Edited excerpt from a 3,000 word story ("Our Day") which was published in an anthology HerStory, Adams Media, 2005.

"Our Day," my mother's conscientious effort to try to like a child better by pretending closeness between us, was something she'd probably read in childrearing manuals she trusted more than her heart. An uneasy parent, giving birth at thirty-nine after two miscarriages, perhaps she could not bring herself to love fully or spontaneously; too much had been taken away from her already.

On 'Our Day,' I let the car's motion slide me over plastic seat covers, as mother, who always wins at chess, crosses midtown Manhattan like the knight, catching green lights by angling down two blocks and over one.

"Wait here, sweetheart," she says, shifting into neutral to dump me at the 53rd Street parking lot by its NO VACANCY sign. I watch the attendant massage dollar bills into his jeans pocket while I kick through gravel, hoping to scuff my tie shoes. Mother's heels click on pavement. I look up into stabbing sunlight.

"Try not to do that with your face, darling. You'll get permanent frown lines."

I don't mention the NO VACANCY sign. She'd say, "Look, Victoria," (friends called me Tory), "obviously, there was room for another car." Nevertheless, an unspoken threat hangs over our silence, like the sword suspended over that poor guy in Greek mythology. "I've planned Our Day to shop for your clothes, but if you have to ruin it..." would be one of her many unfinished sentences, like, "If you chew the ends of your glasses... if you don't stand up straight...if you loosen your retainer...if, at fourteen, you still haven't learned..."

In Best & Company's elevator, I squeeze into the far corner. She shoulders closer and stage whispers, "Isn't it time for some grown-up underwear, too, Daughter?"

I lock my arms across my chest and slump against couch cushions. In the Junior Miss viewing section on "Seventh Heaven," Mother smiles at a saleslady: "We'd like to see some nice dresses. Daughter goes off to boarding school next week."

Finally she'll be rid of me. When Father divorced her five years earlier, sticking her with my "snippy and contrary" behavior, I'd wished I could place myself for adoption with Bridge Over Troubled Waters; they help kids who are determined to work hard to overcome obstacles and improve their lives. I would work very hard.

I run out of polite ways to say no to "smart little frocks" meant for May Queen types, long before the saleswoman smiles and starts toward the stockroom again for "just the thing."

She's saved the best for last. The morning glory blue color startles me forward. The full skirt would waterfall over my knees. I'd toss the two fringed lengths of material attached at the collar, scarf-like, over one shoulder

"Like it, precious?" Mother's smile curls into poignancy. "Why not try it on?"

I hear it as an invitation to stand up straight so I don't spoil the lines of the dress, and turn slowly, giving her time to exchange winks with the saleslady before exclaiming, "How grown up you look!"

"We love it, don't we," Mother pleads.

"Well, the color's nice. But – it's too sophist —"

"You needn't scowl, Victoria. No one's saying you have to have it."

On the rack, the dress is swinging in diminishing blue arcs. I long to set it again in motion, but pleasing Mother would raise her expectations, already too high for me.

I try an extravagant sigh. "Have to have something. Let's buy that blue thing and get it over with."

"You'll never wear it if you don't like it, sweetheart. No point letting it hang in your closet."

How can I argue? In my closet, tags dangle from the Young Miss Bonwit's dress Mother ordered from a New Yorker ad. I look once more at the blue dress, but can't admit 'I love it.'

"Sorry," Mother shrugs to the saleswoman. "Have to let it go, I'm afraid. No pleasing her today."

We march tandem along Fifth Avenue. The back slash in mother's straight skirt moves like sharp scissors. We are passing the statue of Atlas, bearing the weight of the world on his young shoulders, when an older woman hails my mother.

I chew a fingernail while the college classmates exchange greetings.

"That's right, Ruth!" Mother exclaims. "Almost thirty years."

"So this is your daughter." The stranger angles her head. "She doesn't look at all like you, Amanda, does she?"

"No," I announce. "I'm adopted."

Mother sputters, "Oh, Vic-tor-ia!"

Her friend seems embarrassed.

My lie has divided them, leaving a thrilling dividend of doubt.

I stiffen for Mother's voice on the way to the parking lot, but dare not look at her. She reaches into her purse for a hankie, pays the attendant, blows her nose.

Only throat clearings, the metronome of windshield wipers, and jangling coins for tolls punctuate the silent return from 'Our Day.'

Rejecting my mother in front of her friend is a terrible thing to have done. My mind keeps practicing "I'm sorry." Yet my words, though true, never come out easily like hers.

I hunch into my stained raincoat while the rear view mirror shrinks the span of the George Washington Bridge, where lights outline connections across dark blue space.

Elizabeth Eidlitz is a teacher, journalist, freelance writer and studio potter from Concord, Massachusetts. She been a columnist for a Boston area newspaper for 10 years. Her essays and short stories have been published in anthologies; her articles and feature stories have appeared in a varied publications like The Boston Globe, Williams Alumni Review, Massachusetts Wildlife, Orion, Mt. Holyoke Quarterly, Penn Medicine, Police Times, The Beat, Bay State Parent, Yorkshire (UK) Post, Independent School, Media & Methods, Harvard Post, Wellesley Townsman, and the Mt. Holyoke Quarterly.