ihad an enemy for a long time, the parent of one of the children in Sam's class. She seemed so driven and so unconscious that it might have astounded her to learn that we were enemies. But I, the self-appointed ethical consultant for the school, can tell you that it's true. I knew she was divorced and maybe lonely, but she also had mean eyes. In the first weeks of first grade she looked at me like I was a Rastafarian draft-dodger type, and then, over time, as if I was a dazed and confused space traveler, the school's own Admiral Stockdale.

It's true that I have had a certain amount of trouble adjusting since Sam started public school two years ago. I can't seem to get the hang of things. There's too much to remember, too much to do. But Sam's first grade teacher was so warm and forgiving that I just didn't trouble my pretty head about schedules, homework, spelling lists and other sundry unpleasantries. Nor was I able to help out in the classroom much. But there were all these mothers who were always cooking little holiday theme park treats for the class. They always drove the kids  including mine  on their field trips, and they also seemed to read all the papers the school sent home, which I think is actually a little show-offy. Also, it gives them an unfair advantage. They knew, for instance, from the first day of school last year, that Wednesdays were minimum days; and they flaunted it, picking up their kids at just the right time, week after week. I somehow managed to make it into October without figuring out this one scheduling pecadillo.

Finally, though, one Wednesday, I stopped by Sam's classroom and found him  once again  drawing with his teacher. The teacher said, gently, "School gets out an hour early on Wednesdays."

"Ah," I said, and smote my own princess forehead.

"Didn't you get the papers the school mailed to you this summer?"

I racked my brain, and finally I did remember some papers coming in the mail from school. And I remember really meaning to read them.

Sam sat there drawing with a grim autistic stare.

My enemy found out.

She showed up two days later all bundled up in a down jacket, because it was cold and she was one of the parents who was driving the kids on their first field trip. Now, that is not a crime against Nature or me, in and of itself. The crime is that below the down jacket, she was wearing latex bicycle shorts. She wears latex bicycle shorts nearly every day, and I will tell you why: because she can. She weighs 1 pound. She has gone to the gym almost every day since her divorce, and she does not have an ounce of fat on her lithe, aggressive body. I completely hate that in a person. I consider it an act of aggression against the rest of us mothers who forgot to start working out after we had our kids.

Also, she is a Republican. I was not going to tell you that  to me it's like finding out that someone is a racist, or hurts dogs. But it is true. She had a George Bush bumper sticker on her car.

The day of the field trip, she said, sweet as some flight attendant, "I just want you to know that if you have any other questions about how the classroom works, I'd really love to be there for you."

I smiled back at her. I thought such awful thoughts that I cannot even say them out loud because they make Jesus want to drink gin straight out of the cat dish.

It drove me to my knees. I prayed about it. I prayed because my son loves her son, and my son is so kind that it makes me want to be a better person, a person who does not hate someone just because she is a Republican who wears latex bicycle shorts. I prayed for a miracle; I wrote her name down on a slip of paper, and I put it in my God box, and I said to God, "Here."

On the last day of first grade, I was asked to bake something for the farewell party. I couldn't do it. I was on a deadline. But I at least WENT to the party, and I ate the delicious cookies my enemy made, and we mingled a little, and I thought that this was progress. Then she had to go and wreck everything, by asking, "Did YOU bake anything?"

I don't bake. The last time I baked was when Sam was in kindergarten at the little Christian school he attended. I baked a dozen cupcakes for his class's Christmas party, and set them out to cool. Sam and I went outside to sweep the Astroturf. (I also don't garden.) Suddenly our dog Sadie came tearing outside, our dog who is so obedient and loving that it's like having Jesus around in a black dog suit. But there was icing in the fur of her muzzle, and a profoundly concerned look on her face. Oh my god, she seemed to be saying, with her eyes: Terrible news from the kitchen!

And Sam looked at me with total disgust, like, You ignorant slut  you left the cupcakes out where the dog could get them.

The next morning I bought cupcakes at Safeway. I don't bake.

I also don't push Sam to read. There wasn't much pressure for anyone to read in first grade, but by second grade, it was important that your kid be reading. My kid was not reading. I mean, per se.

My enemy's child was reading proficiently, like a little John Kenneth Galbraith in a Spiderman T-shirt. He is what is referred to as an "early reader." Sam is a "late reader." (Albert Einstein was a "late reader." Theodore Kaczinski was an "early reader." Not that I am at all defensive on the subject. Pas du tout.)

Sam and this woman's child were in the same class, and the next thing I knew, she had taken a special interest in Sam's reading.

She began the year by slipping me early first grade books that she thought maybe Sam could read. And Sam could certainly read a number of the words in these books. But I resented her slipping them to us as if she was passing them along simply because her son was done with them. Maybe he was reading the new Joan Didion. I read contempt.

I went to the God box. I got the piece of paper out with her name on it. I added an exclamation mark. I put it back.

One day not long after, she sidled up to me and asked me if I had an extra copy of the book I wrote about me and Sam. It is black-humored, and quite slanted: George Bush was president when Sam was born, and I was a little angry. I had these tiny opinions. I wrote an anti-Reagan, anti-George Bush baby book.

So when she asked for a copy, I tried to stall; I tried to interest her in my anti-Reagan, anti-Bush writing book  I don't think it's quite as disgusting as the baby book. But she insisted.

I gave her a copy, and tried to let go of the results.

She smiled so obliquely whenever I saw her at school that I felt increasingly anxious. Then one day she came up to me in the market. "I read your book," she said, and then she winked. "Maybe," she whispered, because my son was only a few feet away, "maybe it's a good thing he DOESN'T read."

I wish I could report that I had the perfect comeback, something so polite and brilliantly cutting that P.G. Wodehouse, overhearing it in Heaven, raised his fist in the Black Power salute. But I was mute. I just gaped at her, sort of stunned. She smiled, very nicely, and walked away.

I called a half a dozen people when I got home, and told them about how she had trashed me. And I trashed her; and it was good.

The next time I saw her, she just smiled. I sneered, just a little. I felt disgust; but I also felt disgusting. I got out my note to God. I said, Look: turns out we need a miracle here.

Nothing happened. No burning bush, no cereal flakes dropping from heaven, no face of Jesus in the corn tortilla. But several days later her boy came to play at our house, and she came to pick him up just before dinner. Then she stayed a moment. I almost offered her a cup of tea, because she seemed sad or maybe tired, and I felt a stab of kindness inside, but I mostly just wanted her to leave. She did. I felt quiet, though. I thought about the beauty of loss, the exhaustion of hanging on.

Sam went to play at her house the following week, and when I went over to pick him up, she offered me a cup of tea. I said no, I couldn't stay. She was wearing latex shorts. But Sam couldn't find his shoes, and so I got up to look around the house. The surface was nearly perfect, filled with fine things all in their place: all these dubious comforts. "Please let me make you a cup of tea," she said again, and I started to say no, but this thing inside of me, the gremlinly holy spirit, perhaps, used my voice to say, "Well ... okay." And it was awful. We had very little to talk about, and I sat there in judgment of her perfect surfaces. Everywhere you looked was more facade, more stuff, stuff that was about clutching, holding, tightness. But I drank her tea, the hot cup of mint tea, and I don't know, I think it must have washed something away. It washed something away, or washed something into me. All I know is that I stopped feeling like I was holding up the universe, and then the next thing I knew, a thin straw opened inside of me, and this thing was washing in and out like plankton while we sat there.

Something in me softened that day, something in my cold stone heart, and I swear to God, ever since, I've felt pretty friendly towards her. I kind of think of her as my little training Republican.

I finally took the note out of the God box this morning: I said to Him, Well, Bucko; You must be pretty pleased with Yourself. But as usual there was only silence. Then an hour later, the phone rang and it was her. She was baking Danish for Octoberfest at our kids school this Saturday, and she called to say she had made an extra plate for me and Sam. I think she may have a little baking disorder. But she really did bake us a plate of food, and that is God's own truth.