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with their shows, they’d put on music and all dance together, and Lenore and Angie thought they had the best, funniest mother there ever was to have in this world.
    That was when she only drank beer.
    When Lenore had quit school her mother had said she was a wise ass, and she was sorry she’d ever laughed at all those teacher jokes, that was what had made her a wise ass. Lenore had tried to tell her that wasn’t the reason.
    â€œThey put me on full time at the store,” she had said, “and I can bring home the money. You and Perry and me, we can have more things.”
    â€œBig deal,” her mother had said.
    â€œAngie quit school,” Lenore said.
    â€œAngie didn’t know no better. Angie was a dumb fool gettin’ herself pregnant. Besides, Angie didn’t take to school.”
    Somehow that made Lenore mad, the idea that just because you were good at something you had to keep doing it. “No reason to go,” she said.
    â€œWho do you think you are, girl?”
    â€œNobody special.”
    â€œThat’s for sure.”
    They had stood then with their eyes locked in a stare down until Lenore had dropped hers. Her mother could have left it alone at that but didn’t. She had picked up the bottle on the table and turned it upside down to demonstrate how empty it was. “Okay hot shit with all the money and the steady job, go on out and buy me a bottle of whiskey.”
    Lenore noticed her mother hadn’t combed her hair yet that day. Nor had she gotten out of the old terrycloth robe and the slippers that flapped on the linoleum when she walked. “No,” she said.
    â€œYou ain’t too old to be beat,” her mother said.
    â€œI am too,” she said. “But not old enough to buy at the liquor store.”
    â€œShut that smart trap.”
    Then they had both gotten louder and nastier, and Lenore had ended up telling her ma all the real reasons why she had to quit school, including that she was part of this family in which the mother was a mess of a drunk, Perry wasn’t getting taken care of, and them being on welfare made her stomach knot up. Then she had run out the door before her mother could see she was crying and walked and walked down Route 15 and hated her in a way that stung.
    Three months later she had walked out and gone to Mrs. Henry’s and rented a room with a kitchenette. At least Perry had been there and seen her ma go to get the strap, and Perry knew that the reason she had to leave was because she couldn’t let anyone ever beat up on her again, least of all her ma.

    Roland came in whistling and caught her with her mind way off loitering in her troubles. He was tying his apron, and she noticed out of the corner of her eye how it was the right size for him. He didn’t mention his lateness, but they both knew the clock had noted it.
    â€œSee ya tomorrow,” she said and went in the back to drop her apron in the laundry bin. As her card clicked in the time clock, she made her decision. She went home to read the book that Betsy had sent her from Alaska.

4.
    Lenore picked up the mail and went inside. She tucked the fat letter from Betsy under her arm to open the door and left it there while she went to the refrigerator, took a beer, then settled into the deep old chair with the stuffing hanging out the bottom that Mrs. Henry had proudly furnished with her room. It was one thing to anticipate a letter that hadn’t yet arrived. Lenore knew the disappointment that could lead to so she had set herself a policy of not expecting Betsy’s letters, not allowing herself to stand around at work thinking maybe one would come that day, but it was another thing once the letter was there—in the box, in the quiet of her room, in her armchair. She made herself open it slowly, read it slowly. She held her gratitude, her eagerness, under a type of control that would lengthen the pleasure of the experience.
    Dear