Dani Shapiro

Spotlights in the backyard shone on the landscaped garden, the redwood table, the Adirondack chairs.

I had my father's favorite music, Dvorak's Symphony for the New World, playing on the stereo system.

My parents rang the doorbell.

They looked so solid standing on my front stoop, their cold red noses poking out from above their mufflers.

If nothing else, they looked like they belonged together.

They were elegant and rangy, similarly proportioned.

Unlike Lenny and me, Lenny is thick as a linebacker, and I had become so delicate the wind could have picked me up and blown me away.

My mother strode into the brownstone as if it wasn't the weirdest thing in the world to be visiting her daughter in a lavish apartment with no name on the outside buzzer.

My father trailed behind her warily, as if setting foot on another planet.

My mother entered the living room, flung her arms wide, and did an impromptu dance to Dvorak.

Tra-la-la-la, she trilled.

My father and I hung back and watched, our faces crumpled into awkward smiles.

It didn't occur to me that she was frightened, that this was a lot for her to take in, her college dropout daughter living in the lap of luxury.

All I could see was her outsized self twirling around my living room in her fur coat and boots.

I wanted a drink.

I poured two glasses of Chardonnay for my parents and a large vodka for myself.

I figured that if the vodka was in a water glass, they wouldn't know the difference, especially if I drank it like it was water.

My drinking had taken on a new urgency in the past few months.

It was no longer a question of desire, but of need.

I could not get through an evening like this without the armor of booze.