SOME GIFT. MY MOTHER squeezed them into old silver on the mantle and lit each one. They scorched the wall. Even our best sofas couldn’t make up for the cheesy, rundown way the wall looked now. Still, this was London, not New York, and my mother didn’t even seem to notice. She was on a date. Derek Duncalf, the anesthesiologist, wrapped his legs down around the last curve of the love seat. My mother bent over, pushed a log back inside the grate. I was saying hello. Hello, Dr. Duncalf. My mother said that Derek Duncalf put his patients under by talking to them. But his tedious droning didn’t cure him from occasionally leaping across all obstacles to pin my mother to the wall. My mother liked this. She enjoyed the telling of it. She giggled and described his whining and pleading. Their dance of love was set. She would never give in; he would sleep, then spring, then be rebuffed. He sent her flowers: huge sprays, branches hacked from trees in first budding, wired into fanciful shapes.
