Memento Nora by Angie Smibert

rather see me get a tattoo than an ID chip, although we’ll both need one to live in Los Palamos.
     
    “These shoes would look cute on you,” Mom said, pointing out a pair of these aqua blue Mary Jane sneakers with gel soles in the window of Shoe City.
     
    I shrugged. They were cute, but I already had something similar in my closet. In pink.
     
    “Or maybe you need something a little older.” Mom pointed to a pair of red leather flats on the display table.
     
    I wanted them less than the sneakers.
     
    “Honey, are you okay?” Mom asked. “You don’t seem your usual glossy self.”
     
    I looked at my mother—past her cute, short, cropped brown hair; her flawless makeup; her impeccable Georgia Tatum clothes—and saw this tiredness, this sadness in her hazel eyes that made me want to cry. It made me want to tell her everything, but I wasn’t sure where to begin.
     
    So I said I was fine.
     
    She said we needed cookies. Big ones.
     
    I used some of my TFC points to get us two huge chocolate chips and two small mochaccinos. Mom wanted to use hers, but I had five hundred points to burn and not a clue what I wanted to use them for. We sat in the food court of that cheesy mall and stared at our food for a couple of minutes.
     
    “It’s the move, isn’t it?” she asked.
     
    “I don’t know,” I answered. I actually hadn’t thought much about moving to Los Palamos, but it was like three weeks away now. Mom had already started packing our winter clothes and the stuff in the basement.
     
    “It’ll be okay,” she said, taking a tentative sip of her coffee. “Though it’s certainly not my top choice of places to live.” She took a big bite of her cookie.
     
    “Why not?” I asked. But I really wanted to ask her something else.
     
    “Locking people out—or in—isn’t my idea of community,” she said. “Back when our house was built, people sat out on their stoops and talked to one another. They knew one another. They didn’t hide behind elaborate security systems and blast-proof windows. There was no curfew at night. You could walk or ride your bike or skateboard everywhere.”
     
    That was her rant about our neighborhood. Usually I tuned it out. Dad was always saying she lived in the past.
     
    But this time I was listening.
     
    She swished the whipped cream around in her coffee as she pondered something. “Moving to a compound just seems like giving in,” she said after a few moments. “And I’ve done too much of that already.”
     
    I wasn’t sure to what exactly she was giving in. Dad? Work? Life? Whatever it was, it looked like it was wearing her down.
     
    “What did Dad mean about not getting a house there sooner?” I asked. He’d made it seem as if it was her fault they wouldn’t let us in until now.
     
    She sighed. “I don’t know if you remember, but I used to practice a different kind of law. I had my own small firm—and I defended those people your father considers ‘security risks.’”
     
    I’d heard Dad talking about those quote-unquote people many times. That was his rant. He said real Americans worked hard and bought stuff for their families so that other real Americans could do the same thing. One gear turning the other, making the economic engine work, he liked to say. Anything else, anything that interfered with that, was un-American. Bad for business. Bad for the country. Good for the Coalition terrorists.
     
    I usually ignored his rants, too.
     
    “Ethan complained that it was hurting his business,” Mom said. “And the law kept changing to make it nearly impossible for me to do my job. So I went into real estate.”
     
    I remembered when she’d switched. It was right after that trip to the beach. I was about six or seven, and Mom had gotten me out of bed one night. She’d packed our bags and said we were going on vacation. “Dad has to work,” she’d said, “and we’re leaving now so we can be there to see the sun rise over the