“It’s apparently what all the celebs are wearing,” he said in the prim voice of Charles, the man who always styles him. He spun around in the navy blue suit, paired with a plain white T-shirt and brown wing tips and he looked hot. An understated sophistication that, I knew, would go perfectly with the light blue floral maxi dress I had decided to wear. The dress made me feel like a carefree wife who goes to 10:30 a.m. Pure Barre classes and always has perfectly beachy curls and shops down Madison Avenue on a Tuesday afternoon. But it also reminded me of my mother’s church dress, the one she made herself out of a similar blue floral-patterned fabric that had been donated to the church office. She’d worn it every single Sunday as long as I could remember, and hand-washed it in the bathtub with the kind of slow tenderness I think about sometimes when I’m doing dishes.

I like to think I looked like what she could have been in another life. I do have her eyes.

“He doesn’t drink...” I told the waitress, slipping my empty vodka soda onto her tray and staring at the three of them as they laugh in anxiety-inducing harmony. I could feel her staring at me, probably processing the two or three old-fashioneds she’d already served him this evening. I could taste the whiskey on him an hour ago.

When I finally turned to her, she’d lost whatever Jergens glow she had on her face before and her mouth was agape in that unattractive way it falls if you’re not paying attention. A bug is going to fly into your mouth, I wanted to tell her, a line my mother repeated to us whenever we opened our mouths or cried in public.

“Just kidding,” I finally said, a gentle smile on my face, the kind that merely lifts your cheeks but doesn’t touch your eyes. “I would like something else, actually. Perhaps a sauv blanc?”

She nodded and turned before responding any further, no doubt desperate to get the fuck out of here before I could play with her anymore, which is always a satisfying power. The only power I had that day, it turned out.

My dress blew ever so slightly with the wind, and I was thinking about my mother again. I kept imagining her here, walking around in that graceful way she did, like she was floating—a stark contrast from my father’s lead feet stomping around the rickety house, always like he was on a mission. It was a trait we only became thankful for once we appreciated it for what it was: a warning.