One minute past morning meeting and the tapping of the peace gong.

“I know. You’re dying that I’m coming in today,” I say, elbowing him. I keep my eyes on the road, desperate for the laugh track from the old days of his boyhood, but as always now there is just silence, then a protracted sigh with a word at the end:

“Mommmmm.”

I push past the awkwardness, even though I know that trying too hard and showing my desperation to stay relevant will only make things worse. “But that’s the deal with your school: parents help out.” His eye-roll doesn’t stop me. “It’s a cooperative independent school”—I say the words slowly, because I can’t take my hands off the wheel to pump my usual air quotes—“so when a teacher asks you to come in and teach their class for them because they’re too lazy to,” I add, unable to stop myself from editorializing, “you’re not supposed to say no.”

“Mr. Noah isn’t too lazy to teach.”

I forget how loyal he is, how kind and generous to others he’s always been. He’s never had a mean bone in his body, and Gary and I have always marveled at how much better and more evolved a person he is than we are; how different he is from us. Was it the luck of genetics and biology? More engaged parenting than we’d had? Conscious differentiation on his part? Gary always says that we could learn from him, but we never do, instead just blurting things out without thinking. Like now.

“You’re right. It’s not laziness. He just needs extra time to manscape his goatee.”

“Mom. Stop.” He looks at me finally. He is all Gary, with his perfect ears and straight nose and blue eyes, though I know the lips and chin and, sadly, the crowded teeth, which will need straightening, are mine. “You don’t have to come, you know. Jackson’s mom and Gavin’s mom and Robert’s mom couldn’t come. I can just say you’re too busy. It’s no big deal.” He looks out the window again, away from me to somewhere else.

I blink and feel the sudden sting of tears. “But I want to come.” The sentence is a repentant whisper that leaves me confused: Why, when I miss my little boy so much, am I pushing away what’s left of him? “Dude. I was just kidding.” I’m begging now. Like plate tectonics, something inside me is finally cracking and shifting. Melting. “I want to come. I really do.”

He shrugs. “Are you bringing the dog?”

“I have to,” I say, as if I’m explaining why I have to drag an oxygen machine in with me, that my survival depends on it. “It’ll be worse if I don’t bring her.” I look down at my lap, in the space between my body and the steering wheel and the harness strap of the seat belt, and see the top of the dog’s head inside the sling. It’s then that I notice all the dog hair on my black sweater and wish I’d thought to run a lint brush over myself before leaving the house on such an important morning.