The China Frog (A Belated Mother's Day Card)

          My canary yellow bedroom was on a corner of the large apartment my mother and I shared, for $140/month, when I was 10, 11, and 12.
          One Saturday morning my mother and I crouched below the windows, one looking onto the gravel parking lot and the other onto a high, treacherous sidewalk between the buildings, watching Tommy McCabe stagger from his Dodge "Rambler" to the front door of his apartment building across the way.
          Tommy had spent all of Friday night at the "Moose" Lodge and was just making his way home—lapsing in and out of consciousness—after my morning cartoons. My mother, smelling like Crest and Aqua Net, was absorbed by the scene. She had probably seen him pull into the parking lot from the kitchen window and had come into my bedroom for the best view. 
          Tommy was her lover.

6:00 a.m. Bath

          It is a rare thing, a cold May morning. The painted radiator is hot to the touch, and the noise of the pipes comes from the heart of the old house—comforting and anonymous as a pulse.
          Tiny rounded pieces of four or five different soaps float on the milky water: rose, lavender, sandalwood, and patchouli tadpoles swim around my belly, compounding their scents.
          The steam from the tap rises and meets the first light coming in from the window. The corners of the room are dark, still in night.
          Everything is the color of pearl. The old white tub is smooth and faceted as the inside of a giant shell.  
          My cat regards me from the top of the toilet seat, closing and opening her eyes more glamorously than any actress, more attentively than any nurse. She stands perfectly as a toy; she is an illustration of a cat.
          I hoist my dripping leg into the air, but I cannot hold it straight. I have coiled and tensed through all my years—no warmth can open me now.   
          I step into a thick, clean white towel.
          I still love the world.