Bobby just nodded, making me feel saccharine all of a sudden. When we pulled off for gas, parking where I stood now, I had stared up at the sky as the clouds turned gold first, then pink, and then purple and red. Here was the place where I felt I could finally see everything stretched out in front of me—sky no longer obscured by high-rises and cranes. I had been suffering back east and I knew I had to leave, with or without Bobby. I had gone to see a woman who had me lie down on a mat while she tried to catch vibrations coming off my body. She said, “You need sky.”

“I know,” I said.

All she saw radiating off of me was desert. White sand, yellow tufts of sagebrush, a bright endless sky of blue. I needed to be able to climb mountains and look down at wide expanses, city lights, and a hint of ocean in the distance. I knew I had to go back to L.A., but I was afraid to push for it. It was a city that had nearly done me in. A place my mother had had to scoop me up from, drag my belongings from my apartment into my waiting car, filling it until we could hardly see out the back window, and then demanded that I drive. We launched through the city streets and down the 101, both of us crying, as we left the city. I was sure I would never return; she was aware she was performing some kind of lifesaving mission. She was only partially successful, because I had found a way to come back that seemed safe. I was anchored by someone else who could make sure I would not go astray again.

ABOUT AN HOUR after I left Indio, back on the road to the convention, my mother called to say my father’s drinking had gotten worse. This was not surprising, but it still gave me a jolt. I had hours of driving ahead of me in which to piece together how this could be happening again.