I run my finger over our tabletop. How does one describe things like mania and psychosis to someone who has never encountered them? It’s like being chained to a roller coaster on Mars. It’s your mother smelling like a primate exhibit because she thinks the government is using bars of soap to spy on her or picking you up from school in a car you’ve never seen, driven by a man she only met an hour ago at the laundromat. It is stepping so far outside the realm of logic that you’re not sure you can ever step back in again. And then it’s lots of seemingly normal moments peppered in between—like shopping for new shoes and making sugar cookies together and back rubs when I had trouble falling asleep—so that you can never be certain of where you stand. But all I can say is, “Scary. Weird. I don’t know how to describe it. It’s not the way people think it is.”

“How do people think it is?” His face is open, sincere. He’s not just parroting me. He truly wants to know.

I shrug one shoulder. “I think people confuse mental illness with stupidity or incompetence. They expect it to be obvious in ways it isn’t, and they miss the ways it is. My mom’s not dumb. She’s not a child. She’s bipolar. When she’s having an episode, she can’t regulate herself. When she’s manic, she hears things. She gets paranoid. She’s convinced. She’s convincing. When she’s depressed, she’s consumed. She’s gone.”

“And in between?” he asks.

I feel my forehead crease. There is no resting point with my mother. Even her “normal” is not like everyone else’s. “In between, she’s just a softer version of the extremes. She’s always shifting. You never know which version of her is going to show up next. It’s like a dance where you’re not in the lead and there’s no pattern to the steps. It’s all random.”

“Sounds tough.” His smile is gentle.

“It’s crazy making. But we haven’t spent much time together since I was little, so I can’t say I’ve been there for all of it.”

His eyebrows raise a quarter inch, and I notice that his eyes are like two round toffees in the sunlight. “And now?”

“Now I’m here, like it or not.”

“Seems like you don’t like it very much.”

He’s right. I can’t say I’m happy to be here, but I’m beginning to see its potential…for someone else. My future is New Hampshire or somewhere far, far away. On that, I’m clear. “What’s not to love, right?” But my tone is flat.

Daniel laughs. “New Orleans isn’t for everybody.”

“Mary’s not for everybody,” I say under my breath.