Iris wants to hear her mother say, “Yes, we are, very.” But Iris knows enough about mothers by now, or her mother, anyway, to know that mothers don’t always do just what you want; they have secret thoughts of their own. Iris finds this disturbing. She wants her mother to know exactly what she is thinking, to feel what she is feeling, to understand what she means inside, without having to utter a peep. She wants her mother to have her feelings and thoughts, and when she perceives her mother might be somewhere in her own locked room of thoughts and not paying close attention, Iris is
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