You will spend one more strained and bittersweet afternoon in the living room with your parents listening to Frank Sinatra because they’re leaving Las Vegas, and your father is a sucker, and you’re a sucker, and all your hearts are lead, and your mother has killed the sucker that used to wear her skin and now nothing can destroy her. You’ll feel all of your angry muscles start to break down into fat. You’ll knot your griefs like a daisy crown, you’ll throw it like a whip. You will hold facts in your hands like hot rubies. You will make plans to behave badly. You’ll swear to break yourself for good so that you can start putting yourself together again. You will do gentle math in your head and come up with zero.

Your mother will spend the day reading library books and asking you periodically if you know how to fix certain things, if you know how to live. Your father will crack jokes and look sad and pray to you for you.