Heather, The Totality. Matthew Weiner

kept her late at school. By junior high, she had been ignored into full self-reliance and established a routine of locking herself in her room after school with a portable TV where she could escape to the saturated worlds of romance while having access to her body.

      Karen told Mark she didn’t want another child. It wouldn’t be fair to Heather. In fact, Karen knew the minute Heather was born that she would give her uninterrupted attention and care for as long as possible. She never worried that she was justifying her lack of interest in a career or her reliance on Mark’s success, because Heather was not an average child. Perhaps if Karen had shown the spark and magic that Heather did, her Mother would’ve never gone back to school.

      As Heather grew into a little girl, her beauty became more pronounced but somehow secondary to her charm and intelligence and, most notably, a complex empathy that could be profound. “Why are you crying?” she said at five years old from her stroller to a Woman on the subway who was not crying and who corrected her politely. Heather continued, “You shouldn’t be sad even if your bags are heavy. I can carry one.” The Woman then laughed nervously and sat down next to Karen as she said she could handle her things, but thank you. Karen lightly scolded her child to mind her own business and handed her a sippy cup.

      The Woman was looking up, pretending to read the ads, as Heather, still staring, removed the cup from her lips and said, “Everybody riding on the train acts like they’re alone, but they’re not.” At that point the Woman burst into tears. Karen didn’t know what to do and her search for a tissue became simply rubbing the woman’s shoulder as she sobbed and awkwardly smiled, embarrassed. Heather watched both of them and by 77th Street when they had to get off, she said bye-bye and the Woman, now composed, looked at Karen and said that she must be the best mother in the world. Karen deferred the credit to her child and although it looked like modesty, she knew that Heather did things like this all the time and that she was somehow here on earth to make people feel better.

      For Karen there was plenty to do every day even after Heather began a full day of school. There was exercise and shopping, not a lot of housework that wasn’t done by someone else, activities and enrichments to discover and investigate, nutritious meals and thoughtful entertainment to be planned, and of course, documenting the daily wonder of Heather could never be ignored. Karen made scrapbooks, collages on the computer and with some effort, little movies that she could share on the Internet. She worried at first that she was bragging in some way, but when she saw that everyone responded to her daughter the way she did, she knew that she was actually brightening people’s day and that maybe they, like her, were learning so much about themselves as they watched Heather grow.

      In the communities she visited online, she found so many like-minded women and got such encouragement that any worry was quickly abated either by a veteran mom or an actual expert. This meant that Karen spent less time around other people in general, but she was always open to interacting, and from the beginning, whether they were strolling in the park or swimming at the club or eventually playing tennis, Heather made Karen game for sitting down and having a snack with anyone.

      The Breakstone family, small as it was, used more than its share of resources and Mark was proud that he was able to provide them with a beautiful apartment. He particularly liked Karen’s taste for satin velvet, which was used sparingly but seemed directly aimed at him. They had a velvet headboard on their bed and a suite in the living room featuring an armchair of the same that he favored on his increasingly sleepless nights, preferring it to his private paneled study where the furniture was cold leather. The living room chair was red but appeared brown in the dark and he would pour a few fingers of scotch in the best glass and be able to either doze off or at least not be nervous about seeing the sunrise or how the long night would make his workday unbearable.

      One late night while Mark was preparing for his chair he realized that he could look in on Heather, now seven, while she slept. He was never alone with his daughter and felt his wife’s resentment when he would sit down at the dinner table and say, “How are my girls today?” He had arrived at the phrase because when he would talk to Heather directly, Karen would always answer for her or insinuate herself into the conversation. Even when Heather was sick, his “How are you feeling, piglet?” was answered by Karen. “She’s better, thank God” or “She had a crappy day.” So that night, when he found himself standing in her room staring at her, he felt guilty and strange when she opened her eyes and smiled at him. He couldn’t explain why he was there so he just sat on the bed and stroked her hair. He finally said, “Why are you up?” and she said, “Because I can’t sleep. I must be like you.” He brushed her forehead and gave her a kiss on the cheek and said, “Where do you want to go on vacation? We can go anywhere.” And Heather said, “Wherever you are, Daddy.”