A problem with having Maura around a lot is seeing your own body in motion. When you are in public sometimes strangers’ eyes track her movements instead of yours. Her greasy hair, the sloppy sprawl of her posture, the paunch of baby fat you kept too long into your teenage years.

As a little girl—tiny; four, five?—the looks she gives you are so worried, and when she’s a teenager her face is hateful, furious as the smell of blood on a barbecue. “We could at least try to get along,” you might say. She pulls your lips back from your teeth.

“I don’t like myself very much.”

* * *

Some Mauras are stickier than others, do not disappear quietly in the night. You bring those to your mother’s house. You usually stand at a distance, but the fifth Maura, who has been uncharacteristically docile, you walk to the door. She rings the bell for you. Take a breath. Hold still, Maura, it’s just your mother.

Your mother opens the door, and she opens her arms. She takes Maura into them. She always does this. You’ve watched her do it from your car window, from the lawn, from your mind’s eye. You often think of an anemone swallowing a fish. Maura exhales—might be contentment, might be impatience. It probably depends on the day, on the girl. She leans your forehead against her mother’s shoulder.

“Hi, Maura,” your mother says. Over her Maura’s shoulder, so, to you.

“Congratulations on the book.”

Her face does something bad, something like the feeling of watching another person walk precariously along the edge of a very high place. Don’t apologize, but also don’t put your fist in your mouth and bite your knuckles so you don’t apologize.

“Thank you.”

“It’s impressive.”

“It was hard to write.”

You could ask her about the advance, how much she’s going to make off it. Will you ask her about the advance?

She opens the door a little wider, as she turns her body and the version of yourself clasped against it toward the house. “Do you want to come in?”

“I can’t.”

Your mother looks back to you. When did her eyebrows turn gray? How have you missed these little details of her aging? “You haven’t been answering my calls,” she says mournfully. “I tried to tell you about it.”

This seems unlikely. You may not know everything about publishing, but you are fairly sure there is a long stretch of time between deciding to write a book and seeing it on shelves. Still, it is true that you haven’t been answering her calls.

You don’t say anything. Your mother’s face crumples up. She sighs. “Do I really make your life that hard?”

* * *