1973

In one terrible year of my life, it seemed that the universe wanted me to have time alone to contemplate my sins.

In January, my stepfather died of a heart attack just a few weeks after my 6-year-old son Chris and I had arrived in San Diego, at my parents’ invitation, so I could make a new start and go to secretarial school.

In June, I put Chris on a plane back to Minnesota to live with his father and new stepmother. It was my own fault; I had caved in to their custody suit.

By October, my mother applied for and was accepted as a dorm mother in a Christian Science boarding school for retarded children in San Jose, several hundred miles to the north. A week later, she packed up her van and left me alone with my dog Mopsy in her tiny house on Bianca Street.

Then in December, my best?my only?friend wrote me a letter informing me that we were no longer friends, and could she please have her clothes back.

I slouched at the kitchen table, staring at the letter, wondering where I had gone wrong, and big, sloppy tears spilled down my cheeks. My shoulders began to shake and I found myself sobbing out loud, crying like a teenager with a broken heart, because my heart was surely lying in splinters before me.

Mopsy whimpered and laid his shaggy white head on my knee. I couldn’t help laughing through my tears; someone loved me after all. I gave him a long hug.

Then I wiped my eyes and began to write my own letter, telling my former friend that the clothes she had once given me would be in a bag on the front porch and she was welcome to come and get them. I folded the paper, licked the envelope, and walked to the corner mailbox.

There was nobody left, nobody to please. Nobody except me.

The next day was a new semester. I sat in my accounting class and watched the teacher explain the difference between credits and debits, but I couldn’t hear the words. I looked at the words in the textbook and couldn’t understand them. Credit? Debit? They didn’t make sense.

What am I doing here? I thought. I don’t want to do this. But what do I want to do?

A small, childish voice answered shyly, I want to be an actress.

Yes, I remembered now.

I could do it, too, I thought. I could leave right now and sign up for drama classes at the nearby community college.

I closed the textbook and stood up, leaving the book on the desk. I walked out of the classroom as the teacher droned on. I walked down the stairs to the street and breathed deep, smiling.