So I leave her alone and swim a few lengths, even though I’m not a good swimmer. And when I come out again Mom looks like she really is asleep. She’s just kind of baking in the sun and for some reason I feel sorry for her, or happy for her, or something. So I let her sleep and go for a walk around the park. There’s a basketball court and a little kids’ playground, with a sandbox and slides, and a small creek or river next to the court, where the water isn’t even going anywhere, it’s just kind of slimy and covered in reeds. Some grown-ups are playing basketball and talking a lot; it’s hard to tell if they’re angry or having fun, and I watch them for a while and think about my dad. And then when I come back to the pool, Mom sits up and sort of shakes herself, and says, “All right, Ben. We can go.”

The next day Mom buys a car, a secondhand Toyota Corolla. Granma drives us to East Austin, and the guy who sells it to us is a grad student. He looks about twenty-five and has a goatee and an earbud, which seems to be playing something, even when he’s talking to us. He just got a job in Boston—he’s one of those people who tells you stuff about himself even if you haven’t asked.

“I was going to drive it over,” he says, “but the truth is, it’s not that good a car. It’s fine, but for the first time in my life I’m going to be making, like, grown-up money, and so I thought, Buy yourself a grown-up car.”

Mom just smiles at him, the way I sometimes see her smile at guys, so maybe they think she’s being friendly but really she thinks, You’re a jerk. Afterward I have to choose whether to go back in Granma’s Volvo or with Mom, and I’d rather go with Granma but I don’t. At least the air-conditioning works in the Toyota, but it makes a clanking noise and the vents drip on your leg if you’re sitting in the front seat. The whole car smells like dirty laundry. Mom lets me sit in the front seat. I can tell already that she loves this car.

“I haven’t had a car in fifteen years,” she says. “We can go anywhere.”

It’s funny, because in New York she used to argue with Dad about money—she liked expensive things. When she fixed up the kitchen in our apartment she ordered these countertops from Italy, and my dad was like, “I can’t actually believe how much this stuff costs.” But he let her do it because it was her project and he thought she didn’t have enough to do—which doesn’t mean they didn’t fight about it. One thing I realized is that if you don’t say anything, your parents will just argue in front of you because they think you’re not really paying attention. But now that we’re in Austin she buys this really crappy car from some student and she loves it. I don’t get it.