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fearless and calculated warrior whose skill with the sword is said to have been so great that he never lost a duel (including his very first, which he fought at the age of 13). These fights were always to the death: Losing one would have cost Musashi his life.
    When I asked Mom why she chose such an ancient and macho name for a newborn baby girl, she simply rolled her eyes and said, “I thought your father would like it.”

    A woman can leave a man several times, but still not muster the resolve to cleave through the stubborn tendons of attachment. Mom could navigate the emotional tightrope of Oliver’s drug use, drinking, and stealing; she could manage his moods and frequent disappearing acts. But in the end, her concern for Michael and me forced her to sever all ties. She couldn’t bear our disappointment when he’d vanish, and she couldn’t help us understand his temper.
    The winter before my second birthday, Mom uprooted us from the Cape, abandoning a life and the friendships she’d meticulously built over eight years to give us a fresh start in Boston. She took only what she could cram into an old leather carryall from the shop. “At some point you just have to face the facts,” she said of her departure, “Nothing was going to change. It’s like math: Two plus two is four, and it always will be. The realization just hit me: We had to move on.”
    In the years ahead, Mom rarely spoke of Oliver. If we wondered aloud about him, her eyes would flash, the corners of her mouth turned down. She tried to hide her emotions by looking away or changing the subject, but Michael and I could read her. They had been together five messy years—enough to leave more than one scar.
    Mom never dated again and made sure we never knew our father, trashing photos and erasing all connections to that era. Sometimes, when we were out and about in the city, she’d pull Michael and me into a doorway, muttering, “Why won’t he go away? ” If we asked, “Who?” she’d shake her head a little too quickly.
    I wouldn’t learn my father’s name (or that I was once named Musashi) until I was 21, and wouldn’t see a photo of Oliver until I was 29. I only knew him as Mom described him: “a charismatic con artist.”
    For a long time, it never occurred to me that my father could be out there somewhere. Father’s Day came and went uncelebrated, a holiday for other people, like Chinese New Year or Rosh Hashanah. Mom was the only father I ever knew. I even considered myself Italian Hungarian, like she was, never really considering that in truth I was likely only a quarter of each.
    Years later, when Michael added “a father” to the top of his Christmas list right above “world peace,” the ache that bubbled up in me felt as alien as the words.

CHAPTER 3

    Lean Y e ars
    W HEN WE ARRIVED IN B OSTON , Mom waited in line with the rest of the city’s lost souls to secure the last two spots in an overcrowded homeless shelter. Even as everyone shuffled, Mom stood tall, frizzy mop clipped back, while three-year-old Michael ran circles around her with his baby doll.
    I suppose she could have asked my grandfather or someone else in the family for help, but her chaotic relationship with my father made favors hard to come by. She’d left in such a rush that there’d been no time to secure work or accommodations.
    Though the thin soups and stale bread at the shelter were miserable, my brother and I ate with gusto. Because we were still scrawny little tots, we were able to sleep on either end of one cot, while Mom slept on the other. We lasted there three days.
    After Mom made a few collect calls, we ended up at a friend of a friend’s place on the cracked side of Boston’s suburbs. We crammed ourselves into the corners of Barbara’s tall, blue gingerbread town house. Mom paid her way by doing laundry and cooking. Little by little, she saved enough of her assistance checks of $350 a month so that we could finally move to our own apartment