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apprehension—even preemptive irritation—that accompanies any visit home once you’ve moved out. The rest would be because of something I’d always felt but could never name. My mother, smiling brightly, looking directly into your eyes before she embraced you tightly, would feel a million miles away. My father, averting his gaze before he took you into his arms, would be the one who felt close.

5
    MY MOTHER WAS OUT CUTTING FLOWERS WHEN WE arrived, bent over roses such a deep red color they looked black. She turned when she heard our car doors slam and shaded her eyes. She was wearing a white linen blouse, black linen pants cut to just above the ankle, and red strappy sandals. Cute. “Look who’s here!” she cried, and, removing her gardening gloves, headed toward us, arms open wide. “You’re the first ones. I’m so excited!” She hugged Pete and me, then the kids. “You’ve grown!” she told Hannah.
    “You always say that,” Hannah said, smiling.
    “I know. But it’s always true. You’ve become a
lovely
young lady.” She turned to Anthony. “And you! You’re gorgeous!”
    Anthony laughed, embarrassed, then took his bags and headed for the back door. “Grandpa inside?”
    “Down at his workbench,” my mother said. She started to take one of the suitcases, but Pete took it from her. “Save your strength, Barbara,” he told her.
    As we headed indoors, we heard a car honk. It was Steve, pulling up to the curb, and then we saw Caroline’s car pulling up right behind him.
    “Well!” my mother said.
    “Good timing,” Pete said, but my mother seemed more unsettled than pleased. She smoothed down the collar of her blouse. Raised her chin. It seemed to me that there was, in these movements, a strange sense of preparation for battle. But then I decided my perspective was skewed by what Caroline had told me the night before. I waved at her and Steve and headed inside.
    IT WAS ALMOST MIDNIGHT. Pete and I were lying in bed in the basement guest room, a room my parents used mainly for storage of out-of-season clothes. Beside us, in the dim light of the moon coming through the tiny, high windows, I could see our makeshift nightstand: a TV tray holding an alarm clock, a tiny lamp, a box of Kleenex, and a small porcelain dish, put there, I knew, for holding Pete’s change. There was a cozy completeness to this utilitarian still life. It occurred to me that one of the values of going away was that you saw that something far less complex than what you were used to would do just fine. More and more, I looked at my house, at my life, and thought,
Why do I need all this stuff?
Maggie and I had been talking about this need to simplify, about what it might mean; she’d been feeling it, too. “It’s the first step in getting ready to die,” Maggie had said, in her usual no-nonsense way. “It is not!” I’d said, but I thought she was probably right.
    Upstairs, I could hear the muted conversation of my parents, still up and sitting in the TV room. Soon they’d go to bed and then continue talking quietly, I knew, until they fell asleep.
    I lay there, Pete beside me, and the sound of my parents’ voices seemed to erase him; seemed to erase me too, at least as the middle-aged person I was. I became instead a young child, fresh from the bathtub and smelling of Ivory soap, the doll I’d chosen for the night mummy-wrapped in a receiving blanket and held in the crook of my arm. I was not responsible for anything but my own daily meanderings. The purpose of reading the newspaper was to check up on Nancy and Sluggo. Monetary decisions had to do with what kind of candy to buy with the change I had left over from going to the corner store to buy milk for my mother. My parents were my clock and my calendar; they told me where to go and when. My parents were also the arbiters of judgment, of taste, and of politics; I stepped into their values like an outfit they’d laid out for me on my bed. Later, of course, I forged