“Well, howdy, young lady,” he said. “Your momma said you wouldn’t be home for another couple of hours.” He lumbered past the women to fumble with the hardcase Samsonite where his clothes evidently were. “I beg your pardon, madams.”

“Larry?” said Mary-Sue.

“Uh-huh?”

“Kate says it’s all right for you to bunk with me tonight.”

Larry immediately turned beet red. He looked at Kate and nodded. “Well, in that case I promise to be a gentleman.”

Mary-Sue looked so excited when they pulled into the parking lot of the Tropicalia shopping mall that Kate nearly wept. She now understood why her mother had decided to put on a silk scarf and an imitation gold brooch, why she had worn actual shoes, and not her usual Scholl’s sandals—Mary-Sue thought this shopping mall was going to be classy. “O Tannenbaum” was being funneled out via speakers camouflaged in hibiscus bushes.

After Kate turned off the engine, they sat in the parked car, facing the Pottery Barn for a silent minute. Kate thought her mother was mesmerized by the idyll of the home-and-hearth diorama in the store window, but she was mistaken.

“You have to help me out of the car, kid. My body’s still noncompliant.”

Kate could have kicked herself. She knew how hard it was for Mary-Sue to ask for help. “Sorry, I completely forgot.”

The place was all upscale chain stores built over a man-made lagoon and linked by a wooden plank walkway—apparently developers’ shorthand for “resort style.” This was what they called a “destination mall,” a consumerist magnet dropped in the middle of nowhere to further the LA sprawl. Her mother had read all about it in Parade magazine, and had been hinting at a visit for weeks.

Kate feigned interest in the window displays, while wishing Mary-Sue would hurry the hell up. Not that she moved like a sprite herself, with her belly weighing her down. What a pair—a gimp and a blimp.

In her bitterer moments, Mary-Sue allowed herself to think that the accident at the Publix had been a lightning bolt sent to her from some joyless Supreme Being, chastising her for darting around with age-inappropriate speed and impatience—a reminder, in other words, that she was an old woman. This was one of her bitterer moments, and she wanted to wallow in it. But the presence of Kate prevented her from throwing the tantrum she would have with Larry. Larry was the ultimate shock absorber; she could say anything to him and he’d still come by with cookies the next day. With Kate, say one wrong thing and she’d go mute for a week.

They stopped by a Häagen-Dazs ice-cream stand. Mary-Sue caught her breath leaning against a post, pretending to casually hum “The Little Drummer Boy.”

“We can leave if you like,” she said finally. “I know I’m a pain in the butt to have to chaperone.”