“Classy,” she said, meaning I did not look like the kind of person who would paint my nails. Purple this week, with diagonal white stripes. I snatched my hand back. What on earth was she doing here? How much did she know?

“I do it for Maddy,” I said.

Norma held my gaze. “Who is Maddy?”

Maddy

2

Just say. For the sake of argument, just say it was true. How would it work? One hundred and seven billion individuals right back to the cavemen—a hundred and eight on some websites—each one still remembering who they are? I lie on my side, stroking Cloud. I do my best thinking this way. I can think whatever I want. I can even tiptoe into places that are totally, strictly off-limits for someone with a mother like mine. Under the fur I could feel my kitten’s skull and the buttons of her spine. So tiny. Breakable. She stretched and opened her toy mouth and closed it again, and into her ear I whispered, “Even the cavemen?” until I felt her tongue scraping my face. Soft on the outside, grainy on the inside. Well, maybe it’s not like here at all. Maybe you can dissolve in and out. Be yourself when you want to be, or just disappear into the soup.

I got up feeling not supergood but okay. I put on my dream-catcher earrings with the little hanging feathers. Holding my door open at least a foot, I told Mom it would be a pajama day. She was fine with that. She had an article to write. But she still stood there, needing something.

My mother’s hair has grown back. She shaved it off in solidarity after my first round of chemo. There’s no point in both of us being bald forever. It’s in a pixie cut now, which I think really suits her, even with the little shoots of gray coming in. She thinks it’s completely unfair that Grandma has almost no gray whatsoever, and neither does Uncle Chris. The way genes go together and create a person is totally random. I think about that a lot.

She put the back of her hand on my forehead and then my cheek. I let her step inside and hug me, and smell my orange-flower body spray, a present from Fiona. My mother has always liked sniffing me. She says it starts with smelling your baby’s head and then you just keep on doing it.

“Is your kitten with you?” She wants me to have company because she can’t stay with me every minute of every day, though she tried to at first.