I do tell her, though, that she didn’t know anything when she woke. That she couldn’t speak, that she couldn’t tell the EMTs what day it was or when she was born or who the president is. Maybe it’s good, I tell her, that she didn’t know who our president is, and she laughs at that. I tell her she didn’t know where she was. I tell her that she didn’t know me, didn’t recognize me. Of all the details I tell her, she clings to that one only.

“How did I not know my baby?” she says with a sharp breath.

“It’s okay,” I tell her, even though it’s not.

She says the doctor’s coming, that he wants to run some tests.

“I’ll be by soon,” I say.

“What?”

“The emergency room,” I say. “I’ll be by soon.” We say good-bye, hang up.

I knock on the front door of the crisis center. They buzz me in. One staff woman is cleaning the puddle off the floor, and the other is sitting behind the desk.

“I’ve lost something,” I say, and I go out back to the gazebo. Meryl isn’t there with my mother’s cigarettes. The old man who was shaking while he ate his sandwich is sitting outside smoking a long Camel 100. I bum a smoke from him and light it with the red of his lit one.

“You don’t look so good,” he says to me. “You shake like me.” He lifts both hands.

I don’t say anything. The old man picks up his cup of coffee and sips it.

“Damn cold,” he says.

“Let me heat that for you.” I set my cigarette on the picnic table, the lit end dangling off. I take his cup. I wonder if he watches me leave. Watches me go inside. I wonder if he gives a shit. I put the coffee in the microwave and set it for forty-four seconds. I walk to the front door and go out and stand in the parking lot. The exterminator is still here, eight black boxes at his feet. They’re laced by a rope, as if they were fresh meat.

“You supposed to be out front?” he asks me.

I say nothing and get in the car, start it, and reverse—I throw it in drive and peel out and the back right tire thuds over one or two black boxes that crack-crunch. In the rearview mirror the exterminator throws his arms into the air and he runs to the front door to tell the staff—forget him. Ahead, to the north, I’m drawn to the dark blue clouds like mold, the spray of rain and wind and yellow lightning soon to come over this part of our swell.