Well, those conditions were fine with me, and I was under the impression it was the beginning of a nice long detente, but then all of a sudden you came breaking your own rules, asking me who the flowers were from.

"Mom, I am twenty-six years old," I said.

And there your blue-green eyes were, staring me down like oh so many years ago, and I was staring back just as strong, wondering which of us was going to break first--neither (and isn't that always the way?); you just turned with the swish of your polyester pants and big belted overcoat, mumbling, "Well, excuse me for living," and slammed my own door, leaving me face-to-face with my timeworn Partridge Family poster, sick souvenir of my youth: Shirley & David et al., smiling brightly before the multi-colored bus, Com'on get happ-y! And it was while staring at those big-collared crooners that I realized how much we didn't understand what I'd just said, because I felt I'd answered your question to the best of my ability, though I couldn't have said how.

Meanwhile I was willing to forget the whole scene and go back to bed, which is exactly what I tried to do the second you left the room. And maybe I would've been successful if the faces of those damned dogs hadn't come plaguing my brain again, which they seem to be doing more and more frequently these days, and usually at just this kind of inconvenient moment. Mind you, I've never seen these dogs, but I'm convinced they were Dalmatians--remember, like Pongo, the Shaws' dog, that died of whatever it was made him piss all that blood and stain the trees? But of course you know nothing about the learned helpless dogs and I am wasting time and paper. I wouldn't have known about them myself if you and Dad hadn't been so kind as to pay for me to go to college against my will, and so I am indebted to you both for this bit of mind-expanding knowledge, even though I failed psychology like I failed every other course I took. I'm sure Jimmy knows all about the dogs, ask him. Or ask that bitch of his, Jennifer (and don't tell me you don't share that opinion). And then maybe I'd be interested in hearing what they might have to say about them--that is, if any of us are on speaking terms by then, which I entirely doubt.