Her mother watched One Life to Live and All My Children. Her grandmother, who’d sometimes lived with them, watched the game shows. Her older brother watched reruns of old westerns—“Saddle up, Hoss. Find Little Joe”—which was totally out of character for somebody who stayed stoned all the time and loved Black Sabbath and the Sex Pistols, but he did. He said he liked those simpler times, when you just shot whoever was fucking with you and then rode off into the sunset. She wishes she could tell him that is exactly what is going on in the world today, only there are no horses or sunsets or somebody like Ben Cartwright pontificating on whatever bit of a moral there might be. Shelley had loved Dawson’s Creek and MTV, but good luck getting time all by yourself with a television in that house.

And now she does have time to herself, sometimes too much time, especially at night when Harvey is asleep and she starts to hear things. She certainly had not planned to add losing a job to her long to-do list, but there it is, or at least the possibility if they don’t find a way to forgive her for doodling and writing all kinds of other weird shit in the midst of a murder trial. She knew better. Of course she knew better, but this particular trial bothers her more than all the others, and that is saying a lot, because there have been some really terrifying ones!

But still, she can explain how she is able to transcribe everything that is being said on the stand while thinking of a couple of other things, too. It’s no different than knowing the commercial break was about to bring her mother out into daylight (“Yes, I bought your cigarettes and took out the trash,” Shelley had said, instead of what she’d wanted to say, which is, Who in the fuck do you think you are watching television on your fat ass with no food in the house and then judging me?), or when the Ponderosa was signing off and her brother said, “Please leave me alone. I hate them as much as you do, so don’t take it out on me!” She can do that and still solve the word puzzles on Wheel of Fortune before her old grandmother (LET SLEEPING DOGS LIE, you old idiot). She can do that, and it is actually a soothing kind of thing to do when disturbing things are introduced into the world.