From my seat at the table, the whiteboard and its blue quote snag my attention. If we’re built things, I wonder, then who builds us?

Mom and I are quiet. Then she starts asking if I’ve seen this movie with Adam Sandler.

“I think it’s called Adults,” she says. “Yes, that’s it. It’s called Adults. We all watched it last night.” By all, she means the others there with her, the others in crisis.

I blow on my coffee and take a sip. It’s warm, but I wish it were warmer. I let it cool for too long. I don’t tell my mother that I know the movie, that she’s wrong, that it’s not called Adults but something else. I don’t tell her a lot of things, like how I couldn’t pay half the rent and so my girlfriend left me and took her spaz cat with her. Mom hated my white girlfriend and would like it too much that she left. I don’t tell Mom that I finally got the job driving truck for UPS. My father drove truck for them before Mom and he were married. They’re divorced, have been for years. And my father’s dead. Maybe that’s why I don’t tell Mom about the job, don’t want her to tell me not to be like my father. She’s dramatic like that.

“It’s a riot,” Mom says about the movie. “You have to see it.”

I say I’ll check it out, that I bet it’s funny, but I know I won’t watch it.

These days when Mom talks, she’s always looking for words. Something isn’t right with her brain. The trauma. It’s been that way for years, but she’s taking longer than usual.

“Ma?” I say.

She looks at me, doesn’t say anything. She straightens the two unopened packs of cigarettes on the table in front of her and sips her coffee.

“I’m so tired,” Mom says. “I haven’t slept in four nights.”

See? First three nights and now four. She’s dramatic, has to up everything. I wonder if she has slept or if she’s lying.

The front-door buzzer rings and one of the staff—a woman with wide hips and a small head—asks through the intercom who she’s here to see. That woman who wanted me to bring her a pack of cigarettes is standing up now, watching the door. I get a good look at her. Her name’s Meryl, I think. Mom said that she looks pregnant but that she isn’t. I look at Meryl as she peeks at the door. She looks pregnant. I wonder if one of them is lying.