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years of her marriage, like the ones where she and my dad are holding Meg in the hospital. Second of all, she hadn’t had the hairdresser blow it out, so it was curly. Curly, like Tina’s.
    She stood up as I came in and walked around the table. On her feet was a pair of flip-flops like Tina’s, and she was grinning a huge grin at me.
    “So, what do you think?” “Wow,” I said. “I know!” she said. “Tina convinced me to do it. Is it awful?”
    “No, Mom, it’s … You look great. Really.” This was so weird. Why was my mother so interested in looking like Tina all of a sudden?
    I was insanely relieved when just then the real Tina walked into the kitchen holding a huge paper bag with ears of corn poking over the top. It was way easier to look at her than my mom. “Henry brought the corn.” She put the bag down on the counter. “He’s off to play golf, but he dropped it off. Hi, Kate. Want to shuck?”
    “I’ve never shucked before,” I said, giggling a little at how dirty it sounded. “What’s involved?”
    Giggling too, Tina put her hand on my shoulder. “You always remember your first shuck,” she said. “Let’s make it tonight.”
    Actually, shucking corn isn’t so bad. You rip off the husk and then there are all of these soft, silky threads that you have to peel away, and once you do you’re left with a pristine ear of corn. In a little while, the bag on the floor between my legs was overflowing with strands of corn silk and empty husks, and there was a pile of bald corn on a platter next to me. The whole experience was very satisfying.
    “So,” said Tina, “how’d it go with Natasha?” She had a glass of white wine on the counter in front of her, and she was chopping garlic while my mom read through a cookbook. Apparently tonight was just a dry run for the feast we’d be having tomorrow, when Tina’s brother, Jamie, arrived for the long Fourth of July weekend.
    “Oh, yeah,” I said. “I’ve been meaning to ask you about that. She’s kind of—”
    “Pissed off?” Tina finished, stopping what she was doing to look in my direction.
    “Exactly,” I said. “Pissed off. At me !” I added. “I mean, okay, her dad is such a jerk. But what did I ever do to her?”
    “What’s this?” asked my mom, looking up from a page that had a line drawing of a fish in a pan.
    Now that I’d had a chance to get a little used to my mom’s haircut, I didn’t mind it so much. I told her about Natasha.
    “What grade did you say she was in? Eighth?” asked my mom.
    “I don’t know,” I said, turning and looking to Tina’s back for an answer.
    “She must be going into ninth,” said Tina after a second. “Because her mom said something about her being at the high school next year.”
    I couldn’t believe a girl who was only two grades behind me in school was supposed to take me seriously as an instructor. Maybe she was just resentful that her dad had hired some kid to teach her.
    My mom shook her head. “Yeah, that’s a tough age,” she said. “When I was teaching, I always struggled with the eighth graders. They’re tricky.”
    “Well, Dad said I don’t have to take responsibility for her anger,” I said. Was it my imagination, or did my mom and Tina exchange a look when I said that?
    “That’s true,” said my mom, and I was relieved she didn’t say something negative about being married to my dad, like she had earlier on the deck with Tina. “You know,” she continued, “you could try talking to her about stuff other than tennis. I remember sometimes I’d have a kid who was bad in history or just resentful about school in general, but once in a while if I got him talking about something else, we could connect over that.”
    “You mean, like, ask her what it’s like to have such a major-league jerk as a father?”
    My mom and Tina both laughed. “Well, I was thinking more along the lines of asking her about something she might enjoy discussing with another teenager.