Sooner or later we all face two options.

—Grace

It’s come to this. Me in my new interview clothes in another part of town, a two-bus-transfer part of town. But early too. I head straight for the bathroom and work the routine: I press my lips together and slick my hair and fasten my coat buttons and brush lint from my sleeves and send my smile through warm-up.

When I come out, I drag in line behind a man wearing construction boots splattered with paint and snug jeans. The man orders off a sheet for his whole crew and stands aside picking paint flecks off his tattooed forearms. He’s the show until it’s my turn. The girl working the counter is as slight as I was at that age. She fixes the fishnet halo under her visor and asks to take my order. Not placing an order, I say. But may I see the manager, please. I’m here for an interview.

She disappears.

She comes back, asks me to step aside, and simpers at the next customer. Not too long after, a woman built to survive rambles out with a clipboard in her hand. She says her name is Pam. And you must be . . .

Grace, I say, and give her a once-over. What my first mind says about Pam: She’s been through the fire and got a soft spot for folks that seen the flame.

We sit in a booth near a window muddied with specials. She has a hairy mole on her cheek that’s tough to ignore. She slaps my app on a clipboard and checks it with a red pen. I can’t watch. I can’t not watch. I left the felony question blank, and when she gets down by where it’s at on the page and crisscrosses a red X. I turn to the window that looks onto the playground, see two boys tumble out of the mouth of a winding purple slide while a small girl stands by applauding.

There’s a huge difference between lowering your standards and adjusting your expectations. One day you’re driving your boys to a restaurant and ordering whatever they want off the menu and stuffing dollars in the donation box, and the next you’re interviewing for a job with, if you hadn’t of called your eldest, bus fare home and not much else. Sooner or later we all face two choices: either we can adjust our expectations or have them adjusted for us.

Pam wrinkles her brows. Hmm, no food service experience, she says. Do you at least have your food handler’s permit?

No, no food service on the résumé, I say. But I got three boys with big appetites, and I’ve kept them fed.

To tell the truth, the experience isn’t crucial, Pam says, but you couldn’t work without your permit.

Permit? Oh, I can get one, I say. I’ll go and get one as fast as you can.

Great, great. But first let’s talk about these work history gaps, she says. She points to one of her red X’s. I look away, see through the window behind her happy kids riding a carousel.

Work history, I say. Well, I was getting state checks for a few years. Then had some personal problems after that.

Problems? she says.

Yes, I say. But I’d rather not discuss, unless it’s necessary.

Who ain’t had them? she says, and flips the sheet. The way I see it, you here now, and that’s what matters. You could be back in that welfare line just as easy.

I nod and feel a flash of buoyance.

Oh, I see here you graduated from Jeff, Pam says.

Yes, I say. I’m a Dem.

Did you know Ronnie Reid? she asks.

Ronnie Reid with those colored eyes? I say.

Yes, him, she says.

Who didn’t know Ronnie Reid? I say

He’s my cousin, Pam says.

Wow, I say. Haven’t seen him in years.

You aren’t the only one, she says. They got him down there in Salem, gave him ten, but he’s close to home now.

Pam lays the pen on top of the clipboard and pushes it across the table. Looks like you left this blank, she says.

And there it is again: Have you ever been convicted of a felony?—a blinking neon billboard.

The choice is yours: Choose wise.

We either are or we aren’t.

Where we go, there we are.

Oh, I say, and force a smirk and grab the pen—a weight.

Don’t let them tell you otherwise; there’s a big, big difference between lowering and adjusting. Sooner or later there aren’t but two choices for all of us. Will they check if I lie? How long will it take for them to find out the truth?

The first few times you tell the truth and hope for goodwill, but afterwards you take your chance on lie.

Must’ve overlooked it, I say, and check the wrong box.

She rubs a finger. The light catches on one of her gold rings.

She would have hired me anyway, would have. If I’d explained how I’d been broke, out days, and scheming on a hit, if I’d told her how some guys I knew, but didn’t really know, but had been out with, told me about a hustle, if I’d told her how they’d promised that returning the TV they’d heisted would go down without a hitch. No probs, baby girl, is what they said. No problemo. On the other hand, they couldn’t do it, cause they were men and they were in bad shape and no one in their right mind was going to let them return anything, return nothing at all, looking the way they looked. So all I had to do, they explained, was take it back to the store and say I didn’t want it. Take it back and, they promised, we could split the money three ways even. And puff till our heads burst. Smoke till our lungs collapsed. But of course they were wrong, and I was caught and charged and convicted. Pam would have probably still given me the job if I’d come clean about that first conviction and the fraud—collecting state checks in two states—that finally earned me a trip downstate. If I’d explained what I told the judge about the troubles of raising three boys who outgrew clothes by the month, boys who deserved new tenny shoes and the latest games, who were worthy of much more than I could afford on the funky few hundred Oregon was giving me, which is why I kept the Oregon address when I moved across the river to Washington, kept the address and the state checks, not because I wanted to, but because I had to, and even though the judge just shook his head and gave me a year and a day, Pam would’ve understood why I’d agreed to the TV scheme, why I’d kept the checks, and even why I’d just checked the wrong box.

The kids rush in with a breeze whipping behind them. The girl working the counter dumps dirty trays. Elsewhere, the soda machine churns ice, meat sizzles, a knife knocks against a cutting board.