“And at five thirty,” Theresa went on, “when I come to pick you up, I will be going into the building to find you. None of this meeting you at the curb.”

Theresa really has the mom thing down. She has four kids of her own, all mostly grown, and three grandchildren, even though she’s only a year older than my mom. This is because, as she put it, her eldest son, Tito, is an idiot.

It was because of Tito’s idiocy that you could not pull anything over on Theresa. She had seen it all before.

When we finally got to the Susan Boone Art Studio, which was on the corner of R and Connecticut, right across from the Founding Church of Scientology, Theresa gave me a very dirty look. Not because of the Church of Scientology, but because of the record store Susan Boone’s studio was on top of. As if I’d had something to do with picking the place out!

Although I have to say, Static, one of the few record stores in town that I’d actually never been to before, looked tempting—almost as tempting as Capitol Cookies, the bakery next door to it. You could even hear the strains of one of my favorite songs thumping through the walls as we walked toward the store (we had to go around the block once and park a million miles away on Q Street; you could tell Theresa wasn’t going to be insisting on walking me to the door again after this). Static was playing Garbage’s “Only Happy When It Rains.” Which if you think about it really sums up my whole attitude about life, since the only time parents will actually let you stay inside and draw is when it is raining out. Otherwise it’s all, “Why can’t you go outside and ride your bike like a normal kid?”

But Susan Boone must have had her place soundproofed, because when we finished climbing the narrow, whitewashed staircase to her second-floor studio, you couldn’t hear Garbage at all. Instead all you could hear was a radio, softly playing some classical music, and another sound I could not quite identify. The smell, as we climbed, was comfortingly familiar to me. No, it didn’t smell like cookies. It smelled like the art room back at school, of paint and turpentine.