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A Last Go
- University of Pittsburgh Press
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6 A Last Go My mother takes the world into her mouth, she takes the sour-cream coffee cake and the rugelach with walnuts and currants. She wants a pecan raisin loaf, two loaves, See’s suckers, and mandelbrodt, and I’ll take her hunger any way I can, mainlining my mother’s desires, finding in her appetites the young woman— tortoise-shell sunglasses and dark hair pulled back in a silk scarf— who gunned the white Ford Galaxy, hardtop convertible, a ringer for Jackie O. This is her reward for years of tuning deprivation like a violin, of learning to do more on less and less until she lived on argument, solo performance, dry toast and black coffee, the fish dish halved. Now that medical studies show the skinny live longer, she’s gained the sweet taste of being right all along. Go ahead, Ma, try the ginger scones, the lemon poppy seed cake. All the hours you hoarded have turned into years; there’s time for a last go at pleasure. ...