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“I’m making a roast chicken,” she said, as if I hadn’t noticed.

“Sounds good.”

“Do you ever make it for your family?”

“Not that often. With everyone’s schedules, we can’t always have dinner together.”

“Family dinners are important. You need to make it a priority. I hope you’re not getting takeout all the time.”

“We rarely get takeout.”

“Why would you ever get takeout?” She didn’t wait for an answer, which was good, because I didn’t have one. She put the chicken in a pan, tied its legs, and patted it down with paper towels. She treated it as if it were getting a massage, not about to be burned from the inside out. After giving the chicken a rubdown, she washed her hands again. Then she opened cabinets and began grabbing spices. Every jar in her cabinet was neatly arranged and facing forward so you could read the labels easily. She shook what looked like ten different spices over the chicken. I didn’t think I had that many spices in my entire kitchen.

“You want some tea?” she asked.

“No, thanks.” Having me just sit watching her cook was making her nervous. She took a mug out of the cabinet, put a tea bag in it, and put the kettle on the stove. She might have wanted tea herself, or she might have thought I should have it. What I wanted didn’t always matter.

“Did your dad ask you to come over?”

“No.” We both knew I was lying. The phone rang, and she pushed the button for the speaker phone. It was my father checking to see what time she was coming that afternoon. She took the phone off speaker and excused herself from the room, as if she had state secrets to share with him that I shouldn’t be privy to. She was probably grilling him to see if he’d sent me to see her. I was mentally preparing what I would say when she told me how hurt and disappointed she was that my dad had forced me to come visit. I’d deny that was why I came. Then she’d say she should’ve known when I showed up that I didn’t come there on my own accord. She’d lament how her own daughter didn’t want to spend time with her. I was getting stressed; the guilt was overwhelming. These arguments were why I didn’t want to come. I was an adult. I could do whatever I wanted. I suddenly realized I was arguing with myself.

She came back in the room and hung up the phone. Then she took a plastic bag out of the drawer and used it to pull the gizzard and neck out of the chicken. She wasn’t talking; something wasn’t right.

“Is Dad okay?” I asked.

“I think so.” She picked up the salt shaker. When she didn’t stop shaking it over the chicken, I got up and took it out of her hands. “He’s been a little confused,” she said. “He just asked me two different times when I was coming to see him today. Jerry’s noticed it too.”

“Dad’s seventy-six, and who knows how much sleep he gets in there,” I said. Mom was only one year younger, but it seemed like twenty. She had none of his health issues, tried to eat nutritious foods, and meditated every morning. The woman was going to outliveme.

“I hope that’s it,” she said as the tea kettle let out a loud whistle. She poured hot water in the mug and handed it to me. I guess I was having tea. “You never did say why you came by today,” she said as she put the chicken in the oven. “What did you do?”

“Why do you think I did something?”

“Because you don’t usually show up here without calling first.”

I’d never shared any of my problems with her, and I don’t know what propelled me to do it now. “Have you ever wondered if you made the right choices in your life?” I asked. “Like if you should’ve gone back to work instead of staying home with me and Jerry?”

“Sometimes. There were days I was so bored, and you two would make me crazy. You’d both argue about everything, to the point I felt like I was in Congress.” She reached for a plate of cookies on the counter. Even though I saw her wash her hands after she touched the chicken’s gizzard and neck, when she picked up a cookie and offered it to me, I was repelled. But not so repelled that I wasn’t going to eat one of her oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. I stuffed it in my mouth. “Are you regretting your decision to give up your career and stay home with Gia?”

“No, but now that she’s older, she doesn’t need me the same way anymore.”

“Yeah, it’s in the job description. At some point, there’s cutbacks, and you get demoted.”

“That’s funny, Mom. You were never funny when we were kids.”

“You develop a sense of humor after your kids are gone. You’ll see, next year after Gia leaves, you’ll be doing stand-up comedy.” I laughed.

She took a cookie and sat down at the table. “So, are you thinking of going back to work?”

“Maybe.”

“I used to wish I’d gone back, but life kept getting in the way.”

She understood what I was trying to say; maybe we were more alike than I thought. Had I been misjudging her all this time? I looked at her with fresh eyes. Here was a woman making roast chicken, something she never used to make because my father hated it. I wondered how many other things she’d given up for him. I felt this wave of connection with her, but as I reached out to put my hand on hers, she ran out of the room. A moment later she came back with a hairbrush and a mirror. She started to brush my hair from one side of my head to the other.

“What’re you doing?” I asked.

“You would look much better with your hair parted on the other side.” She surveyed my head as if she were assessing a dent in her car. “Here, look,” she said, holding up the mirror.