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wuss if you must, but I was overwhelmed with conflict. I was raised to be respectful to my mother, but I also needed to set limits with her, boundaries. If only she’d get a life, I kept telling myself over and over. Then I’d be off the hook.
    “If I can’t share a terrific bargain with my daughter, who can I share it with?” she said, walking right past me into the living room, where she came upon Ethan, who was still stretched out on the sofa. “Oh, my. I had no idea you had company, Stacey.”
    No idea I had company? I had told her I had a date only that morning! But she just had to see Ethan for herself, didn’t she? I was dying to remind her that I was entitled to my privacy. Instead, I said, “Mom, this is Ethan. Ethan, this is my mother.”
    “Helen Reiser,” she volunteered, planting herself on the sofa next to Ethan and pumping his hand.
    “Pleasure,” said Ethan, who was polite but clearly put out. He had visions of us doing more than kissing, I guessed.
    “So tell me, Ethan,” she said, peering up at him as if he were an exhibit in a museum. “What’s with all the earrings?’
    “My mother’s a very direct person,” I explained to Ethan.
    “As if that’s a bad thing,” she said with a shrug.
    “Maybe Ethan doesn’t feel like discussing his personal life with someone he’s just met,” I said.
    “What personal life?” she scoffed. “I was asking about his jewelry.”
    “I had my ear pierced,” Ethan said tightly. “It’s no big deal.”
    “It must have been a big deal because you did it seven times,” said my mother. “Stacey wanted to pierce her ears when she was in high school, but I put my foot down. She went and did it anyway, when she was away at college, and wouldn’t you know that she developed an infection. In her right ear, I think it was. Apparently, whoever did the piercing didn’t use a sterilized needle. The ear became inflamed and started oozing, and if it weren’t for the antibiotics they gave her in that infirmary, she would have been in real trouble. And speaking of antibiotics, there are strains of bacteria now that are resistant to the drugs, were you aware of that, Ethan?”
    He shook his head helplessly.
    “That’s right,” she went on. “And I don’t mind telling you that it infuriates me. The fact that the geniuses in this country can’t care a common case of diarrhea absolutely infuriates me. A child eats a bad hamburger and the next thing you know that child is clinging to life in a hospital bed. It’s a national disgrace! We can send a man to the moon. We can clone sheep. We can invent computers that show every kind of X-rated trash known to man. So why in the world can’t we save a child who eats a bad hamburger? Why?”
    Look, I’m as sympathetic as the next person when it comes to children or anyone else who contracts E. coli, but I was totally humiliated by my mother’s latest performance. There wasn’t a chance that Ethan would call me again. He sat there with this odd expression on his face. It was not one of bemusement or impatience or even hostility. It was one of fear—as if he were trapped in a train wreck.
    “You must be tired,” I said to my mother, in an effort to tell her to beat it without actually having to. “It’s late and you did all that shopping today. Want me to walk you home?”
    “Thanks, dear, but I’m fine. Being out in the night air gave me a second wind. So, Ethan, what do you do for a living?”
    “Hair,” he said in a snippy monotone he hadn’t used with me.
    “What, exactly, do you do with hair?” she said, boring in on him. “Do you wash it? Cut it? Remove it? What?”
    Remove it. Yeah, he does waxing, Ma. “Ethan is a very successful hairdresser in Beverly Hills,” I said.
    “How nice,” she said, nodding at him, “although I’ve read that those dyes you people use can cause cancer of the scalp.”
    “That hasn’t been proven,” he said. “It’s perfectly safe to use color, Mrs.