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nights spent weeping through step class.
    By the time I got back to the Gap, Timby had pulled a Supermarket Sweep . A girl with a headset was ringing up a haystack of clothes.
    Between scanner beeps, Timby whispered, “Hurry, hurry.”
    “Don’t think you got away with this,” I said, coming up behind him. “I know you tricked me.”
    “Will you be using your Gap card today?” the girl asked.
    “No, and I don’t want one,” I said. “We’re never coming back.”
    “You ruin everything,” Timby said.
    “No, you ruin everything.”
    The salesgirl’s smile didn’t falter, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t wait to get home and tell her roommate.
    It was 11:45 and still no word from Sydney. Out on the street, a white police bus had parked across Sixth Avenue, blocking traffic. I dialed Sydney’s number. As it rang, I pointed to the bus.
    “Look,” I said to Timby. “The Pope must be staying at the Sheraton. That’s what you get when you call yourself the People’s Pope. You have to stay at a dump.”
    “I wish I could stay at the Sheraton.”
    Voice mail again. “Sydney? It’s Eleanor. Please call me. I don’t want you showing up at lunch and I’m not there. Or maybe I should go. I don’t know.” I hung up. “See, this is why I can’t stand Sydney Madsen.”
    “I thought she was your friend.”
    “It’s a grown-up thing.” I pulled the newspaper from under my arm and pointed to the date. “Read that to me.”
    Timby did.
    I handed him my date book. “Look up today. Thursday, October eighth. Tell me what it says.”
    “Spencer Martell.”
    “Give me that.” I yanked away the book. In my own hand: SPENCER MARTELL.
    “Who’s Spencer Martell?” Timby asked.
    “I can’t imagine.”
    Spencer Martell. Whoever it was, I had made a lunch date with… him? Her?
    “Who’s Spencer Martell?” Timby asked again.
    “Do I look like I know?”
    “It’s okay, Mom,” he said. “You did it on accident.”
    “It’s ‘by accident.’ Who’s teaching you to speak?”
    I took out my phone and searched Spencer Martell . One e-mail came up from a month ago.
    From: Spencer Martell
    To: Eleanor Flood
    Re: Long time no see!
    By any chance are you free for lunch on October 8? I’d love to catch up.
    xS
    I scrolled down and found my response. A twelve o’clock reservation at Mamnoon.
    It was now ten of.
    “Maybe he’s related to Sydney Madsen,” Timby offered. “He could be her brother.”
    “We’re about to find out, aren’t we?”
    “I’m coming too?” Timby said with big eyes.
    “Me and you.”

As for my constant low-grade state of confusion—the Blur is a term that seems to be sticking—let me break it into three categories: (1) things I should know but never learned, (2) things I choose not to know, and (3) things I know but totally screw up.
    Things I should know but never learned? My left from my right. Sorry, but you better ask someone else for directions.
    Things I choose not to know? Plenty. There’s only so much a good brain has room for, let alone a bad brain like mine. So I made an executive decision: There would be subjects I’d aggressively take no interest in, such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Lena Dunham, the whereabouts of the stolen paintings from the Isabella Stewart Gardner heist, what GMO even stands for, and, until Timby’s flirtation with kneesocks in the Gap five minutes ago, gender identity. If that makes my human existence a limited one, I stoically accept my fate. Today’s prevailing stance seems to be I have an opinion, therefore I am. My stance? I have no opinion, therefore I am superior to you.
    Things I know but always screw up? Times. If I have a lunch at 12:30, I’ll write 12:30 in my book. But along the way, some alchemy happens in my brain and 12:30 becomes 1:00. You’d think that after arriving for the theater half an hour after curtain (a dozen times!), I’d have learned to triple-check the ticket. But no. I wish I could explain it.