I drove all the way to northern Florida, where I checked into a motel and slept through an entire day.

My mother’s house looked better than I expected. The rotting siding had been lifted and patched; the screen door hung neatly on its hinges. The spiky grass of the lawn was mowed evenly, and her car, a newer Civic, was washed and parked straight in the driveway. It was as though someone had lifted it up and set it back on track.

The bell rang loud and clear; she’d had it repaired. Through the screen, the house looked neater and tidier than I’d ever seen it; the carpet was vacuumed, the furniture was aligned, not askew. An elderly woman came to the door. At first, I didn’t recognize her. Her hair was short, curls brushed. She wore almost no makeup and walked with a bit of a shuffle, the hesitancy of age. But behind the sun spots and the wrinkles, she was still my mother.

“Honey!” she cried, almost jumping through the screen. “Honey. You came home. You know, when I didn’t get a check from you this month, I started to worry.”

“Sorry, Mom,” I said, hugging her tighter and tighter, burying my face in the sagging skin of her neck, relishing her smell: menthol cigarettes and coffee and sunscreen. “Things have been a little erratic. I can’t stay long. I can send more money soon.”

“That’s okay, that’s okay,” she said, keeping me in the hug, rocking me back and forth. “Things have been real good down here,” she said. “I got my sixty-day chip. It’s better than last time. I got a new sponsor.”

“That’s good, Mom.” We’d had this conversation before. “I’m proud of you.” I’d said that before too.

“I’m proud of you,” she said, crying too, and then she was backing away from me, holding my hands, looking me up and down. She looked like a mother—a grandmother, perhaps—in pressed Bermuda shorts and a teal tank top with big wide straps over Teva sandals. The bloat had melted away at long last, taking with it the glassy sheen of her once-vacant eyes. Her mascara was tidy, unsmudged.

Still—her fingers trembled as she lit a cigarette. “How long can you stay, baby?”

“About a week. I have to go, um, I have to go to Paris, actually.”

“Paris? Paris, France?”

“Yes, Mom. Paris, France.”

“Whatever for?”

“For work, Mom. My paintings are being shown in a really nice gallery there.”

“Oh my gosh, that is so exciting,” she said, buzzing around and around. “Oh my. Okay. We need Arnold Palmers. Not Laura Palmers like I used to do, ’course. Come in, honey, come in.”