Josh stood perfectly still. This was the moment he feared most. This was how conversations with his mother went. He just wanted it to be over and for himself to be out in the world, where he could keep looking for his father. He wanted to understand who he was in relation to the father that had abandoned him (had his father even abandoned him? He didn’t know, and that was the point) as well as he understood who he was in relation to his mother, in all of its goods and bads. Then, seeing himself against and between these two people, he could start to figure out who he was beneath all of the forms he took every day, beneath whatever he looked like to the world in any given moment.

“I’m left to wonder if the only time you want to actually talk to me is when you want something from me. That’s incredibly disingenuous.”

“Mom. I—”

“Disingenuous means not genuine. Don’t know if they’ve taught you that word in school.”

“I’ll catch the bus.”

“Better hurry.”

Josh threw his things in his bag and walked out the door.

Diane stared into her coffee, knowing she had ruined a lovely moment with her son, knowing he must loathe being around her when she was like this.

“I love you,” she called, hoping it wasn’t too late.

“I love you too,” he said back, not loudly enough to be heard.

18

Now that science and civic leadership had failed to solve her problem, Jackie sat in her car in the City Hall parking lot, unsure of what to do. No one had fixed anything. No one had been able to help her.

She watched as workers rushed out of the doors to begin the long process of draping the black velvet over City Hall. It was nice to watch people struggle over a problem that did not involve or affect her at all. She didn’t have to help or act or choose. Part of her wanted to just recline the seat as close to lying down as possible and sleep the night where she was. Stay in one spot and let the world go on with its strange and terrible business without her.

But before she had even finished having that thought, she was already turning on the ignition and reversing out of the parking lot. She wouldn’t stop. She couldn’t. There was something in her that made giving up feel as impossible as the most impossible of her problems.