She’s not always unpleasant, and it’s in moments like this—moments when her daughter seems beleaguered instead of belligerent, just plain tired—that Julia can most readily access love for her; it’s in moments like this that their problematic cycle of coddling and enabling gets renewed; Julia would be late to work for the rest of her life for just a few quiet moments like this in the car with her daughter, who isn’t elementally an asshole, not on an atomic level, just—with her chewed-down nails and her ridiculous shorts—seventeen.
