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Show Motherlunge a novel 137 X. and I continued our long, meandering route through the park and then throughout our neighborhood. As we strolled, I rested my falafel sandwich on the stroller canopy to make it last longer. I pointed out the local features to my nephew. On your left is the place where your mom fills her prescriptions. There's our newsstand. There's where Cassandra once saw Madonna buying soap. Straight ahead is a dog like General. Just as the sun was going down, we walked past the co-operative community garden. There, the co-opers were having one of their series of self-congratulatory events-We 're organically and with reverence recognizing Summer Solstice!'-and they had the white fairy lights up, and somebody was playing clarinet, and there were hugs and shoulder squeezes all around. And looking on with X.-my little fake son, my prop and proof, my temporary responsibility-I felt momentarily appropriate, like someone who might herself one day begin a small composting effort. A baby, after all, is very natural, very local, as real and heavy as a clod of dirt compressed. A baby is too new to have mental health issues. I took X. out of the stroller and held him to me as we stood outside the chain link fence around the garden. I swayed with the music rising up to the faded moon above. X. grabbed for my glasses, then hooked his fingers in my mouth and pulled, chortling so adorably and audibly at my grimace that the co-opers were compelled to look at us and wave us in, implying our neighborhood garden is a place of welcome! I shook my head no thanks, but stayed there for a few more minutes. In fact, I lingered. I was of course avoiding going home to Pavia's, where the heavy dread of loneliness awaited me, the |