Mom returns to the table and sits. “I wish you’d continued with Dr. Hill.”

She’s changed the subject to another highly charged topic. By junior year of high school, I was most definitely in high school.

Stoned at school.

Stoned at home.

Stoned wherever the buffalo roam.

I’d get high at lunchtime or drop acid and trip through my afternoon classes. Sensing that something was amiss, Mom insisted that I start seeing Dr. Hill, a psychiatrist. At his office, the good doctor would ask how I felt about Alan. How I felt about my parents. About myself. (Didn’t he understand that the whole purpose of taking drugs was not to feel?) I usually went into his office stoned.

“Mom, what’s the point?”

“Didn’t you feel it was helping?” she asks.

“Helping you, maybe.”

She stiffens. “Why do you say that?”

“Seriously, Mom? Wasn’t the point of sending me to a shrink to make you feel better? Like you were doing something instead of nothing?”

Mom’s face scrunches and she takes a deep breath. I feel a rebuttal coming and wipe my lips with the napkin. “I’m not blaming you. You had your hands full with Alan. And it’s not like you’ve gotten a lot of help from you-know-who.”

“We’re not talking about him,” Mom says. “We’re talking about you and Dr. Hill.”

“You don’t think it’s all mixed together? Come on; we both know Dad has no interest in this family. We’re nothing but a burden to him.”

After a moment’s stillness, Mom leans forward and speaks in a measured tone. “That is not true.”

How can she defend him? Does she know about the blonde I saw in the MG a little more than a week ago? I’m certain she knows about some of the other women. Why would she defend him? I find it nearly incomprehensible. Should I tell her about his latest dalliance? Something holds me back. Is it that I can’t imagine how telling her about this one would make a difference if the others didn’t? Is it because this summer things between my parents already feel more strained than ever and I’m hesitant to make it worse?

Or is something else stopping me?

Tuesday, July 8

Work’s over. In the parking lot, a pair of feet jut out from around the side of Odysseus. Whoa. I know I had a toke on the way to work this morning, but I think I would have noticed if I’d run over someone.

I round the microbus. It’s Tinsley, sitting on the pavement in the shade cast by Odysseus. The bottoms of her bare feet are nearly black. Her legs spread wide under a long purple tie-dyed skirt gathered to her knees.