Inside are chocolate chip cookies with walnuts. I run a finger along the edge of the container, feeling wistful for a moment, longing for more of the cookies, more of the homework help, more of the bedtime stories.

More of the mom.

These treats from her will be a reminder that she can play that part too.

But first I need food, so I open the fridge and find a tupperware container full of African stew from the other night. I have no interest in food my mom makes for her latest lover. I spot a container of pasta primavera, but I bet that was last night’s culinary offering to Neil, so I pass on that too. I grab some carrots and hummus, set them on the counter, and open the drawers for a napkin.

I see a shadow in the living room. Only it’s not a shadow. It’s a man. It’s Neil and he’s about to walk into the kitchen.

In. His. Birthday. Suit.

“Oh crap.” He is tall, lanky, furry and his parts are swinging around.

I jerk my head away, because I want desperately to wipe the image of his limp dick from my brain. But it’s like an ambulance siren, screaming at me. You just saw your mom’s lover’s penis, and you noticed it was smallish, and had a mushroom head and now you can never ever ever escape from the image of his pecker swinging flaccidly between his hairy legs.

“I’m so sorry.”

I drop the hummus container onto the floor and it explodes on the tiles.

He jumps back, makes sure the hummus didn’t hit his toes. I stare at him – above the neck only, I will not look down – my eyes wide with shock. “Seriously? You are walking around the house naked and you’re worried about hummus on your feet?”

“No. No. No. I was just surprised.”

I roll my eyes. “Obviously. Now get the hell out of here,” I say, and I don’t care that I don’t live here anymore. I don’t care that he probably has every reasonable right to have fucked my mom in an afternoon delight on a Friday. But he is naked and gross and in my house where I grew up, and I have had enough of my mother’s lovers.

“Barb went back to work, and I was taking a nap after –”

I hold up my hand in a firm stop sign. Shake my head forcefully. “No. Don’t go there. I don’t want to hear the story,” I say sharply because I don’t need to know he was taking an after-sex nap. I don’t need to know that my mom helped herself to a naughty nooner, then left her lover to snooze when she knew I was stopping by. That is the very definition of TMI.

“I’ll just turn around and go.”

“Yeah. Exactly.”

I bend down to pick up the hummus, and I want to throw it at him. But then I’d have to lay eyes on his naked body and there isn’t enough bleach in the world to white out what I just saw. I grab a towel, wipe up all the hummus, then toss the towel and the container in the trash.

Tears well up, but I don’t let them out. Because they’re mixed with far too much anger. Too much frustration. And way too many foul memories. Even though my mom’s at work I can smell her. My nostrils are filled with a scent I want to erase from the entire universe, and I can recall other encounters like this, when I’d bump into her after she’d had a roll in the hay while I was home. She’d be wearing a red dressing gown, mid-thigh length and silk, and smelling of sex. Musky and dirty and adult, like sheets tangled up that beg for a washing. Her scent, the scent of her bedroom, her nightgowns, her sexuality that she shared freely with me. I wrinkle my nose and try to hold my breath as the olfactory memory floods my senses.

I grab the bag of carrots from the counter and crunch into one, biting down hard. Chewing as if I can rid my mind of these images if I bite hard enough. Drilling into another carrot, I bear down, my teeth now a lethal weapon, slicing the carrot in half. I imagine it shrieking. Wishing it could.

Screw this.

I leave the carrots on the counter. Let her clean up the bag when she returns to her den of iniquity. Maybe they’ll be dried out and inedible when she sees them. I leave behind the cookies too, my small act of defiance.

I head for the front steps when Neil reemerges. He’s wearing jeans, cuffed once at the ankles ,and a striped button down.

“I’m so sorry,” he says, as if a double apology alleviates his trespass. But I will never see him as anything other than unwelcome.

I don’t answer him. I walk toward the door.

“Wait. Harley. Something came for you a few minutes ago.”

My ears prick, and I spin around.

I spy a package on the coffee table. “Barb had left for work, and a few minutes later a courier knocked on the door.”

My lips quirk up into a traitorous smile. I want to jump up and cheer. He intercepted the package! He unknowingly intercepted it from my mom.

I race to the table and lunge for the envelope. It’s manilla, thick and padded. It already has the well-worn look of an envelope that’s been manhandled on its route across town. I clutch the package tightly to my chest. “Thank you.”

Then I want to smack myself. Why am I thanking him? He has nothing to do with the good fortune of my mom missing the early delivery.

“Is everything okay?”

He casts his eyes to the package momentarily, then back to me. He notices the logo.

“Of course,” I say quickly. Does this half-baked lover of hers think he can catch me in trouble since he’s seen Miranda’s name on the return address? I can lie with the best of them. I can dance circles around the truth.

“Because I saw the name on it,” he adds, gesturing to the package I’m clutching like a newborn baby. “Just curious.”

My heart races in my chest, but the wheels turn quickly, and the lie is already fully formed. “Oh. Yeah. Of course. Because it’s a gift we’re working on for Barb.” Then I press a finger to my lips. “Shh...Don’t say anything.”

“Ah,” he says with a knowing wink and a smile, since it’s natural that Miranda and I would pair up to give my mom a gift. Now, Neil and I are co-conspirators. Or so he thinks. He grabs his phone and wallet, and says goodbye.

Good riddance.

I peer out the window, making sure he’s gone, waiting until I see him raise a hand, and hail a yellow cab on Central Park West. He’s off in a sea of New Yorkers, fanning out from clandestine encounters, the city hiding all their secrets. The anonymity, the size, the surreptitiousness of Manhattan, the cloak we all wrap ourselves in.

I sink down on the royal blue couch, rip open the package and pull out the pages I’ve written in the last few weeks. Maybe fifty or so, full of Post-it notes and penciled-in marks, instructions to me. Notes that say things like: “More salacious,” “More details,” “Is this how it really happened or are you leaving out key parts?”

On and on, they’re all the same: More, more, more.

Shame, shame, shame.

I find one more note. I read it, and it’s a shovel digging through my innards, scooping them out, serving them bruised and battered on a platter for me. “This story about Pierre and the carnival? I don’t care that your mommy taught you to kiss. You should have some more respect for your mother. After all she’s done for everyone. I don’t need you psychoanalyzing yourself and why you did what you did. You did it because you’re a whore. Your mother is not to be dragged through the mud. Even anonymously. Shame on you.”

I toss the pages on the table, make two fists, dig my fingernails into my palms, then scream. A loud, shrill, sharp sound like a train whistle tearing through the cold, quiet midnight of a lonely town. It knocks picture frames from walls. It rattles vases off tables. It reaches all the way to the top of the building and out into the afternoon sky. Neighbors drop their afternoon coffee cups. Curious. Concerned. Terrified. Is everyone okay?

But none of that happens.

Because no one notices, nothing changes, my father leaves, my mother reinvents herself as my friend, and so when a tree falls in the forest and no one can hear it, it doesn’t make a god damn sound.