But he was quiet on the way home. Kay tried to get him to talk but he would only answer with one or two words. I was in back with Stevie and Elsie who wanted to sing, and while we sang I heard Kay say, “You scare me when you get like this.”

We went through town, past our apartment, then out on the neck toward the Point.

“Why did they put these sorry little shitholes right here?” Hugh said. “Nice road, crappy house. Sorry about that.”

One of the shitholes up ahead was my father’s. I saw a woman in a yellow shirt crouched down in one of his flower beds. My mother. I felt a strange whirring in my chest.

Go home! I wanted to scream out the window at her. Let all his flowers die. We’d been through this so many times, the dry-out places, the circle of chairs, the specked linoleum, all the apologies and tears that meant nothing.

Before the kids’ naps, we all swam. The day had grown hot, hotter than it had been all week. Mrs. Pike joined us wearing a bathing suit. She had some blue knots in the veins, but her legs were strong, surprisingly muscular.

Hugh noticed this, too. “Those Richard Simmons classes have been paying off, Motherlode.”

I grinned, but she had no idea what he was talking about.

He looked at me. We were in the shallow end. Stevie was swimming in his wings back and forth between us. He’d said it for me, I realized. I was swinging my arms along the surface of the water and he was imitating me. I understood that I had his full attention now. I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. I’d never had any boy’s attention before as far as I knew.

“Carol, I just used the last of Elsie’s diapers in the bag,” Kay said. “Would you mind running up and getting a few more?”

“Sure.” I lifted myself out of the pool.

“Now where is she off to?” I heard Mrs. Pike say from her chaise as I unlatched the gate.

“Who knows, Mother.” He was speaking loudly to be sure I heard. “But she makes perfect and vivid sense to me.”

I walked quickly across the grass. On the patio I dried off as best I could before I went in and up to the second-floor bathroom with the changing table and the big bag of diapers beneath it. I shut the door to pee. My bathing suit was still wet and I had a hard time peeling it down and a harder time pulling it back up when I was done. I flushed the toilet, grabbed two diapers, and pulled the door open. Hugh was there, his hands on either side of the door.

“Just making sure you got the diapers.”

“Right here.”