She pulled me in through the screen door and told me all about her new friends, her sponsor, her job, what was going on with the house. She asked about my paintings, and I tried to explain. She wanted to know the names of the paintings, but I could see in her eyes right away that she didn’t understand.

“Jesus loves you, baby,” she said, loving, condescending, dismissive. “I’m sure God is in the details. I’m sure those paintings will make people feel the things that you call them. I taught you how to be those things. Isn’t it good to be reminded how to be? To remind others?”

I didn’t know how to tell her that those words taught me only how to follow, and never to lead. It wasn’t that they were fundamentally bad. They weren’t enough.

I didn’t want to fight with my mother. I wanted to be close with her for a while, while her eyes were open, and her breath smelled like coffee, and her recycling was empty, while she was, for this moment, alive.

When, later, she told me that she was sorry—she didn’t say what for and I didn’t ask—I said thank you, and I meant it. At one point when she went to fix dinner, I thought, Even if this try at sobriety fails, I’ll still have this day.

I stayed in the motel for a week, not wanting to disrupt her space or the tenuous peace between us. I met her sponsor and some of her new friends. I helped her clean out the kitchen and the garage, and then it was time to go. I sold the truck to a used-car dealership, took a taxi to the airport, and went to Paris to install my Rich Ugly Old Maids.

One Year Later

One Year Later

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Five

The last time I saw Pine City, I was thirty-five years old. They were standing on the sidewalk in front of the Young Museum, and they were huddled in a circle, sharing cigarettes and talking quietly.

It seems in my memory that everyone turned to look—that diamond-collared collectors craned their necks, that the young men in front of me whispered and stepped aside, that businessmen looked up from their phones—and that even Pine City stopped talking—as I crossed through the party, head held high, and made my way through.