Mom wanted no interruptions. I suppose she would have taken the phone off the hook, but she didn’t have to, because all her friends were doing the same thing—hastening their children off to bed, urging their husbands out the door—so they could spend an hour in that fabled living-color world of millionaire matrons and the scoundrels who loved them.

I wasn’t allowed to watch and wouldn’t have wanted to, anyway. To a kid, the endless adult conversations, high-stakes oil deals and secret affairs were deadly.

Sequestered in my room, I always knew when the show started. First, there would be the clink of a glass. On Sunday nights, Mom opened the wicker-clad bottle of jug wine we kept in the cupboard and poured herself exactly one round-bellied, stemmed glass, full to the brim. Next, a curl of cigarette smoke would snake its way upstairs, emanating from a Parliament 100 with recessed filter, whatever that meant. It was all part of Mom’s curious ritual of self-indulgence. I wonder if she ever imagined Southfork Ranch as a real place, tucked into the green folds of the Texas countryside, with skyscrapers in the distance.

The high-octane music would swell, the sound boiling up the stairs to my resentful ears. Mom loved the theme from that show so much that she bought the sheet music. Even though we didn’t have a piano, she learned to hum the notes. A few years ago, Molly found the music in the piano bench and picked it out while I was working in the kitchen. I felt the same curious shiver of resentment and intrigue I’d felt as a child.

Nowadays, women escape by running away to urban spas, yoga retreats or wild-woman weekends of paintball drills and primal screams. Others frequent male strip clubs or dress to the nines for high tea. Back then, women like my mom didn’t have to go any farther than their living rooms.

* * *

We stop at a deli for a take-away lunch, and Molly is drawn to the counter girl’s flat New England accent, which skips blithely over the r and elongates the vowels.

The sub sandwiches are called “grinders,” and the milkshakes are “frappes.” The word feels awkward and foreign in my mouth, and when we place our order, Molly and I don’t look at each other because we’ll start giggling.

We take our lunch to a roadside park with a scenic overlook. There is a sign pointing the way to the Norman Rockwell home.

“I can see where he got his inspiration,” I tell Molly, gesturing at the spill of rounded mountains below us.

“Who?”

“Norman Rockwell.” I indicate the signpost.

“Who’s that?”

Not again. This is crazy. Is it possible that she isn’t familiar with the quintessential American artist of the twentieth century?