I looked at the TV with my mom while we ate a Monday dinner of fish sticks and Tater Tots I’d cooked in the toaster oven. She’d come home with a strained face about an hour before, but hadn’t said a word about where she’d been. The six o’clock sun peered through the blinds.
“Why’s it you keep picking at the sofa cushion and kicking the coffee table like that?” she asked. “Are you worried about school tomorrow? I used to get so worked up before the first day of school I’d get these awful nervous farts. The worst you’ve ever smelled. They just slipped on out. Nothing I could do about it.”
“Mom,” I said, “when’s all this trouble with Hayes going to be over?”
She was quiet for a while. “If he’s done what I told him to do, it’s already over.”
“What’d you tell him this time?”
She blinked her eyes for half a second and then stared hard at the coffee table. “That stupid man.”