I am an only child, and I think I always will be. Mossie doesn't like my mother much at all. He never says a word to her when we go to visit her, unless he has to.

Likewise, she doesn't say anything to Mossie, and neither do her parents. Grandma Lori and Grandpa Ron just sit on the sofa and stare at him. He sits in a faded blue armchair and stares right back. I sit on the ottoman in between them and stare at my feet.

"I'll come back for--Alyssa--in half an hour," Mossie finally says stiffly, standing up. The living room ceiling is low enough that he'd be able to lay his palm flat on it without standing tiptoed. (Grandma Lori and Grandpa Ron are short, though, and so is my mother. They wouldn't be able to do that.)

Once Mossie leaves, Grandma Lori gets the closest she ever does to acknowledging him. She smiles sweetly at me and asks me to "ask your father to cut off his hair."

"Just a trim," she adds when I don't answer. "It's just getting so long, and he would look so...respectable if he wore it shorter."

After a long pause, Grandpa Ron adds, "And if he stopped dying it black. He looks like a bum with that hair."

"Yes!" Grandma Lori exclaims, nodding. "Never dye your hair black, dear. You look so pretty with your blonde hair."

"If Mossie's hair was short," I finally manage to say, "I wouldn't have anything to comb." After I tell her that, Grandma Lori frowns, and I realize that she doesn't know how our hair-brushing works.

"Well--never dye your hair, Alyssa." I guess it's just easier to repeat advice than ask what I mean. Grandma Lori leans over and touches my hair, which is turning wavy in its ponytail. "You have such nice blonde hair."

"Will you braid it for me?" Mossie can't braid, and since my mother hasn't come out to see me this week--I don't know where she is and I'm afraid to ask--I figure this is as good an afternoon activity as any.

I wish my mother lived with us--or maybe across the street, since Mossie doesn't like her--so tht I could wear my hair in a braid every day. It wouldn't matter if I saw her a lot more; she doesn't say a lot on the Sundays I come to visit. If she was just there--to braid my hair in the morning and maybe make me a snack in the afternoon--that would be nice.

"Oh--well, all right. Stacey should be coming down soon. She can take over for me when she does." Grandma Lori's smile looked hard, like the kind soldiers wear to battle in movies. "Come here."

I moved the ottoman over so that I was sitting in front of her legs, she untwisted the ponytail from my hair, and I went the second week in a long row of motherless visits to my mother.

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