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on the office door and make it swing out instead of in, just to save space—that’s how small the room is. I stood in the doorway, trying to keep the volume level low enough that entering customers wouldn’t be treated to a revival of vaudeville on their way in to the movie.
    “Mom,” I said, “how did you find out that Sharon is . . . late in getting back to me?”
    “Gregory called,” my father interjected.
    “ Gregory called you? Since when does Gregory have your number?”
    My mother looked wearily at me. “You think we’d let Sharon marry just anybody and not make sure he could get in touch if something . . . happened?” She sniffed.
    “The man plays a hell of a game of pinochle,” my father added, once again unprompted. Arthur Freed is nothing if not charitable in his assessment of pretty much everybody. Apparently including the man who broke up my marriage.
    “You play cards with him?” My head was swimming, and I couldn’t even sit down.
    “Once every couple weeks,” my father said. “It’s nothing.”
    “Sharon,” my mother reminded us, and put her head in her hands.
    “She’s fine,” I said. “She’ll call by tomorrow. Stop worrying.”
    Gloria Sperber Freed is not a woman to be denied under any circumstances. When Sharon and I married, my mother had mentally adopted Sharon. I believe she sincerely thinks of my ex as her own daughter. Which I tried to ignore during our marriage, because it would have taken a lot of fun out of it for me.
    In the best of times, navigating my mother is tricky, but worthwhile. She is a great source of common sense, whereas my father will plunge in and worry about it later. But Mom also has an unparalleled talent for passive aggression. By seeming to be completely pliant, my mother could convince Osama bin Laden to drive her to a Passover seder, and probably to come in and have a cup of wine instead of waiting in the car.
    Now, strong in her belief that “her” Sharon was in grave danger, my mother was in no mood for reassurance.
    “Why didn’t you tell us?” she shot at me.
    “Because I didn’t know. I just got back from the police station myself.” Oops. Maybe she’d overlook . . .
    “The police station!” A man walking into the theatre stopped, adjusted his jacket, and turned around to exit.
    “Mom, I’ve got customers. Do you mind?” Closing the office door was out of the question. I hadn’t sat in my mother’s lap since I was six. “Why are you guys here, anyway? Why didn’t you just call me?”
    “It’s a crisis,” my mother said, her tone indicating that I was an idiot to have asked. “In a crisis, family has to be there for each other.”
    “Couldn’t you have been there for me from home?”
    Luckily, the debate didn’t get a chance to progress, as Jonathan appeared behind me. “Mr. Freed?” I’ll never get him to call me Elliot.
    I turned to face him. “Some of the customers are complaining,” Jonathan said.
    I sucked in some air. “I’ll keep the shouting down in here,” I said.
    “Okay,” Jonathan said, looking confused. He started to turn away, then thought better of it. “Um, that’s not why they’re complaining.”
    The three Freeds stared at him for a while, until I asked, “Okay, then, what is it?”
    “Some of the customers said there’s water all over the men’s room floor.”
    I resisted the impulse to roll my eyes. “So go get the mop and take care of it.”
    “Okay.” He did the turn-away-and-turn-back thing again. “They said it’s, like, a lot of water.”
    Before I could react, my father stood up. “I’ll take a look,” he said. He was out the door in a blink.
    My mother and I spent a long moment staring at each other. It’s not that I don’t love her, or even that I don’t like her, but my mother and I have always had a less relaxed relationship than I have with Dad. When I was growing up, she was the tough parent.
    Gloria Freed is something of a contradiction: she’ll never publicly