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father said.
    Yvonne smiled at him as if he’d just said the smartest, most admirable thing she’d ever heard come out of a man’s mouth. Abraham Lincoln could be delivering the Gettysburg Address at the other end of the table and Yvonne would be ignoring him and mooning at my father, reeking of lavender, dimpling, and touching her hair.
    “Scotty, you know why bears are em-barr-assed?” Mr. Beck asked. I don’t know how the man could even talk with all those teeth in his mouth.
    “Why, Dad?” Scotty asked.
    “Because they’re bear naked,” Mr. Beck hooted. Scotty laughed, a single “ha,” while Mr. Beck the Comedian stood. “Anybody need a refresher?”
    Mrs. Beck put a hand on his arm as if to slow him down, but Mr. Beck walked very deliberately to the liquor cabinet, placing his feet carefully, not at all acting drunk. “Larry.” Mrs. Beck sighed. Yvonne touched her hair.
    “He was way over there, climbing up rocks,” Scotty said, as if we were still talking about bears.
    Yvonne put a concerned hand on my dad’s arm. “I worry about you two, alone in that cabin,” she pouted.
    “We get by just fine,” my dad said. Yvonne’s hand stayed on his wrist. Her eyes were all soft. Mr. Beck opened a new bottle of clear liquid with a joyous twist of the cap.
    “You need a woman to cook you fellows a homemade meal,” Yvonne stated, moving the conversation ahead like someone playing chess.
    “Could have been a grizzly,” Scotty speculated.
    “I’m going to be sick,” I said suddenly.
    Conversation froze. Everyone looked at me.
    “I’m sick to my stomach,” I elaborated.
    In the silence that followed you could have heard Yvonne touch her hair. Finally my dad responded. “What is it, Charlie?” he asked.
    “I said I’m going to vomit !” I shouted at Yvonne. And then, though I hadn’t been the slightest bit sick when I’d made my declaration, my body backed me up by regurgitating right there at the table. I turned away from everyone and aimed at the floor, but I don’t imagine it made the sight any more appealing.
    Mrs. Beck was on her feet and had a towel to my mouth before anyone else had even moved. “It’s okay, Charlie; you just go ahead,” she said softly. I closed my eyes at the sensation of her soft hand on my back. This was what mothers did; they held you and spoke kindly to you when you were sick. When you had a fever their hands were cool and soothing on your forehead.
    Mrs. Beck drove us home. I sat in the front seat and ignored Yvonne as she unhappily waved at us from the front deck of the Becks’ house.
    “You should go lie down,” my dad said, though it was still light outside. I didn’t fight it; the light touch of Mrs. Beck made me want to bury my face in my pillow.
    I thought of my mother helping me one day when I’d skinned my knees falling off a rope swing. I was maybe eight years old. Her tanned skin at that point was more than a year away from the blotchy yellow pallor I would come to associate with her face when the disease—chronic myelogenous leukemia—took over and killed her blood. Her name was Laura, Laura Hall—we were a family with a Charlie and a George and a Laura, normal names, nothing at all like Yvonne.
    My mom sat me down in the bathtub that day and carefully cleaned my burning wounds. That’s what mothers did; they took care of you.
    And then when they got sick it was your job to take care of them. But I hadn’t done that, not when it mattered most, and that was what made my tears burn my face as I lay in bed—that was my awful secret. When it was my job to take care of my mom, I failed her, and the consequences were life altering.
    When sleep finally came it released me from both my grief and my guilt.
    I was ravenous the next morning and ate so many bowls of Cap’n Crunch that the inside of my mouth burned. A note from my dad told me to call him, so I did—I liked phoning him at the shop, but I knew it pulled him off the floor, so I only did