the room, to send me tumbling downstairs into the familiar sanctity of dirty dishes and vacuuming. On the record, a male voice sang, “You know you’re a cute little heartbreaker.”
“The greatest,” Jonathan hollered. “Much better than Van the Man.”
I made a decision. I stood up and said, “Bobby, let’s dance.”
He joined me immediately. We danced together in the chaos of the music. It wasn’t so bad, as long as you kept moving. It gave you the airy, buffeted sensation a sparrow must feel when caught in an updraft—a simultaneous sense of assault and liberation. You could scream into the face of this music. It all but lifted your arms into the air.
From the corner of my eye I could see that Jonathan was disappointed. His mother had not cowered before his hard-driving music. Once again, I could see the child contained in the burgeoning man—his expression at that moment recalled the times his checkers moves didn’t work out, or no one fell for his April Fool’s trick. If he’d permitted it, I would have reached over and pinched his cheek.
Presently, he started dancing, too. What else could he do? As we three swayed to the music, that small room seemed as densely packed as Times Square, and every bit as full of the weight of the moment. Jimi Hendrix growled “Foxy lady,” and it struck me as a fair appellation. A smart older woman who didn’t scare easily. Who wouldn’t just retreat to her domestic chores, and start getting fat.
After that, I paid more regular visits. I abandoned my old rule about waiting to be invited. We seemed to have passed beyond that. When my ordinary errands took me upstairs I’d tap on the door and go in for a song or two. I never stayed long.
One night when I knocked on the door I detected a shuffling on the other side. Neither of them answered my knock. I thought I could hear them whispering. Then Jonathan called, “Come in, Mom.”
I smelled it the moment I entered—that sweet smoky reek. The room was blue with it. Bobby stood in an attitude of frozen panic, and Jonathan sat in his accustomed place by the radiator. Bobby said, “Um, Mrs. Glover?”
Jonathan said, in a voice that was calm and almost suave, “Come on in, Mom. Have a hit.”
He extended a smoldering, hand-rolled cigarette in my direction.
I stood uncertainly in the doorway. For a long moment I lost track of my own character and simply floated, ghost-like, watching dispassionately as my son extended a pathetic-looking gnarled cigarette, its ember glowing orange in the dim light of a baseball-shaped lamp I’d bought for him when he was seven years old.
I knew what I was supposed to do. I was supposed to express my shock and outrage or, at the very least, to speak gently but firmly to him about the limits of my tolerance. Either way, it would be the end of our familiar relations—our impromptu dance parties—and the beginning of a sterner, more formal period.
After the silence had stretched to its breaking point, Jonathan repeated his offer. “Give it a try, Mom,” he said. “How else will you know what you’re missing?”
“Your father would have a heart attack,” I said evenly.
“He isn’t here,” Jonathan said.
“Mrs. Glover?” Bobby said helplessly.
It was his voice that decided me—his fearful intonation of my married name.
“I suppose you’re right,” I said. “How else will I know what I’m missing?”
I took three steps into the room, and accepted the sad little cigarette.
“Atta girl, Mom,” Jonathan said. His voice was cheerful and opaque.
“How do you do this?” I asked. “I’ve never even smoked regular cigarettes, you know.”
Bobby said, “Um, just pull the smoke, like, straight into your lungs. And hold it as long as you can?”
As I put the cigarette to my lips, I was aware of myself standing in a pale blue blouse and wraparound skirt in my son’s bedroom, about to perform the first plainly illegal act of my life. I inhaled. The smoke was so harsh and bitter I nearly choked. My eyes teared, and I could not hold the smoke in my lungs as Bobby had told me to do. I immediately blew out a thick cloud that hung in the air, raggedly intact, for a full second before dissipating.
Nevertheless, the boys cheered. I handed the cigarette to Bobby.
“You did it,”