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...vividly of T, that I saw her after all these years, that she was lovely but normal looking in a little polo shirt. Her friend asked me, were you popular? And I said no. then I started talking about how lovers said they liked my tummy roll when I gained weight.

N stands up to introduce everyone and pople are sort of irreverent and talk while he's talking and you look at him, wanting O to introduce everyone and K not to hand out copies of her book and thought of all the women throughout history who have reacted with compassion to this befuddlement of old men who need their world to be ordered and structured and be humored all the time. It’s not that different from changing a diaper; it’s a maternal instinct...Mom said something hurtful and I rode away on a train. I didn’t know if I was going to get off or not and rejoin the family. She did say she was sorry and I crumpled my face up and put it into her shoulder. I got off finally somewhere where I could meet back up with my family instead of riding out of town. I stepped into someone's room and lifted out their black dress. Then they came in, a mother and a daughter, and I pretended to be lost even though the daughter could see that her dress had been moved.

T took me to his house. He and his brother had four now, close to the ocean in Carpenteria. His family was there and tommy said to me at one point that he wanted to get to know me again. Another where Mom was lying down a lot—maybe she was going to get surgery again? And I was holding in my hands a lot of cardboard horse trophies my sister had won a long time ago in Pony Club.

Another long goodbye with R all about how he was going to get into a great medical school. I was trying to balance three gas stations (which had the lower price? I have to put oil in) and two cars all on my own. Where had I left the car in the parking garage. We were all trying to make it to the ocean but we had to make it around a really sludgy pool first, and it was difficult, and I ended up falling in and watching R get ready to rocket himself back up from the bottom of the pool.
I had all my stuff with me as I left, so I couldn’t go in the ocean. Could I leave my heavy backpack on the shore without anyone touching it?