Cut from "I am having so much fun here without you"

            “Do you remember the nightlights?” she asked, referring to something I’d made while she was pregnant to illuminate her frequent nighttime trips to the toilet. While we were still living in Providence, my mother used to send me care packages filled with Crown Prince kipper snacks. The empty tins were everywhere, accumulating monthly in oil slicked piles at the bottom of the trash. With a little nautical rope and miniature red Christmas bulbs, I was able to fashion a series of maritime “red light” district nightlights for her that we still had somewhere in our Paris basement.

            “Yeah,” she said, looking past me. “Maybe you should wash those.”

            I was determined not to pick at her verbal barbs.