“I just thought about it. It doesn’t matter.”

“No, it doesn’t,” my mother said. “I could’ve been married eight times. I’m just sorry he said that to you. He’s not generous sometimes.”

“He didn’t say that,” I said. But I’d said it enough, and I didn’t care if she believed me or didn’t. It was true that trust was not a big issue between us then. And in any event, I know now that the whole truth of anything is an idea that stops existing finally.

“Is that all you want to know, then?” my mother said. She seemed mad, but not at me, I didn’t think. Just at things in general. And I sympathized with her. “Your life’s your own business, Jackie,” she said. “Sometimes it scares you to death it’s so much your own business. You just want to run.”

“I guess so,” I said.

“I’d like a less domestic life, is all.” She looked at me, but I didn’t say anything. I didn’t see what she meant by that, though I knew there was nothing I could say to change the way her life would be from then on. And I kept quiet.

In a while we walked across 10th Avenue and ate lunch in the cafeteria. When she paid for the meal I saw that she had my father’s silver-dollar money clip in her purse and that there was money in it. And I understood that he had been to see her already that day, and no one cared if I knew it. We were all of us on our own in this.

When we walked out onto the street, it was colder and the wind was blowing. Car exhausts were visible and some drivers had their lights on, though it was only two o’clock in the afternoon. My mother had called a taxi, and we stood and waited for it. I didn’t know where she was going, but I wasn’t going with her.

“Your father won’t let me come back,” she said, standing on the curb. It was just a fact to her, not that she hoped I would talk to him or stand up for her or take her part. But I did wish then that I had never let her go the night before. Things can be fixed by staying; but to go out into the night and not come back hazards life, and everything can get out of hand.

My mother’s taxi came. She kissed me and hugged me very hard, then got inside the cab in her powder-blue dress and high heels and her car coat. I smelled her perfume on my cheeks as I stood watching her. “I used to be afraid of more things than I am now,” she said, looking up at me, and smiled. “I’ve got a knot in my stomach, of all things.” And she closed the cab door, waved at me, and rode away.

I walked back toward my school. I thought I could take the bus home if I got there by three.