On autopilot, I drove past the grand homes on Main Street, the still-grand homes on Elm and Maple, past the smaller but neat-as-a-pin cottages on Locust and Chestnut, past the quiet ranch homes in the subdivision on the outskirts of town, over the railroad tracks, and back out into the country. The houses were farther apart now, some with adjoining farms, some stranded in a sea of rusted and busted-out cars forever on blocks.

Finally I turned onto the long winding driveway, gravelly and pitted, lined with flower boxes painted in Day-Glo yellow, orange, purple, and pink. Here and there, signs propped up in the flower boxes shouted motivational messages in neon green:

LESS TROOPS MORE HUGS

A WOMAN NEEDS A MAN LIKE A FISH NEEDS A BICYCLE

NO DAY BUT TODAY

Pretty sure that last one was a line from Rent. My eyes rolled, a conditioned response. As I bumped down the driveway, reading the new signs mixed with the old, I tried to see her as others might see her. Happy. Positive. Eternally optimistic.

I still saw the woman in overalls with a flower behind her ear who brought me my lunch bag when I deliberately left it at home, telling me in front of all of my friends to make sure I didn’t pick off my bean sprouts from my sandwich, that I needed the fiber for my constitution.

Mortifying.

I drove around the last bend in the driveway and found myself in front of my childhood home. Though it had been a few years, it looked exactly the same. Two-story clapboard with peeling white paint. Expansive front porch covered in half-finished art projects. Whirlybirds and pinwheels scattered across the front lawn, which could use a good mowing. At least three different paint colors had been tried out here and there on the side of the house, all abandoned when something else had caught my mother’s attention. Knotholes where woodpeckers tap-tap-tapped right on through, and occasionally brought their friends the squirrels. Always nice to wake up to a scurry in the walls.

But home was home. I parked the car, dragged my luggage onto the porch, and debated whether to knock. On the front door of the house I’d lived in since I was three days old.

Screw the knock, I thought, and turned the handle.

It was locked.

So I knocked. No answer.

Are you kidding me?

I marched through the backyard, past the signs encouraging me not to worry but to be happy, and dug for the key that still lived under the planter by the back door. I knocked once more, then let myself in.

Every house has a smell. You can smell it when you visit someone’s house for the first time. Sometimes it’s good, like cinnamon and clean laundry. Pecan rolls and pipe tobacco. Sometimes it’s bad. Febreze and cabbage. Curry and hamster cage. Stale pizza and dead skin cells. (If you’ve ever been to a college guy’s apartment then you’re familiar with the latter. Like I said, every house has a scent.) And that scent tells a story. You usually can’t smell your own home, unless you’ve been on vacation for a while and manage to get a quick whiff when you first come home. Or if you moved away for several years.

One deep breath and I was home. Steel-cut oatmeal. Borax. And patchouli. I looked around and found it exactly the same as it always was. Same Camp Snoopy water glasses drying by the sink. Same white-and-brown ceramic mushroom canisters lined up on the counter. Same bicentennial plates hung from the wall, although Rhode Island seemed to be missing.

“Mom? You home?” I called, knowing she wasn’t.

And suddenly I was pissed. I’d driven across the entire country, walked away from my own business (my fury didn’t care about facts), and shown up so she could race around the world. And she wasn’t. Even. Home.

I banged back out the door, jumped into my car, and headed back into town. It was Monday morning. I had a good idea where she was.

When I pulled into the back parking lot of the diner, I swung into the slot beside her car. Wood-paneled cars ran in the family, and there was no mistaking her 1977 station wagon with the Darwin bumper sticker. And the faded Vote Mondale/Ferraro! sticker that still lingered.

I grabbed my purse and barreled through the back door into the kitchen, straight into a scene I’d seen a thousand times. Tickets flying. Bells dinging. Feet running. The door to the walk-in fridge banged as people ran in and out. Vegetables chopped. Pans sautéed. An army of retro-looking waitresses (we had our own Flos) barking orders and bringing food, dressed in pink and green polyester dresses that perfectly matched the seat covers. There was a certain rhythm. There was a certain madness. There was also laughter—and mostly from my mother.

She stood in the center of the Fantasia-like storm, her dirty apron tied back expertly, her frizzy, gray-streaked hair whisked back into a bun, wearing a broad smile as she expedited orders, ran food, and shouted special requests left and right: “For Table 16 I need two dots and a dash, two eggs wrecked, a club high and dry, and a cowboy with spurs.”

She caught my eye over the chaos, and a second later I was wrapped in a bear hug that would take out a quarterback. I hugged back, unable to stop the laugh that popped out. Mostly because all of my air was forced out at once. Mostly.

“Roxie, you’re early! I thought you’d be here this afternoon, or even tonight. When did you get in?”

“Just now—I was so close last night that I just decided to keep going.”

“I’m so glad you got my note.”

“What note?” I asked as she pulled back to look me over, eyes assessing.

“On the front door, that I was working the early shift. How else did you know I was here?”

“I guessed. And there wasn’t a note, Mom.” I shook my head.

“Sure there was. I taped it to the front door on my way out this morning, when I . . . Oh shoot, here it is,” she said, shaking her own head at the piece of paper she pulled out of her apron.

Roxie—I’m working the early shift, come on down. So glad you’re here!

“Oh well, you’re here! That’s all that matters! And not a moment too soon; we are in the weeds. Carla called in sick at 4 a.m. so I had to come down to open up this morning, and one of our dishwashers quit last week and I haven’t had a chance to replace him. Did you bring your apron?”

“Bring my— Mom, I literally came straight here after driving all night and—”

“No trouble, just grab one off the wall. I need to get moving, those beans have been sitting in the window too long as it is, talk when the rush is over? Thanks, sweetie!” she called out, turning to yell to Maxine, one of the oldest waitresses. “Those whistle berries are getting cold, get those out to Table Seven on the double!”

“Stuff it, Trudy! Hiya, Roxie! Great to have you home again!” came the response, and the chaos resumed.

I stood in the center, wondering what had just happened.

“You remember how to peel potatoes? We’re getting low on fries and I’d love to get ahead before the lunch rush,” my mom chirped as she sped by me, turning me toward a mountain of potato sacks.

“I know how to peel potatoes, for goodness’ sake,” I mumbled testily, realizing there wasn’t any way I was getting out of this. My mother was already heading back to the front counter, shouting over her shoulder to “Burn one, run it through the garden, and pin a rose on it.”

“It’s faster just to say burger with lettuce and tomato,” I told the potatoes, which looked back at me blandly. Because they had eyes, you see.

I grabbed a clean apron off the wall, grabbed the least dull and least likely to cut me knife from the block, and started filling a hotel pan with water to soak the cut potatoes. We served steak fries at the diner, thick cut and big enough to fill a hot dog bun, should someone choose. But that didn’t mean they couldn’t be perfect steak fries. So I settled in with my paring knife, peeling and slicing and lining them up with perfect uniformity. I dug out eyes, trimmed away green, and lost myself in the details.