My mother’s ancient Prius was festooned with bumper stickers: generations of failed democratic candidates. Nasty Woman, read the latest. I touched the key, adjusted the seat. I took out my phone, checked for Jake, Leah, both inactive. Ella had a new story up and I sat there, watching her add ingredients to a blender. Layers of kale, banana, flax. “Fighting inflammation,” she said and dumped a scoop of green powder over the mess. “Reishi mushroom, for anxiety.” She pressed a switch to grind. With my free hand, I touched the car’s start button. The air came on; stale coffee and Calvin Klein Euphoria rose up. The radio was off. My mother had driven to the surgery in silence.

I tried to count the hours since my last pill but couldn’t decide if it was one or three. I wasn’t sober, but it didn’t matter. Houston, shaped like the rings of a tossed stone, was familiar enough. The hospital and my mother’s home were both inside the smallest loop. I’d go slow, leave the radio off, take Montrose all the way. I put my phone on the seat beside me, facedown so I couldn’t see it. At the exit gate, I gave the parking attendant my mother’s credit card.

“You’re supposed to use the machines by the elevators,” she said. Her nails were long, like finger bones.

“Sorry,” I said and she handed me back the card. “Sorry,” I said again. She opened the gate. I drove through, onto an empty road, everyone still asleep in their normal lives.

I passed Rice University, and the edge of the Museum District, where oil barons dumped money into art. I passed the apartment in a prefab building on Richmond where my mother had moved us for a few forgotten months before her divorce settlement came through and she bought the cottage. It was a house that never flooded. No tropical storm or hurricane had touched even the cinderblocks it stood on. I pulled into the driveway and the car shuddered out a battery breath. Three months since I’d left, but it didn’t feel like it. Los Angeles, Jake, the experiences I’d had there were sewed up inside me, separate from the stacks of bills and coupons, the recycling bin overflowing with cans of Diet Coke, the freezer full of Lean Cuisines and Smart Ones dinners I knew waited inside. I unlocked the front door, entered the house. Dissonance hummed inside me, a low thrum, the sound of the air conditioner when I pressed the button to start it.