But you fight all the time, I say, and I lean my head against the passenger-side window. I watch another mall employee, plastic bag held over her head, running toward the door of the department store. I am glad to be early. I am glad not to have to run in the rain.

My mother pinches the top of her nose like she’s getting a headache. It’s the kind of thing she does when she’s being dramatic. I love her, I really do—I just wish she made better choices.

Jeanette.

What?

You’re being ridiculous. We don’t even fight anymore. He doesn’t even have the energy if he wanted to.

She places a hand between my shoulder blades, a thing she does when she wants me to stop slouching.

And anyway, that was the alcohol, you know that, she says. That was a disease, a disorder. He did things and said things he would not have done or said if he wasn’t sick. You should understand that.

I slouch again as soon as she moves her hand away.

When we used to fight, you know when he used to drink … I have accepted that was not the man I married, she says, and that’s not the man he is now. He’s just an old man. I just want us to be, oh, a normal family again.

Now it is my turn to laugh. Mom, I say. I’m nineteen. It’s a bit too late for that, don’t you think? And he’s not drinking, because he can’t. And it is the man he was. And I don’t love him, okay? I’ve decided I don’t love him.

My voice snags in my throat and comes out hoarse, and then before I know it I’m gulping and crying and she’s looking at me and shaking her head like she just doesn’t understand and I’m thinking, say it, say it, and still I can’t.

Just choose me or him! I scream at her instead.

But I would always choose you! she yells back at me, and now she looks like she’s going to cry too. I just don’t understand why you think I need to make that choice! Why we both can’t be happy and healthy. I just don’t get why you don’t want me to be happy. You think you’re protecting me? You think I want you to hate your father?

And she’s rambling again about how he’s better now and they don’t fight anymore and none of it is about me, so I start to gather my bag at my feet and wipe my eyes, glad it will look like rain smeared my eyeliner.