We each ate a couple or three spoons of ice cream, then she started to cry, or to try to talk, and then she stopped crying or trying to talk, and she paused the movie, took our bowls from our laps and set them on the table, and extended her arms and hugged us together, all our heads touching, and I don’t know who was sobbing but one of us was sobbing, my father or me, and the other one told her we both understood, said, “I understand. He understands, too,” and for a while we remained that way, pressed head to head, then my mother sat upright, and we followed suit, and she gave us our bowls of
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