IT’S LATE EVENING when Turk pulls his rental car into the driveway of my dad’s place. A sense of dread seizes my chest. The party is over. Now it’s time for the reckoning. As much as I can’t wait even another second to introduce my dad and Turk, the uncertainty of how my dad will react to learning what happened to his dad makes me want to lock us in the car and never, ever get out.

We carefully navigate the steep driveway in the dark and walk around to the front door. Something about this reunion feels inappropriate for the back door and the kitchen.

My mother answers when we knock. Her face is tense, and her lips are tighter. Part of me wants to grab her and hug her so hard that it’ll wring all the anger out of her and me. Another part wants to run.

“Hi Mom,” I say. “Not sure how to do this, so. Um. This is Turk Braverman. Dad’s dad’s … significant other. Turk, this is my mom, Renee Warren.”

She sticks her hand out tentatively, like she’s not sure if this is an appropriate response to what I’ve said. Thank God for Turk, who gently takes her hand and then steps forward and hugs her tense body.

Then the three of us walk in, and I squeeze her shoulder as I walk by. It’s like a squeeze question: Are we okay? I’m pretty sure we’re not. She doesn’t respond in any way I notice.

“He’s resting,” she says, as I point to my dad’s bedroom door.

Turk turns to her as if to ask permission. She nods ever so slightly.

Turk and I walk to the door. He knocks, and it takes Dad a long, long time to answer.

He looks at least a year older than when I left. His unshaven face sags, sallow. I think, No. This is not the person I’ve been talking to on the phone.

I hug him as tightly as I feel I can without hurting him. He smells stale, unshowered.

“You came back,” he says, his words labored as he squeezes me. “Yay.”

“Dad,” I say, pulling back from the hug. “This is Turk Braverman. He knew your dad.”

My dad just stands there, like he doesn’t know how to react. Turk sticks out his hand. My dad barely shakes it.

“Would you mind if I came in and talked with you for a bit?” Turk asks.

My dad looks scared. He looks at me. I nod. He looks at my mom, who nods too.

Even with his frailties, I am used to Turk being decisive in every action, every movement. So watching the way he reacts to my father is stunning to me. I can feel his uncertainty. I see it in his tentative glances, and the way he avoids looking at my dad. How weird this must be for him, I think.

My dad steps aside and allows Turk into his room. Turk closes the door.

I look at my mom, whose eyes plead for more information.

“I’m gonna hang out downstairs,” Aisha says, and she slips into the kitchen, heading toward the basement stairs.

When my mother and I are alone in the living room, neither of us speaks for a long time. I sit down on the couch, and she sits down in the love seat. I simply don’t know what to say. I don’t know what her excuse is.

Finally, she takes a deep breath, crosses her legs, and says, “I recognize that what you’ve done here is significant, Carson. I thank you for that. But that doesn’t change the fact that I feel like we need to have a real conversation about boundaries. I feel as though I allow you a lot of leeway, but I am your parent. It’s important for me to locate it when I feel as though my boundaries as a parent have been crossed.”

My face heats up. It gets hot, and then hotter. I feel like a teakettle with the heat turned way up, like if I don’t let something out right now, my head’s gonna start to whistle.

“MORE, PLEASE! ANYTHING, PLEASE! JUST … MORE!”

My mother reacts as if I’ve just socked her in the gut.

“I need more than that kind of talk. I mean it. You can’t do this to me anymore. I’m your kid. Who says that to their kid?”

“Who says what?”

“All this ‘locate,’ ‘own,’ ‘allow’ … You’re so clinical, so cold, Mom. You freeze me out.”

“You think I’m cold?” She sucks in her lips.

I don’t say anything. Her eyes redden and moisten. She swallows. A first tear falls.

This. This is what I’ve been afraid of all my life. This is why I count. So I don’t say something that melts my mom. I have melted my mother. I have made my mother cry.

“I don’t think —” I say, and then I stop. We’re here already. No going back. “I just think you sometimes play psychologist with me instead of, you know. Being my mom. You don’t show emotion. You don’t seem to care enough to get angry most of the time. You never hug me.”

This just makes the tears fall more, and she doesn’t wipe them away. It’s like she’s thawing. Liquid streams down her face as she speaks.

“Do you think I don’t know I’m not cut out for this? Do you think I haven’t told myself, every day since I had you, that I can’t do this? Every day, Carson. I hear the voice every day. Renee, you’re doing it wrong. You’re a terrible mother. I try to keep it together, and that only makes it worse.”

“I didn’t say you were a terrible mother,” I say. I look at her face, and she’s grimacing. “Mom —”

“You think you’re the only person with a mother who disappoints you? You think my parents were any better? My mother disapproved of every single choice I ever made. Driving around the country alone made me seem like a … prostitute. Getting pregnant before I was married? Do you have any idea? She wore black to my wedding, Carson. She told me your father was a huge mistake, that I was wasting my life away. When I came back to New York after the divorce, she told me I’d gone and ruined two lives. All I wanted to be was the kind of mother who didn’t do that to her child.”

I can’t imagine my grandma, my sweet, lovable grandma, doing these things. Saying these things. Is nobody pure? Is everybody fucked up? Is that life? Is that okay? Is it acceptable?

“Do you have any idea how much energy I spend trying to keep it together? Do you get that when I measure my words, I’m trying to protect you from me losing my … do you get that?”

“Maybe we should stop,” I say.

“Stop?”

“Trying to keep it together. Trying to protect each other from each other.”

Mom slides down from the love seat until she is sitting against it on the floor. I do the same off the couch. Our outstretched legs touch, and I’m waiting for her to pull her legs away. But she doesn’t. She doesn’t do or say anything.

I study her face. It’s tired. Discontent. She has a pimple on her forehead. She raises her head just slightly, and there’s just a bit of a booger visible at the end of her left nostril.

This horrible, stinky, sad idea strikes me and takes all the air from my body. My mom is just a person. A fucked-up person, like me, like Dad, like everyone.

It occurs to me for the first time in my life that it’s truly possible to know something and not know it at the same time. Because how could I not know that my mother is a flawed person? That she’s just me with slightly more experience? That she dropped me off at the zoo the first day we were here, not because her normal, brilliant understanding of the world had momentarily warped, but because she had no idea what else to do?

I crawl over to her and wrap my arms around her. She slowly gives in to the hug, uncoiling her tense body almost one vertebra at a time. I feel her letting go, and soon she turns toward me and hugs me back.

She leans her head against mine. I don’t pull away. “Thanks,” I say, marveling at the warm feeling of her skull against mine. “That was a treat. This is.”