Full part: At our family barbecue, my four-year-old son asked for a few fries; my mother moved the plate out of reach and said, “Those are only for my real grandchild”; everyone laughed; I took his hand and walked him to a restaurant; before midnight, Mom was calling over and over; I replied with one word: “Remember…”

I was the one there.

She was the one being there for Dad out loud, where it counted for something.

When the barbecue invitation came, I almost didn’t go, but my mother made a point of it, and I understood why. There would be relatives at that barbecue—aunts, cousins, family friends.

My mother needed the picture to look right. She needed the whole clan present and smiling so no one would ask too many questions about who was actually holding my father together.

I was part of the picture she needed.

Dany was an afterthought she’d tolerate.

I told myself it was one afternoon. I dressed my son in a good shirt. I made a pasta salad in my nicest bowl and drove us over to my mother’s house with no idea that I was walking into the last hour I would ever spend pretending.

It was a bright, hot Saturday at the end of August. The backyard was full of people and the smell of charcoal. There were two coolers on the patio. One had a piece of blue tape on it that said FAMILY in my mother’s handwriting.

That was where the good drinks were.

I set my pasta salad on the far end of the food table next to the trash bags because that was the only clear space, and nobody moved it anywhere better.

Carter was the center of the yard. My nephew, five years old, was passed from lap to lap and praised for every ordinary thing a five-year-old does. My mother had his artwork clipped to a little easel by the drinks like it was a gallery opening.

Dany stayed close to my leg. He was shy in that yard, the way he never was at the salon, because some part of him had already learned that this was not a place where his name got called.