Kate wondered if she’d done something wrong. “We only just got here. We drove over an hour to get here. I thought you wanted to buy stuff.”

“I know. But we won’t find any bargains in this place. We’ll have to go to the Walmart for that.”

“Then why are we even here?” It was amazing how quickly her mother swung from poignant to aggravating. “Let me at least buy you an ice-cream cone before we leave.”

“Actually, since you’re offering, I’d prefer a strawberry malt from Johnny Rockets—it’s better value.” Kate let Mary-Sue direct her to the kitschy fifties diner, its pink neon and chrome fixtures beckoning from behind a faux waterfall.

The strawberry malt arrived in a gigantic Styrofoam tumbler. Mary-Sue could barely contain her excitement. She accepted it from the waiter as if it were a holy chalice.

Later as they drove, Mary-Sue pushed the plastic straw to Kate’s lips. “Here. It’s too much. I can’t possibly drink all of this.”

“Just leave it, Mom. I’m driving.”

“It’s going to melt. It won’t taste as good once it’s melted.”

“Just put it in the holder. Please.”

Mary-Sue peered at the rearview mirror on her side of the car. The sun was harsh on her papery skin. Some women turned yellow or brown or gray with age like freezer-burnt chicken meat, but she was still the same pale shade from her Iowa days, midway between cherry-blossom pink and cucumber green. Wallflower coloring, her mother had once remarked, “a pallor suited to neither powders nor the palette.” Mary-Sue never wore makeup in her youth, and she was now at an age when she could scarcely dream of beginning—any touch of artificial color on her would look obscene, past due, like a dead woman violated by rouge. Her hair was mostly white. The bristly, unruly colony on her scalp was harder to comb down than her original chestnut hair. And it was thinning. She regretted not enjoying her good hair while she had it; she’d always opted for those mousy, low-maintenance bowl cuts, as if she worked in a lab or a lunchroom and needed to have her hair out of the way. But she never worked in a lab. She never had to impersonate Dorothy Hamill. What had she been so afraid of?