Free Ask Again Later by Jill A. Davis

to buy two copies because we didn’t want to share.
    It’s over pistachios and raspberry tea that I finally have the guts to say it.
    â€œMom, I’m not nurse material,” I say.
    â€œI don’t need a nurse,” Mom says. “I feel perfectly lovely.”
    â€œWe should have had this conversation before I quit my job,” I say.
    â€œDon’t get me wrong. I’m happy you’re here. But I’m not the reason you quit that job,” Mom says. “I have no idea why you turned out so afraid.”
    â€œI don’t either,” I say. It’s half true.
    My second-grade teacher’s euphemism for a lie was “half truth.” But it’s not that straightforward. Like most big decisions, quitting my job was part of a chain reaction waiting for the perfect combination of events to set it off.
    I wouldn’t have quit my job if she had not been diagnosed. Yet she is not the reason I quit my job. She is the push that got me to quit the job, which I was all too happy to quit in the moment. It was a convenient time to escape getting closer to Sam. It also looked like I might have a helpful role in my mother’s life. A closeness that was never there. I had a split second to choose at the fork in the road, and I chose the past instead of the future. I don’t regret choosing the well-traveled road.
    But to say she has no clue what I’m afraid of…As far as I know, my mom hasn’t had a relationship that was important to her since my father disappeared. It’s more than a little terrifying to be all she has.

Jim’s Office
    IT’S WINTER, and I walk the eighteen blocks to my father’s office in new boots. I’m taking him up on his offer of lunch, which he made out of politeness that day at my mom’s. He’s rescheduled twice already. I’ll be shocked if he’s at work when I arrive.
    Since I now must account for the time I spend away from my mother, I walk everywhere. It allows me to leave home twenty minutes early for each outing. Because when I’m not with her, that must mean there is something more important…some competition for my attention.
    I show identification, then take the elevator to the twenty-ninth floor. The elevator seems to fly straight up in the air, and I feel taller when it stops. Above the little people. Height by association. I exit the elevator. There is a wide corridor leading to a large wooden desk, encased in bank-type bulletproof glass. It is the nucleus of this legal establishment. The stopgap. I’m guessing it’s a post–9/11 installation. A moderately useful monument to over-the-top security measures.
    A gray-haired woman sits behind the desk. She adjusts her glasses. She doesn’t recognize me, so she waves me off with her hand and returns to her paperback.
    I knock on the glass. She doesn’t look up. I pace. I knock again. She ignores the knock. The perfect analogy for the relationship I have with my father. He’s right there,around the corner, less than fifty feet away. And so unreachable.
    I knock on the glass again. The old woman shrugs. Points to the elevator. I point to her, and then to the door. I mouth the words “I’m here to meet Jim—Jim Rhode.”
    Someone else approaches the glass door. Raps his knuckles, and shakes the handle.
    â€œHer vision isn’t great,” he says. “And she refuses to make coffee, but—”
    â€œShe’s a good kisser?” I say.
    â€œWell, that, too,” he says. “But I was going to say that she bakes these amazing homemade pies every few weeks.”
    A loud dull buzz precedes a loud click, followed by the sound of vibrating glass. The freeing of the lock. He holds it for me. “Who are you here to see?” he asks.
    â€œJim Rhode,” I say.
    â€œCheck fraud? Divorce? New will? Nothing violent, I hope,” he says.
    â€œFree lunch,” I say. Avoiding my life.