Chapter 13: One Layer in the Pan

My mother arrived at six-thirty on Thursday morning with a suitcase and her own pillow.

"I'm staying until you can find your son's inhaler without me," she said.

"Mom, I'm fine."

"You have been fine for three years, Miles."

"Look where it got everybody."

She walked past me into the kitchen, put on her reading glasses, and opened the blue binder on the island.

She had clearly read it already.

The corners of three pages were folded down.

"It's Thursday," she said.

"What does Thursday say?"

I looked at the page.

"Swim practice," I said.

"Inhaler before," Dolores said.

"Where is the inhaler?"

I opened the drawer by the fridge, then the one by the stove, then the one with the takeout menus.

Jamie came down the stairs in his school jacket and watched me do it.

"It's in the front pocket of my swim bag," he said.

"Mom put a spare in the car, too, but Dad has a different car now."

"I have the same car," I said.

"You have the old one," Jamie said.

"Mom's spare is in her car."

My mother did not say a word.

She just turned a page of the binder and let the silence do it for her.

I drove Jamie to school at seven-forty with the inhaler in my coat pocket, and I checked it twice at red lights.

At the gate, a mother I knew from the bake sale nodded at me.

It was a small nod, and it was the first one anyone had given me all week.

I took it home.

That evening my mother handed me an apron.

"Fried chicken," she said.

"Jamie wants it, so you're making it, and you're making it from scratch, not the bag."

"I've never fried chicken."

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