Circles of Confusion by April Henry

someone inside chatting away. When Jean opened the door, Claire realized the sounds she had heard had come from the twenty-seven-inch Sony that held pride of place in the living room.
    A look of alarm passed over her mother's round face. "What are you doing here this time of day?" She was dressed in a purple velour jogging suit that had never been jogged in. "You didn't get laid off, did you?"
    "Don't worry, Mom, I'm taking a few days off and was just out for a run. I'll have that job until I die." Claire said it in jest, but she suddenly had a vision of herself at sixty-five, her age-spotted hands bringing down the Rejected stamp on some twenty-first-century version of ILUV69.
    Her mother had already transferred her gaze back to the TV set. A talk show had degenerated to the point where two young girls were toe to toe, screaming at each other, while the audience hooted and booed. "If you stay long enough, you'll have a chance to see your sister."
    "Where's the baby?" Claire asked. Her mother, who claimed her bad back had ruled out a full-time job years ago, made a little money under the table watching Susie's toddler, Eric.
    "Asleep in the back bedroom. You can take a peek at him if you want."
    As she walked down the hall, Claire was lapped by waves of sound, first from the five-inch black-and-white battery-powered Panasonic on the kitchen counter, then from the thirteen-inch Hitachi in her mother's bedroom. At the end of the hall, Claire turned the doorknob stealthily and pushed the door open. Even in here, a TV was on, an old nineteen-inch Zenith that at least was tuned to Sesame Street. Eric, who was just over a year old, lay facedown, fast asleep with his knees drawn up under his chest and his overalled butt in the air.
    Her mother's whisper startled Claire. The baby had the power to pull even her mother away from her TV show. "Doesn't he have hair just like Top Ramen?"
    Claire smiled and reached out to touch the pale kinked waves. Eric sighed and rolled on his side. She pulled her hand back, afraid of waking him. It had been several months since Claire had seen him, and already he looked more like a little boy, not the baby she remembered.
    "I cut out the TV Guide for the day he was born, to put in his baby book." Jean pulled up a blanket to cover him, patted him so softly that he didn't stir. "You could get you one of these, you know. And you'll be thirty-five next week, so it's not like there's much time left. They have stories all the time on TV about women who wait too long and then figure out their body won't cooperate anymore."
    "Evan doesn't feel ready to get married, Mom." Claire surprised herself by adding, "I don't know if I would want to be married to him anyway."
    "Married? Who says you have to be married? I didn't have to be married to have you and Susie. And Susie may be as good as married to J. B., but she sure don't have the piece of paper to prove it." Susie had been the product of a liaison with an on-again, off-again truck- driving boyfriend who still occasionally showed up to take Jean out to dinner or to give Susie a birthday present two months after the fact. When she was growing up, Claire had actually envied her sister the certainty of knowing her father, and knowing that he loved her, at least in a small way.
    Her mother turned and shuffled back down the hall in too-small metallic gold mules. Claire trailed behind her. In the living room, Jean huffed a little as she bent over and pressed a button on the bottom of the TV, flicking past different images until the opening credits for A Better Tomorrow came on.
    "The batteries went out on my remote. I have got to get to the store today." Jean tapped on the forehead of a rugged-looking man with a stethoscope around his neck. He was holding an anguished conversation with a nurse while they stood inside a supply closet. "His ex-wife is one of the models on The Price Is Right."
    Claire was confused. "The doctor's ex-wife?"
    "No, honey, the actor's