Larry faces the dark blue wall of his bedroom and then turns and faces the open room. The solar system – Mars, Jupiter, Earth, Venus, etc. – is above his head, dangling from the ceiling by fishing wire, soft Styrofoam balls. When he turns the light out at night, his ceiling shines with glow-in-the-dark stars and planets. His mother is walking back and forth past his open door, carrying laundry to and from the four bedrooms of their house – his sister’s, his brother’s, his parents’, his. She brings the laundry in, fresh-smelling and folded, and places it on his bed where he can reach it.
“You’re old enough to put it away by yourself now, Lawrence,” she says, and leaves the room. Always moving, his mother, always doing chores. They’ve got a housekeeper, but his mother never sits still. She
