When I come downstairs and Mom doesn’t look up from the paper, I know she’s mad. I know we’re not going to Annapolis. 

She’s mad that I went to Dad’s last night instead of coming straight home from the airport, but whatever: I’m mad that she said she’d pick me up, then sent a text I received upon landing: Take an Uber. After a five-hour flight from Portland to D.C. and before that, a two-hour bus ride from Corvallis.

I took the metro to Dad’s because I knew he’d feed me, and I doubted there’d be any food at Mom’s. She hasn’t cooked much, or eaten for that matter, since Dad left, five years ago. Plus, I knew he’d pay for the Uber to McLean, whereas Mom always says she’ll pay me back, but never does. When I got home, around 10 p.m., she was asleep, or pretending to be, and my bed wasn’t made. Just a stack of white sheets on my old period-stained mattress.

“Morning,” I say.

“Morning,” she says, still not looking up from the Times. More newspapers are spread over the arms and back of her overstuffed chair, the upholstery pocked with cigarette burns from all the times she’s fallen asleep smoking. She’s still in her nightgown and summer-weight white waffle robe.

No “It’s good to see you, sweetie?” No “Welcome home”?

I go into the kitchen, pour myself a mug from the leaky Mr. Coffee Mom always says she’s going to replace.

“When do you want to leave for Annapolis?” I ask, leaning in the doorway between the kitchen and the family room. “Aunt” Mary—Mom’s best friend from Rutgers—lives in a waterfront mansion, and she’s invited us up for a long weekend—to take a ride in her boat and soak in her hot tub and enjoy the first blue crabs of the season.

“I’m not going.”

“What?”

Mom looks up, leisurely, like she’s a queen giving orders to her maidservant. “If you want to go alone you can, but I’m not going.”

“Why not?”

She looks back down at the paper. “I told you we had to leave by 8.”

I look at the oven clock: 8:11. “It’s only—” I begin, but she cuts me off.

“—And besides, you didn’t reply to my text last night.” While I was at Dad’s, she texted asking if I still wanted to go to Annapolis, as we’d previously planned. I didn’t respond because I thought it was obvious that I still wanted to go. I love Aunt Mary and Uncle Steve, I love mansions and boat rides, why would I have changed my mind?

I shake my head. I should have known she would back out. Ever since Dad left, Mom has backed out of things. Tickets to see Ben Folds. A reservation at Jose Andres’ new restaurant. Pedicure appointments. But I never learn. I’m always hopeful that this time, it’ll be different. 

I know the real reason she doesn’t want to go. She’s drinking again. Proof: On the phone, she slurs, repeats stories, forgets things. She sends sentimental all-caps typo-laden late-night emails, mostly articles about how terrible the academic job market is and how terrible motherhood is. The drinking isn’t surprising. I anticipated, when I moved out of her house and across the country for graduate school last summer, that she would start drinking again. There’d be no one around to hold her accountable. My older sister is busy with her baby; my younger brother is in college. And I felt guilty about this, I feel guilty, but I’m not her keeper. I can’t fix her. I can’t turn her back into the old mom. I tried that for years; it didn’t work. This is what I’ve learned at Al-Anon, in therapy (it’s nice to have good health insurance again). I’ve got to live my own life. Maybe this is partly why she’s sabotaging our trip: She’s punishing me. For leaving. For spending time with Dad. Or maybe it’s none of these. Maybe she just wants me all to herself.

Whatever her reasons, I can’t stand the way she blames me.

“Can you just tell me the real reason you don’t want to go?”

“Get off my case,” she says, “I don’t have to explain myself to you. All you ever do is attack me.”

“Attack you? I’m not—”

“Would you just go away? Go away!”

Yes. Fine. I’ll go away. I’ll do what I want for the rest of my spring break.

I want to hop in my car and speed away, but I can’t because my brother totaled it. All I can do is storm out and take our miniature schnauzer Mo for a spin around the neighborhood. But first: breakfast.

I open the fridge; it’s packed. With beverages. As I said, Mom doesn’t really eat. She’s fueled by various liquids: coffee in the morning, then Diet Snapple Iced Tea—Peach and Raspberry—and Diet Coke when she’s bored of tea, and then, at night, non-alcoholic beer but more likely her old friend Kendall Jackson because, as I said, I don’t believe her claim that she’s not drinking.

I open the drawers, looking for solids, and find a bunch of weird vegetables: wilting bushels of bok choy, angry faces of kohlrabi, slippery radishes. Mom always forgets she doesn’t cook or eat. When she comes across recipes with pretty pictures while “surfing the web”—poached shrimp in lemongrass broth, cumin-roasted cauliflower with dates, soba noodles with sesame and shitake mushrooms—she gets inspired and rushes to the store. But, once back home, she runs out of energy, there’s none left to actually cook. The food spoils. Eventually, she throws it away. I’ve pointed this out to her several times, how she buys much more than she eats, but she never listens.

“Is there anything for breakfast?” I ask.

“There’s eggs.”

“Bacon?”

“Uh-uh.”

“Bread?”

“Nope.”

I sigh.

“What do I look like? A grocery store?”

I finagle the eggs out from a barricade of Snapple, find a bowl, crack one on the rim. The shell hitting porcelain, it doesn’t feel right. It feels too…thick. The shell doesn’t split. I raise the egg to my face and inspect it: frozen. I pull the two halves apart, and the egg plops into the bowl, the white cloudy like ice.

“Ugh.” I dump the eggs down the sink.

“What?” my mother barks.

“The eggs are frozen.”

“Who cares? They’re still fine!”

Forget breakfast.

I find Mo’s leash hanging on the back of the front closet; usually there’s an old blue Times bag tied on for poop, but now there’s none.

“Mom, where are the poop bags?”

“We don’t have any.”

Of course. Why have poop bags if you don’t walk your dog?

“What about the newspaper bags?” I ask. Mom should have plenty, she subscribes to three papers because the Post and the Times are biased towards liberals and the Journal’s biased towards conservatives and the real truth is somewhere in between. So she says.

“They’re in the garbage can. But don’t bother—who cares?”

“Who cares? The Republican cares!”

We call him the Republican because he flies an American flag, served in the military, and owns a Hummer. There are certainly other Republicans in the neighborhood, rich lobbyists and lawyers who don’t want to pay more taxes, but shame keeps them in the closet. The Republican moved in last year shortly before I moved out, with a wife and 1.9 kids. What I mean is that he seems like the kind of person who would play the Average American in a car commercial. He’s around six feet tall, brunette, mows his own lawn. Mom told me on the phone that, soon after he moved in, the Republican began whining on the Neighborhood Forum about dogs pooping in his yard and their owners not picking it up. I didn’t even know there was a Neighborhood Forum. Apparently, this is what replaced Neighborhood Watch.

When I was a kid, when it was your family’s turn, you’d get this big magnet that said “Neighborhood Watch” that you’d stick on the side of your station wagon and drive around the neighborhood, watching neighbors. I did it with Mom, back when we were best friends, back when she drove Big Bertha, a wide-hipped maroon Chevy Caprice. Mom let me sit in the front. She drove with her right hand and smoked with her left, tapping ash out the slightly cracked window, telling stories about her childhood: How, on her bad days, her mother used to leave a red flag outside the house, signaling to her eight children, home from school: No friends. And they best be quiet.

I remember feeling like we were Detectives Carter and Lee from Rush Hour, our family’s favorite movie because we liked to see an Asian guy play the lead. But unlike in L.A., in our wealthy Virginia suburb, there was nothing to see: no diplomat’s daughter kidnapped by crime lords, no gangs printing funny money. Just some kids riding Razor scooters and scraping up their knees. Just some dads washing Audis in their driveways. I guess that’s why it stopped. There was no reason for Neighborhood Watch.

Anyway, we’ve got a Neighborhood Forum now, where people post about cribs and strollers and toys their kids are too old for. About putting in a STOP sign in the middle of Springwood to discourage using the neighborhood as a cut-through between Old Dominion and Georgetown Pike. And, about dog poop. The Republican wrote on the forum: Pick up your dog shit.

And here’s what happened. In the night, someone snuck over to his house and smeared dog shit all over his driveway, just inches away from his gleaming Hummer. The Republican claimed he was the victim of a hate crime. He was being targeted for his conservative political views. I don’t think he’s wrong about that.

I wish the shit smearer had been my mother, but that would have been too much exercise. Shit smearing would involve walking the dog, and why walk your dog when you’ve got an electric fence? All the exercise Mom gets is walking up and down the stairs and to the end of the driveway to collect the newspapers and back. She doesn’t even walk to get the mail; she picks it up on her way back from an errand, while she’s still in the car. She pulls up alongside the mailbox so close that I cringe—but somehow, we never collide—opens the black mailbox, pulls out the mail. If it’s trash day, she’ll flick through the envelopes and sift out the junk, plop it into the bin at the end of the driveway. If not, she’ll drop the mail onto her lap, back up and pull into the driveway. She uses this same technique to avoid dragging the trash and recycling bins back into the garage. She pauses beside the bin, rolls down her window, grabs the bin’s plastic handles, and then lifts her foot off the brake, edging forward and pulling the rumbling bin alongside, all the way into the garage. She’s proud of this.

The mention of the Republican, a common enemy, briefly dissipates the tension between us.

“Screw that guy,” Mom says. “He’s got a Trump-Pence 2020 sign. The election is more than three years away! He takes it in at night and puts it back out during the day so nobody steals it. And! He’s got a bumper sticker on his Hummer that says: ‘EASILY PISSED AND HEAVILY ARMED.’” Mom has been known to vote Republican out of stinginess, but she abhors Trump and second amendment zealots.

“All the more reason to bring poop bags,” I say.

In the garbage I find the plastic bags, dusty with cigarette ash from the last time Mom emptied her ashtray. I shake them off. Beneath the bags are several glass Diet Snapple bottles because Mom is too lazy to walk out to the garage and toss them into the recycling. I lift the Snapple bottles aloft—inside are more stubbed out butts.

“Would you please recycle these?”

“Why? They’ll just end up in the trash anyways. I read last week that China’s not accepting our recycling anymore and nobody else wants it, so it’s just going in the landfill.”

“You’re right,” I say. “Why do anything? We’re all going to end up dead anyway!”

I toss the bottles back into the trash and head for the front door, tie the poop bags to Mo’s leash and clip it to his collar. I shut the door behind me without saying goodbye.

The front yard smells sweet thanks to the magnolia tree, which has bloomed just in time for my visit. Its pink-fading-to-white petals confetti the yard and are slippery under my feet. We head for the Buttercup Field, across the street, named for its summer blooms. Now the grass is mostly bare, except for the occasional cluster of dandelion and purple crocus. The grass is wet with dew, loose strands stick to my sandaled feet. Some of the dandelions have gone to seed, and I go out of my way to kick the white puffs, helping the little guys out. All I do is “attack” her? She’s crazy if she thinks I’m going to let her just cancel a plan I’ve been looking forward to and then blame it on me. I can’t stand how she never wants to do anything. How she’s always the victim. Always turns the conversation to my father, how we don’t hold him to the same standards. How she brings out the worst in me.

I hear footsteps, a dog panting. Someone’s coming toward us, cresting the hill at the center of the field. I halt and compose my face.

It’s Mr. Carbonell, walking Tony the Vizsla, so Mo and I stop. Tony is tennis-ball-obsessed and hates Mo. Once, when Mo tried to fetch Tony’s ball, the guy tore his ear in half. 

Both owner and dog look exhausted. Mr. Carbonell’s dark eyes have sunk deep into his skull, his forehead jutting and wrinkled like a rock shelf. He carries, impractically, a mug of coffee, some of which has splashed onto the placket of his white polo shirt. His back is hunched, curved like his mug handle. Tony’s once-copper fur has gone white around his face. It’s been a rough year for the Carbonells. Mom told me the youngest son Jimmy, who used to hit my brother with sticks and pee on him but call it friendship, has schizophrenia and had to drop out of college and come home. Last fall, playing video games one day, he was interrupted by his mother for lunch and became convinced that she was a secret government agent come to take him away and punish him for crimes I know not—probably illegally torrenting thousands of hours of anime. He attacked her. With an old Guitar Hero guitar that was lying around. Luckily, he didn’t hurt her. She ran down Rolling Ridge to our house. Mr. Carbonell was at work. She banged on the door screaming until my mother answered. Mrs. Carbonell was barefoot, in her floral nightgown and mink coat that she’d managed to yank from the front closet on her way out. She was screaming, “He’s going to kill me!”  

Mom gave her a Xanax that their friend Cynthia, the dermatologist who lives on Brookhollow, had prescribed her. I’m pretty sure Cynthia provides the whole neighborhood of stay-at-home moms with Xanax. After Mrs. Carbonell calmed down, they called the Mister, who came home from the office. The Missus and her fur coat went home. Mom called me. Those people are crazy. We’re always the most critical of behaviors that remind us of our own flaws.

Mr. Carbonell stops a few paces away, and, when Tony barks and strains at his leash, some more coffee splashes out of the mug.

“Tony!” Mr. Carbonell exclaims, not scolds. He’s one of those owners who underestimates how badly behaved his dog is. Meanwhile Mo ignores Tony, sniffs the grass.

“Sorry about him, Maria. Did you just get home? Where are you again? Washington?”

“Oregon.”

“Right. You’re in Eugene, right?”

“Actually—”

“I visited a friend in Eugene way back, and man, was it beautiful. Mountains, ocean, forest, that state has everything.” He looks off in the distance, but there’s only manicured, Miracle-Grow lawns, flowerbeds and second-growth trees. “God, I’d like to get back there sometime.”

“It’s fine. A lot of rain,” I say, trying to downplay Oregon’s splendor so this man feels a little less miserable about his life in the suburbs. I want to ask how Jimmy is, but I know the answer is probably not good, and I don’t want to remind him. Tony, barking with as much menace as he can muster, saves us from thinking up something else to say.

“Well, I’d better get this guy moving again. It was nice talking to you, Maria.” Talking to me. That’s right. That’s exactly what he did.

“Yeah, nice to see you,” I say.

  “Oh hey, would you tell your mother that I’ll drop her casserole dish off on my way to work?”

“Her what?”

“Her casserole dish. She made us baked ziti last night. She said she had extra because she was making it for you. Wasn’t it good?”

She made me baked ziti? I love baked ziti. But Mom hasn’t made it in years.

“Yeah,” I nod. “Love all that gooey ricotta.”

“I mean, some of the stuff she brings us is pretty weird,” Mr. Carbonell continues. By weird, I bet he means Asian. To be clear, Mom’s not Asian. Dad is. Filipino. But over the years, she picked up some tricks.

“But the ziti,” Mr. Carbonell says, “was delicious.”

It sounds like this isn’t the first time Mom has made the Carbonells dinner; I’m shocked. “How often does she bring dinner?” I ask.

“Maybe once a month? She doesn’t give us any warning. Just leaves it on the front steps. Sometimes Carol has already made dinner. But if we can, we put it in the freezer. We told her it’s not necessary, but she insists. She says she misses cooking.”

“Huh.”

“Enjoy your visit!” Mr. Carbonell says and turns towards the pond, no doubt prolonging his time away from home, and I go the other way, along the edge of the field, up Rolling Ridge, dreaming of baked ziti. I feel bad that Mom went to the effort of baking ziti that I didn’t eat, but how was I supposed to know? She should have told me. I’ll eat the ziti for lunch.

I’ve only gone a few paces before I see the Fosters, our next-door neighbors, coming out of their freshly painted white brick house. It’s Mrs. Foster, her two adorable blond sons, Tommy (5) and Brian (7), and Sophie, their cocker spaniel. The boys are both wearing backpacks—Dora the Explorer for Tommy and Spiderman for Brian. It must be time to catch the bus.

Mrs. Foster exclaims with joy at the sight of me: “Maria! Hi!” She has the slightest, charming Southern accent because she grew up in Birmingham. We’re friendly because, for the two years I lived at home after college, I regularly babysat the boys, often while she was still in the house, in her bedroom with the door closed, pretending to know things about industries she had no experience in, or whatever it is consultants do. The cash came in handy because I didn’t make much as a substitute teacher.

Mrs. Foster is 40 but looks the same age as me (25) because she is blessed and works out religiously. She wears a tight light blue pullover that shows off her ample bust, flat tummy, and svelte arms. Her dark glossy hair is pulled into a perky ponytail. She’s tan, even though it’s April, but the tan doesn’t look fake. Maybe they went to Florida for their spring break. I know that if Mrs. Foster and I were the same age, I would hate her. But since she’s older, I can admire her beauty without feeling like a piece of shit.

I pause at the end of the Fosters’ driveway, waiting for them, beside the mailbox and recycling bin. It must be recycling day but, apparently, fuck recycling these days. I look back at Mom’s house: no bin. I consider running back, but then I remember what Mom said about China. Not worth it. Futile. It’ll all end up in the landfill anyway. Mo raises his leg, tinkles on daffodils planted at the base of the mailbox. 

Mrs. Foster hugs me, she smells amazing—like the beach, sunscreen and cucumber.

“Boys, do you remember Maria?” She’s acting like it’s been forever, when it’s only been a year. But maybe when you’re five, a year feels like forever.

The older one, Brian, nods. The younger one, Tommy, buries his face into his mother’s yoga pants.

“Maria used to babysit you,” Mrs. Foster says, beaming, no trace of a double chin. God, I want to look like Mrs. Foster if I’m ever a mom.

“I know,” Brian says. He pulls out a fancy-looking Gameboy from his shorts pocket and starts walking ahead of us, towards the bus stop.

Mrs. Foster rolls her eyes; her lashes are so long, no trace of mascara, it’s not fair. “Second graders,” she says. “So. Tell me about Oregon! Do you absolutely love it? I’ve been following you on Instagram, and it looks amazing.”

I can be honest with Mrs. Foster about how great my life is because her life also seems great, so I won’t depress her. “I really love it,” I say. “But honestly, the best part is living on the other side of the country from my mother.”

Mrs. Foster nods knowingly. She has seen the mailbox shenanigans. She has seen the pile of donations in the side yard that Goodwill won’t accept. The red plastic weights and bench press Dad never used and then left behind. The gigantic cedar cabinet where my parents used to keep their martini, champagne, red and white wine glasses.

“But you know, your mother adores you. She talks about you constantly on our walks.”

“Your walks?”

“You know how I used to knock on your door to ask your mother if she wanted to take the dogs for a walk? And how she made you lie and say she was out, or said no? Well, recently she started saying yes.”

“That is truly shocking.”

“Isn’t it? She never brings poop bags, though. And can you believe she made the Match.com account?”

“She made a Match account?”

“Oops. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to tell you that.”

“Wait, are you serious? What did she say? Has she gone on any dates?”

“I don’t think so. She just told me that she’s getting messages from all over the country—Michigan, North Dakota, Florida— she can’t figure out how to narrow the geographic range.”

“Wow,” I say. “Wow.” I’ve been urging my mother to try online dating for years, and she has repeatedly replied that she hates men and never wants to have sex ever again. And Match.com! You have to pay for that shit. I wonder what photo she used for her profile. I wonder what she listed as her preferences. Probably she’ll back out like she always does and won’t end up going on a date. But maybe not. I never could have imagined her even making a profile. Maybe that’s why she’s taking the dog for walks? Because she wants to get in shape? Why didn’t she tell me any of this?

 “You probably shouldn’t mention it to your mother. I don’t want to get in trouble.”

Mom can hold a grudge. She didn’t talk to her sister for two years after Aunt Lisa told my grandma that my parents had separated and that it was because Dad had been sleeping with his secretary for six years. I guess Mom thought she could keep the separation a secret forever since Dad never came to family functions anyways? I guess she thought that my grandma, a good Catholic, would judge her. But Grammy didn’t care. She was too old to care.

“I wonder what made her do it,” I say.

“She’s lonely?”

I knew Mom would be lonely when I left, so at first, I talked to her a lot. But when she started sounding drunk, and we started fighting about it, my therapist suggested I impose some boundaries. I made a rule: no talking to Mom after 4 p.m. Eastern, 1 p.m. Pacific. If she called during that time, I wouldn’t pick up. Maybe she never told me about all this because I never picked up.

We reach the bus stop, where Rolling Ridge meets Springwood, the main drag of the neighborhood. The sidewalk and surrounding grass are crowded with moms and kids and dogs. I don’t know most of them. These are the families who replaced the old people, the people I used to sell Girl Scout Cookies to. These are the kids and grandkids of those folks. In Potomac Overlook, it’s not uncommon for people to buy their parents’ houses when the parents get old. The parents downsize to condos or move into retirement communities and give their kids sweet deals on the houses, which they would otherwise not be able to afford because houses are so freaking expensive in McLean. Then the kids renovate the place and obliterate every object that could trigger a memory of their childhoods.

My sister tried to do this with my mother’s house, but surprise surprise, Mom refused. “You can’t afford this house,” Mom told her. She laughed at the price my sister offered: $750,000. “No way. I’m selling for 1.2 million.” She’s always talking about selling the house, but if you press her on where she’ll move, she gets grumpy. If you suggest a place, she has objections.

Into D.C., or at least closer to the city, somewhere on the Orange Line so she can ride the metro?

Too expensive, she won’t be able to have a yard, she wants a yard (so she doesn’t have to walk the dog).

Baltimore, close to D.C. but still cheap?

Too much crime. Have you seen The Wire?

New Jersey, where she’s from, where her family lives?

Hell no, the property taxes are insanely high, the drivers are terrible, the people are terrible.

Philly, close to Jersey, with lots of art museums, but still cheap?

Too dirty.

Charlottesville, where I went to college?

Too racist.

She has a good point there.

“I thought you were going to buy me a villa in the south of France!” she says.

There was this song we used to listen to, when I was in high school, when I still liked my mother, before she started drinking, before my father left. It was called “You and I” by Ingrid Michaelson and there was this line: “Let’s get rich and buy our parents homes in the South of France.” And at the time I really thought I would get rich and liked Mom enough to want to share that wealth with her. But now that I’m a writer, I know I’ll never get rich, to my mother’s chagrin, and, on the off chance that I do, I’ll have better things to do with the cash than buy her a villa in Provence.

All the kids swarm around Mo. Kids like Mo because he’s tiny. They don’t worry about him knocking them over. I feel bad for them, that they’re touching him. He’s disgusting. His gray fur—it’s hard to imagine that it was once all black—is matted and greasy and stinks because his favorite thing to do is to roll around in dead stuff he finds in the backyard and Mom never bathes him. Their little grimy hands are going to reek all the way to school and they’ll probably put those hands in their mouths, rub their eyes. Ick.

“Is your dog a boy or a girl?” a chubby little girl asks me, twirling her blonde ponytail around her right pointer finger. Why are kids so obsessed with identifying the gender of things?

“A boy.”

“I have a girl.”

“Let me guess. You have a golden doodle,” I say.

“How’d you know?”

“Just a good guesser.” Everyone in this goddamn neighborhood had some kind of oodle. Labradoodle. Cockapoodle. And the newest: Sheepadoodle.

At the edge of the group, I spot the frosty head of Mrs. Kennedy, talking to some other mom, probably about pushing back school start times so that teens can get more sleep—this has been her campaign for years. I’d like to not talk to Mrs. Kennedy. She pretends to be all nice, but she’s as fake as the acrylic nails on her fingers. She used to be Mom’s close friend, but after Dad left and the going got rough, she disappeared. All she wanted was a lunch date, a pleasant book club member—not even one who finished the book, SparkNotes was fine—all she wanted was gossip and to talk about herself.

Ever since Mrs. Kennedy found out I was a creative writing major, she’s tried to talk to me about writing. How she studied journalism. How she lived in Paris, worked for the AP. People tell me I’ve lived a very interesting life, she’ll say, and that I ought to tell my story. But every time I sit down to write, the words don’t come out.

What she wants is for me to offer to help her write. To be her ghost writer. And I know that she would pay me well to do it. But the idea of spending hours with this woman as she relives her glory days sounds more depressing than visiting my grandma in her nursing home.

“Have a nice day at school,” I tell the little girl. I jerk on Mo’s leash and head away from the bus stop, up Springwood.

But Mrs. Foster, that Lululemon goddess, sees me escaping. “See you later, Maria!” she calls.

At the sound of my name, Mrs. Kennedy looks my way, her blue eyes delighted. “Maria, hi!” she calls. She pushes her way through the moms and their progeny and catches up to me.

Shit.

“How’s grad school? You look skinny!”

“School’s good.”

“You know, I’ve been writing too.” Oh god. Here’s what I was dreading.

“That’s great,” I say, trying not to encourage further conversation.

“Well, now with the kids all grown up—Rachel just started at UVA! Can you believe it? —I actually have time to do it. All these years I’ve been collecting memories—I’d just write on whatever was around, a napkin, a report card—when the kids said something funny—and now I have this box of scraps and I’m starting to go through them. But it’s a mess. I’ve never done this before. I’ve never taken any creative writing classes.”

Here’s my cue to say, Well, I’d be happy to help. I don’t take it.

“That sounds like an interesting project,” I say.

A car honks its horn. Mo jumps, startled. It’s my mother. She waves but doesn’t slow or roll down the window. She’s still in her pajamas, no makeup. She’d never let the neighborhood ladies see her like this up-close.

“Must be going to 7-Eleven for cigarettes,” I say. That’s the only reason Mom leaves the house.

Mrs. Kennedy frowns, though her forehead remains surprisingly wrinkle-free. Botox.

“By the way, how’s your father? You planning to see him while you’re home?” She’s digging.

“Yup.”

“And Donna?” Dad’s girlfriend, ex-secretary.

I nod. “It’s a package deal.”

“What do you think their end game is? Are they ever getting married?”

“I don’t think so. I think he learned his lesson the first time.”

“Your poor mother. I feel for her so much. What happened to her was awful, truly awful. But I mean, it’s been years. At some point you have got to stop feeling sorry for yourself and move on. I know you know this, but for years I invited her out to do things. After a while, when she just kept saying no, I stopped inviting her. It’s sad, it’s truly sad. She used to be such a pleasant person.”

Unlike you, fucking bitch. 

“You know, a few weeks ago she called me—I couldn’t believe it—and you know what? I didn’t answer. I was just like, I don’t have time in my life for her negativity.”

 We’re in front of her house now, thank god. Her perfectly landscaped yard, flowerbeds bright with tulips, daffodils, hyacinths, her front door always hung with seasonally appropriate wreaths, her Lexus in the driveway, luxurious but good for carpooling.

“Listen, I have a hair appointment, so I have to run. But it was so nice to see you! If you ever want to come over and write together, I would love that!”

“Maybe next time. I’m not here for long.”

“No worries. Have a nice visit! Tell your mother I say hello! And give Kelly a call sometime, I’m sure she’d love to hear from you.” Kelly, her eldest daughter, with whom I was close until I went to the nerd high school and Kelly asked Jesus to be her personal savior.

Oh, I will not! Who the hell does Mrs. Kennedy think she is? “Your mother used to be such a pleasant person”? “You have to move on at some point?” She has no idea. No idea what my mother has been through. Mrs. Kennedy, with her fake perfect little family, in their matching cable knit sweaters on Christmas cards, their boring yearly newsletters, John got this promotion and Kelly and her fiancé got that adorable oodle named Noodle. I bet she and Mr. Kennedy don’t fuck anymore. I always thought he seemed gay. I bet she knows this but pretends not to because oh, the shame. I’d rather a fucked-up family than a fake one any day. I’m glad I didn’t go to Kelly’s wedding, when she married a guy who looked just like her dad. It’s sad, truly sad. She used to be such a pleasant person.

I’m approaching the Republican’s house. His Hummer is parked in the driveway he widened so he could keep the car parked there perennially because who actually drives their Hummer? No one—the gas mileage is too bad. There’s the Trump-Pence 2020 sign. And another, smaller sign: “Please pick up after your pet.” Fuck the Republican and fuck Mrs. Kennedy, she’s probably a Republican, too. I want Mo to shit on both of their lawns, and I won’t pick it up. See if they complain on the Neighborhood Forum.

I linger by the driveway (of course the Republican has no recycling bin). “Shit, Mo, shit!” I urge.

He looks at me blankly. He’s like my grandma. Too old to care.

  It’s not fair. It’s not fair that shit happens to pleasant people like my mother. It’s not fair that unqualified bigots like Donald Trump get to be president. And although I know it won’t right the scale, that no amount of retribution will make my mother the pleasant person she once was or prevent Trump’s re-election, I’ve decided. I’m stealing the Trump-Pence 2020 sign.

I inspect the Republican’s house: red brick, black shutters, yellow “Don’t Tread On Me” flag. It doesn’t look like anyone’s home. The Republican’s probably at work, his wife, kids and oodle down at the bus stop. I look around. No one coming on the sidewalk in either direction, no cars. Please Jesus don’t let him have security cameras. I dart into the yard and wrench the sign out of the ground. Then I start running back toward home, nearly dragging Mo behind me, past the McMaster’s, past the O’Malley’s, dodging recycling bins.

I’m coming up on the Kennedy’s when fuck, shit, I hear a car coming behind me. I’m about to throw the sign in a honeysuckle bush when I turn and see it’s my mother’s black CRV. I slow, heart pounding. She pulls up beside me. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Give me a ride?”

I throw open the passenger door and Mo scrambles up onto the seat. 

On the floor of the car is a white paper bag. I recognize that bag. Sweet Stuff. The bakery next to 7-Eleven, where we used to go all the time, for croissants and bagels and cinnamon buns, back in the days of Neighborhood Watch, back when my mother and I were best friends.

Mom got me breakfast.

“Is this for me?” I ask, picking up the bag, still standing on the side of the street.

“Have you ever seen me eat breakfast?”

She used to be such a pleasant person. 

“Give me a sec,” I say.

I turn back to the Kennedy’s house. The Lexus is gone. I survey for witnesses, none. In the Kennedy’s lawn, I position the sign perpendicular to the street, then stomp down on the metal supports. I dash back to the car, get in beside Mo, and slam the door. “Hit it!” I say.

Mom pulls away, shaking her head. “You’re dead meat if anyone finds out. Or I’m dead meat, I should say. You know I have to live here!” she exclaims. But she’s smiling.

“I thought you were moving!” I say, and she shoves me, affectionately.

At the bottom of Springwood, the bus has arrived, its blinking STOP sign ordering us to wait for kids to board. I open the white paper bag, tear off a hunk of chocolate croissant. The pastry is buttery and flaky, but goddamn, there is never enough chocolate in these things.

“Thanks for this,” I say, mouth full. “And for the ziti. Mr. Carbonell said you made ziti.” I want to bring up Match.com, but I don’t want my interest to give her cold feet.

The bus takes off, the moms and kids and dogs disperse. We wave to Mrs. Fisher as we turn onto our street. Our house, gray siding, two-stories, red front door, big magnolia tree, comes into view. In the driveway: the weights and glass cabinet Goodwill won’t take.

Beside the mailbox is the recycling bin. Mom must have taken it out before leaving for 7-Eleven. The lid’s thrown open; the truck has come and gone.

“What about China?” I ask.

She slows, rolls down her window. “Maybe they’ll change their mind.”

She turns into the driveway and, when she pulls up alongside the bin, she hits the brakes.

“Give me that,” she says, gesturing for the Trump sign. I hand it to her, and she bends it in half, sticks it out the window, drops it in to the bin, bangs shut the lid. She grabs hold of the plastic handle, takes her foot off the pedal. The bin rumbles alongside us.

I can see this as sloth, evidence of my mother’s decomposition.

Or, it occurs to me, as we approach the garage and the scent of the magnolia tree fills the car, and my mother lets go, the bin settling into place as we continue to glide forward, I can see this as resilience, a woman emerging from the seeds of her old self.