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went back to the file.
    â€œI like being one of the two oddballs around here,” he went on. “You and me, darlin’.”
    â€œExcuse me?” I said.
    â€œThe two of us are the oddities. We keep our moods cool and our eyes on the prize.”
    I was grateful that Peter and Rashad showed up just then asking Jacaboni to come “see something”—undoubtedly the latest grad student scribbles on their office chalkboard.
    â€œSure,” Jacoboni told them. “I don’t have anything else to do.”
    He winked at me as he left. When he was gone, I feigned throwing up in the trash can, just for my own benefit.
    I had Tuesday’s lunch date marked in red on my calendar, and I’d circled it three times so I wouldn’t forget. Mother, on the other hand, was still in her lab coat as she sailed into Marie Callendar’s at 12:15. She didn’t look much different than she did the night of her dinner, except that now she was wearing no lipstick at all. It made her look a little like a disheveled corpse.
    â€œWhat?” she said to me as she slid into the booth. “You’re looking at me like you’ve been waiting for two hours. I’m not that late.”
    I shook myself out of my stupor. “No, you’re fine.”
    â€œI don’t see why you wanted to meet all the way over here when there are places to eat on campus,” she said.
    She propped her menu in front of her, which gave me a chance to shift my face out of stunned mode. Not only did she look even more unkempt than the last time I’d seen her, but her voice was more slurred in person than it had been over the phone. It did nothing but confirm my drinking theory, and at this point even Max couldn’t have persuaded me otherwise.
    The problem was, if I was noticing it, it probably wasn’t escaping the people she was seeing every day—her colleagues, her employees, her superiors. I stared at my own menu without really seeing the words. If it was up to me as her dutiful daughter to say something to her about it, both of us were out of luck. Suddenly, I could conjure up the scene that would occur if I calmly said, “Mother, it’s time for you to admit you have a drinking problem.” I would be filleted with her icicle of a tongue and left for dead right there in the Marie Callendar’s booth. What had I been
thinking
, asking her here for a dressing down?
    I hadn’t thought at all, actually, and I was totally unprepared. It was throwing me—again.
    â€œWhat can I get you ladies?” said a perky little waitress.
    â€œChicken potpie, order of corn bread, salad bar,” Mother said and then slapped her menu closed.
    Perky and I exchanged momentary blinking stares, and then I hurriedly ordered the French onion soup. By the time the waitress was bustling away, Mother had already polished off her own glass of water and was reaching for mine.
    â€œI’m sure she’ll come back with a pitcher,” I said.
    My mother drained my glass and set it down. “So what is this all ablout, Jill?” she said.
    I leaned forward, as much to get a whiff of her breath as to speak. I couldn’t detect any alcohol, though she seemed to have bathed in Clinique.
    â€œDon’t you want to go get your salad first?” I asked.
    â€œWhat salad?”
    â€œYou ordered the salad bar.”
    â€œI did not.”
    â€œOh,” I said. “I thought you did.”
    â€œYou thought wrong. Now what did you want to talk to me about? As soon as I eat, I have to get back to the lab.”
    My stomach tightened. This was such a role reversal. It had always been my mother summoning
me
to an interrogation lunch or commanding
my
presence at a cross-examination dinner. I raked my hand through my hair and then winced, waiting for the inevitable “Stop that, Jill.” She didn’t say a word.
    â€œI just wanted to spend some time with you,” I lied.