“SPD, Mom. It means crowds and loud noises and hugs and handshakes get all tangled up in my brain, and my body can’t sort it out. I freak out. You already know that. You knew how it was for me. But you still made me do all those karaoke nights and shows at the fairs and farmer’s markets and street corners. Mom, why?”

In our tiny world of two, she was always the talker and I was the listener. I never thought to ask why until we got separated. I assumed that however hard those shows were, she was trying to do what was best for me. I don’t think that anymore.

She’s quiet for so long, I’m not sure what to do. I can’t tell if she’s mad or trying to think up an excuse or what. It’s like sitting next to one of those street performers who pretend to be a statue. You wait and watch for signs of life. I can hear my own heartbeat in my ears. It’s too fast.

Finally, she speaks, and it’s so predictable, I’m mad I ever thought it could be different: “You have such a gift.” I slump down in my seat, ready for the rest. “I just wanted you to see you could make it big. Really be someone great, Louise.”

“I never wanted to make it big, Mom. I just wanted to be with you.” It comes out ragged. I’m all fought out.

Something happens then. Something I’ve never seen before. Her face falls in on itself, and she starts to cry, really cry. She’s faked it plenty of times to get out of parking tickets and stuff like that. But this is the real deal, and it makes my own throat close up, like when someone yawns and you have to do it too. I made my mom cry. She starts to reach for me, but I flinch, and she lets her arm fall in her lap.

“Oh, my baby. I am so sorry.”

I swallow hard. She thinks I’m done. The big revelation is over. But she needs to hear the rest, what Andrea and I practiced in her office earlier today. But it feels even scarier to say than the SPD stuff. I’m about to take a hammer to everything that made our relationship work.

“I’m done with the shows, okay?”

I can’t look at her after I say it. But out of the corner of my eye I see her wipe her face with a napkin. She sits, for a minute, or an eternity. I focus on the cars in the parking lot. Count the trucks. There are eight. Count the shrubs along the sidewalk. There are twelve. I feel like a spinning coin getting wobblier and wobblier and waiting to fall.

Finally she whispers, “Does that mean you want to live with me again?”