Down the Shore by Stan Parish

one?” she asked me.
    I shook my head.
    â€œWhat’s wrong with you tonight?”
    â€œCan you watch out for deer?”
    My mother lit her cigarette and took a long drag.
    â€œDon’t talk to me like some friend of yours because you’re driving me around. Is it that girl from school?”
    â€œWhat girl?”
    â€œWhat did she really want?”
    â€œDessert,” I said, wondering if she could see my face flush in the dark.
    â€œDid she ask you for pot?”
    â€œNo.”
    My mother said nothing, so I turned to face her.
    â€œShe didn’t.”
    â€œWatch the road. Hold this.”
    She passed me her cigarette and wrestled out of her chef whites, which she tossed into my backseat. She was wearing a gray Bruce Springsteen T-shirt underneath, a souvenir from some concert at Jones Beach before I was born, worn to transparency under the arms and torn around the collar. She took one last drag before she tossed her cigarette and rolled the window up. When I was little, she would come home from jobs like the one we’d just left, pay the baby-sitter, and then sit on my bed to tell me about the dessert she had saved for me, smelling like sweat and smoke and her conditioner, which was how she smelled now, sealed up with me inside the Ford Explorer I had paid for with the money I made selling drugs.
    â€œShould I meet them at the Ivy for a beer?” she asked. “Should I pretend I don’t know about your fake ID and take you with me? You know what? Let’s go. I owe those guys. And then we’re going home. And don’t let me catch you with a drink in your hand.”
    â€œYou won’t,” I said.
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    The Ivy Inn sounds like one of those Princeton establishments trying to siphon off some of the university’s cache, but the squat ivy-green building had been a beer-and-a-shot joint since it opened in the ’60s, a bar where servers from around town got drunk after their shifts. It was the last place I wanted to go right then.
    â€œWhere are you going?” my mother asked as I drove past the bar.
    â€œI’m not parking out front. The cops watch that lot all night waiting for people to stumble out and get into cars.”
    â€œCan you pretend that you don’t know that stuff? I hate hearing you talk like that.”
    â€œYou asked.”
    â€œEven if I ask, then.”
    The bouncer looked up and down the street before he waved me in, but he held up his hand as my mother followed.
    â€œSorry, ma’am,” he said, smiling. “Need some ID.”
    â€œCute,” she said, brushing past him.
    Things were slow inside, and the room was strangely bright without the usual pack of bodies to absorb the light from beer signs and the jukebox and illuminated coolers full of packaged goods. There were a few career alcoholics stationed at the bar, a Mexican crew running the pool table, and my mother’s team at a table in the corner. Eric, the head bartender, had worked for us once upon a time, but he made more sense here, flipping bottles end over end, pouring blind, breaking up fights. He wore the Ivy’s signature polo shirt, which read C HARMED, I ’M S URE across the back. The armbands on his sleeves were notched to accommodate his biceps. Eric spent his days lifting at Gold’s Gym on Route 1.
    â€œWhoa, it’s family night in America,” he said when he saw us. “What can I get you? Shots?”
    â€œNo shots,” my mother said.
    â€œI can’t hear you,” Eric said. “I think you said, ‘Two shots. ’”
    â€œAm I seventeen?” my mother asked. “I’ll have a Bud Light. And he’ll have nothing. Hey, Eric, how often does my teenage son come in here?”
    â€œHim? Never. I don’t think I know this guy. He’s your son?”
    â€œJesus, are you all comedians? Don’t let me catch you serving him.”
    Todd was