“There used to be a great drive-in ice cream place here. And that used to be a gas station where guys would actually pump your gas for you,” she says, pointing across the road at what looks like a high-end apartment complex for urban professionals. “It’s a sleeper town now,” she says. “They drive all the way to Philadelphia every day for work. Two hours of traffic each way. I couldn’t do that. Could you?”

  “Nah,” I say.

  She takes a right onto a road that becomes deceptively twisty.

  “You know your way around,” I say.

  She says, “I learned how to drive on this road. On all these roads.”

  We’ve lived here for nearly three months and she’s only telling me this now.

  I don’t say anything—not because I’m mad, but because what is there to say? She had a home. A place she grew up. Has roads she knows.

  “You okay?” she asks.

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re quiet.”

  “Not sure what to say.”

  “You see all this?” she says, gesturing to her left and then to her right. “This was ours once. Or supposed to be.”

  “Town houses?” I ask. Because that’s what’s here—town houses.

  “Potatoes,” she says. “Six hundred acres of potatoes.”

  I can’t imagine it. After the town houses, there’s a development that looks like an Easter display—Marla’s taste in interior paint. Pastel siding on cube houses.

  “All this. Everything here—both sides of the road. For another mile, too.”

  “So.” I stop here because since she’s never told me anything about our family, I feel stupid guessing. But I do it anyway. “You grew up on a farm?”

  She turns on the radio and shakes her head. “Almost. I almost grew up on a farm. Almost.”

  Nope. I’m not guessing anymore. I’m patient. Surprisingly patient for a kid who’s been waiting on this conversation for sixteen years.

  Mom knows the radio stations. She finds classic rock. She seems angry.

  I’m not angry.

  I was so angry for so long but now I just keep looking out my car window and trying to unsee the houses and aboveground swimming pools and road signs and those flags they put up when they install an invisible dog fence and imagine six hundred acres of potatoes. Isn’t working.

  “My elementary school was back there,” she points. I can see the brick building. “They renovated it. Too small for all these new kids.”

  “You just went to one?” I ask. “Like just one elementary school?”

  “Yep.”

  I try to calculate how many elementary schools I’ve gone to.

  “Kindergarten to sixth grade,” she says.

  “So your school was surrounded by your own farm?”

  “Almost.”

  “You keep saying that,” I say.

  “It’s a long story.”

  “You already started it,” I say.

  Mom sighs. She takes a left and pulls into a small parking area next to a white clapboard chapel across from her elementary school. “Look at it. It’s the size of a fuckin’ high school.” She looks at me. Looks back out into the almost-farm-life she did/didn’t have, and adds, “I want to show you more.”

  We drive down a road with older houses on it. When we get to the end there’s a traffic light and Mom stops. “That Rite Aid? Used to be a diner.” She points directly across the road at a law office. “That’s where the owner’s family lived—right across the street from their diner. God. Great grilled cheese sandwiches.” Across the intersection is a huge shopping plaza—the usual big-box stores, supermarkets, and fast-food chains. “That was a mom-and-pop gas station and a motel. Great little guest pool. Had a hot tub. We rented it for our senior party. My friend Jen worked as the lifeguard.” She gets that faraway look people get when they have memories from their past, so this is new to me. Up until today Mom didn’t have any past. “Great party.”

  “You rented it?”

  “A bunch of us. We all had summer jobs.”

  “So you grew up here all the way to graduation?” I ask. I’m trying not to feel the tunnel closing around me but it’s there. I can’t deny it.

  “I didn’t graduate,” she says, turning right and doing the full circle again—the right off the main highway, the twisting road, the town houses, the Easter egg development, the school, the chapel. I stay quiet for the whole circle and try to visualize the whole place as potatoes. I’m not even sure what potato plants look like.

  “You didn’t graduate because of me, right?”

  “Not because of you, no. That’s almost true, but not true.”

  “A lot of almosts today.”

  “This is the land of almost, I guess,” she says. “Always was.”

  “So where’d the potatoes go?” I ask.

  “We owned most of this land since the late 1700s. Crazy, right? We were famous for potatoes. Shipped them all over the country. And my dad just sold it.” She snaps her fingers. “One minute we had a two-hundred-year-old family history and family business. The next minute, we were just normal people living in the same house with no family. My dad’s whole side stopped talking to us,” she said. “I was the last born—a few years after they sold the farm. My grandparents probably didn’t even know I existed.”

  “Wow,” I say, but I don’t point out that we have this in common.

  “I don’t think my dad knew how bad it would mess things up,” she says. “Or maybe he did. But it messed us up.”

  “Is your house still here?” I ask.

  She nods. “And I don’t plan on driving anywhere near it,” she says and I realize only now that there’s a good chance her parents still live here. My grandparents. My family. I suddenly feel shoplifted. I’m a pork loin. I’m a tube of lip gloss.

  She drives over a bridge that spans a river then pulls into a fire company parking lot. She sits there quietly and if I was to guess, I’d say she might cry.

  “So you have brothers and sisters?”

  “Yeah. A few,” she says.

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah. Wow.” Mom seems as surprised by her own information as I am. “I haven’t talked to any of them since I was eighteen.”

  “You ran away?”

  “Not quite,” she says.

  “Does Mike know them?” I say. “I mean, does he see them or your family or whatever?” At the mere mention of Mike, I shudder. Wrong words. Wrong words. Wrong words.

  “Not anymore, no. I don’t know.”

  I think about whether to bring this up or not but she seems open enough and I feel I should take advantage of it. “Did you know Mike had a tattoo? On his shoulder?”

  “Oh god,” she says.

  “So you know it, then,” I say. “I haven’t been able to figure it out since I saw it.”

  “Nothing to figure out,” she says. “Stupid tattoo says it all, right?”

  “This is why you can’t go out with Mike,” I say.

  “That and other things. He’s a friend. Just because I’m older doesn’t mean every guy I meet I want to marry, you know. Just because he’s nice or whatever. Anyway, it’s conflicting. He’s into that shit and I’m not.”

  “I don’t think I can hang out with him anymore, you know?” I stay quiet for a while. “I mean, I like him. He’s nice. We have fun, I guess. But I can’t be friends with a guy who thinks like that.”

  “I know,” Mom says.

  “But you’re still friends with him.”

  “I know,” she says. “He got me the apartment. I never really thought about having to live next door or getting closer—like dragging you into it.”

  “I still don’t get it. How can he be so cool and be like that?”

  “You’d be surprised who’s like that. They’re all over the place.”

  “Huh.”

  “Welcome to my hometown,” she says. “That’s how things are. It’s just normal for these people to think the way they do. Runs in the family, usually.”

  “Like potatoes.”

  “Like potatoes,” she says.

  I look around while she drives us home and we don’t say much. Then I say, “So, are you here to see your brothers and sisters or what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What’s your old business?”

  “I don’t know anymore. I just felt like I should come home. If this is what home is. I can’t tell.”

  “You seem to know your way around,” I say. “And you have memories here.”

  “True.”

  “Must be home, then.”

  “I guess.”

  Mom doesn’t sound convinced but she doesn’t know what it’s like to grow up any other way.

  “About Mike,” she says. “I can’t be friends with him anymore, either. I don’t know why it took me so long.”

  “It’s not like he was born with that tattoo. How were you supposed to know?”

  “I knew. It was just something I chose to ignore, I guess. I don’t know.”

  “Next time we move, I’m not making friends with anyone until summer when I can see their tattoos,” I say. I’m trying to make a joke, but Mom just nods as if I were serious. As if she’s already thinking of the next move. As if she’s already packing.

  When we get back to the apartment I tell her I have to leave for work and she nods at me from behind her phone—which I imagine is showing her new apartments in a new state. We always said we’d try New England one day.

  Mike is out front with his head under the hood of his car. I try to make it to my car without him seeing me.

  “Hey! How’s it running?” he says.

  “Great! Late for work!”

  “Come over for a beer later!” he says.

  “Maybe!” I say. I feel stupid. Maybe? More like never. I drive to Marla and Gottfried’s house thinking of the hundred other things I wished I could say.

  * * *

  “Where’s Malcolm?” I ask.

  “Don’t ask,” Marla answers.

  Gottfried holds his arms out like he’s an airplane. From this I gather Malcolm has flown back to Jamaica.

  I look at Loretta, who is staring at me and smiling. I say, “So, you’re going to live here, now, right?”

  She nods.

  “You’re in great hands,” I say. I feel so stupid.

  “My parents always said they were assholes, but I figure I’ll give them a try,” she says. Marla and Gottfried are sitting right here. They don’t know what to say. Or maybe they don’t say anything because they already knew this.

  I just nod and say, “A few touch-ups and I’m done!” I turn to Gottfried. “Do you want to inspect the work one last time?”

  “He inspects everything all the time.” Marla says. “He’s like a spy.”

  Marla hasn’t been the same since she fell.

  CanIHelpYou?’s Doorbell Rings

  Ian shows up at my front door after school on Tuesday. My mother is home, and half of me wants to let him in and sit on the couch with him. The other half—the half that took down all his school pictures from around my mirror except this year’s—knows I can’t use Ian to get back at my mother. I open the door and say, “We can’t talk here.”

  Ian says, “Let’s go for a drive,” and holds up a set of keys. Car keys. I tiptoe out the front door, run to the driveway, and walk around it. It’s the perfect car—blue Volvo with a sunroof. I try to be happy for him. I’m not. I try not to covet my best friend’s car. I do anyway. I ask all the dumb questions: Where did you get it? When? How much did it cost? I don’t even hear his answers over my jealousy. We get in the car, and Ian starts it up and puts it in reverse. He backs up a few feet and then puts it in park again.

  “You don’t have anything on you, do you?”

  “Nope. I’m clean. Not even an Advil,” I say.

  He puts it back into reverse and glides slowly out of the driveway.

  He says, “So, I got a job at Lakeside. In the office, helping with scheduling and stuff.” Lakeside is a rehabilitation center—kinda like a nursing home. Jennifer works there, I bet.

  “You quit Weis?”

  “No more shopping for dumbass white people who can’t make up their minds,” he says.

  “Hallelujah!” I say. “Good riddance to them.”

  I lean toward the stereo to turn it up and see how good the speakers are, but Ian says, “No. We have to talk.”

  “Oh.”

  He drives for a minute, but doesn’t say anything.

  Then, “I’m gonna pull in up here.” He pulls into a parking space near the park. I think we’re going to get out, but he doesn’t unclip his seat belt.

  “You’ve been a good friend,” Ian starts.

  “Okay.”

  “I mean it. We’ve always been tight. You know that, right?”

  “Of course,” I say, but I’ve been doubting myself for weeks now.

  “We’re not in fourth grade anymore, though.”

  I don’t know what to say. I love the guy. But I know what he’s going to say.

  He says, “I know we laughed about that text. You know?” He looks nervous. “The one that night back when we were . . . back in February?”

  “I know the one.” We both laughed, right?

  “I know we laughed. And I know you don’t think that way. But it hurt.”

  “I know—”

  “You don’t,” he interrupts. “And that’s the thing.” He takes a deep breath and massages his temples. A bell is tolling for me. This is work. He’s doing work now. For me. He’s looking for small words so I will begin to understand something too big for me to know.

  He says, “You know what happens, right? When someone like your mother decides that her daughter hanging out with someone like me is a bad look for the family?”

  I nod, but I’m not really hearing. Not yet.

  “I can’t be that,” he continues. “I just can’t do that anymore.”

  He’s my best friend. Right? He’s been inside my tunnel. He’s heard the echo. He knows what billboards are under my giant owl’s wings. I don’t have anyone else.

  “You know I wasn’t laughing because I thought it was funny, though, right?” I say.

  “But do you know why I laughed? Because you needed me to laugh with you,” he says.

  I feel horrible. I should feel horrible.

  I think back to that night on his couch. I strip the LSD from it and I try to put myself in Ian’s shoes. My fucking mother. I strip the kisses from it and try to put myself in Ian’s shoes. My fucking mother. I try to feel what he felt when he read that text but I can’t. I have no idea. I don’t even know what to say.

  I say, “Fuck.”

  He says, “I know this whole thing is unfair to you.”

  “No. I get it. I really do.” I say this but I’m really trying to figure out what I can do differently to make this not happen. My fucking mother.

  “All those years we couldn’t hang out at your house made me feel things I shouldn’t feel. All that sneaking around because of who I am,” he says. “And I am who I am.”

  “A best friend is the one person you shouldn’t have to feel that way around. Not when you’re stuck in a town like this,” I say.

  “Something like that.”

  I sit and realize that maybe I became a sneaky weed-dealing girl not because I needed a car, not because I needed the weed, but because I’d started out as a sneaky girl in fourth grade because of my mother. So the rest of the sneaky bullshit just fell into place.

  “I’ll miss hearing about complaining shoppers,” I say.

  “And I’ll miss hearing about gimme-gimme Drive-Thru customers.”

  “Maybe you can text me when people complain about scheduling physical therapy now,” I say but Ian’s head is already shaking.

  “No,” he says.

  “I just wish we could . . .” I leave it there. I want Ian to have a nice life. I want him to go to college and live through every unnecessary traffic stop. I just want him to be okay. I say, “Truth be told, I was falling for you anyway. This is probably for the best.”

  “Impossible,” he says. “I’m not even your type.”

  “How wrong you are.”

  Ian looks perplexed now. He came here to break off our best-friendship and only now realized that he might be breaking my heart. Except he’s not. He’s Ian. I held on to his penis once because it was there. We kissed because we were on drugs. We pressed flowers because we were in fifth grade. We went roller-skating because it was my birthday. It’s the becauses that matter. Which is what’s making this so hard. Because I’m not a racist nightmare. Because it’s my mother’s fucking bell, not mine.

  Ian starts the car again, and we head toward my house. A car follows him close for a few blocks, and Ian stops completely at four yield signs before the guy peels off. Ian parks on the street a few doors down from my house and I get out of the car. He waves. I wave. When he pulls out from the curb, he checks all directions because he’s careful. When he drives up the street, I imagine him never looking back. He deserves that. Took some balls to do what he just did. Makes me realize how everything he ever does will require balls like that. Not just because of people like my mother, either. We’re all a little like that. We never stop to think about it. But we all are.

  Marla & Gottfried’s Easter Dinner, Take Two

  84 Days since the Snowstorm—April 1, 2018

  Marla is hiding plastic neon-colored Easter eggs in the front flower bed. Gottfried is hacking at a patch of onion grass with a trowel four feet behind her. He stops to watch two spring robins chirp from a limb.

  “Do you think these are too hidden?” Marla asks.

  Gottfried goes back to his onion grass. “They’ll find ’em.”