MAXFIELD PARRISH IMAGES

From the Memoir: The burning of a Cinderella-costume dress we made was Karla’s most overt expression of how pissed and jealous she could get. (She accused me of trying to glamorize or sexualize my little girl. “Soft-core porn” was what she called the Maxfield Parrish illustrations she remembered seeing on Maggie’s infant walls; I had cut them out of an old book of fairy tales.) It drove me crazy to have to tell Maggie, calmly, that the burning of the dress was awful, but there was nothing I could do. I said that from now on we’d keep all our toys and projects at my mother’s house.