Best Laid Plans

    Sharon Baker is a bad mother, she knows this. She knows this as sure as she knows her daughter had her tongue pierced because, as Lily said to a friend, over the phone, at 1:30 in the morning, on a school night, while smoking marijuana [she thought her parents were sleeping (one of them was)] "It makes such a difference when you're giving head."

    Sharon didn't immediately know what that meant, but she knew it was something she had never done, and in the back of her mind she associated it with the image of herself and Phil clinging to opposite sides of their queen-size bed, a situation she ever more increasingly believes is her own fault.

    Nor did her mothering skills prevent Justin from becoming a young thug who treats girls like servants -- much like his father treats her, but without the courtesy of a paycheck or so much as a dinner, a kind word, or heaven forbid, flowers. The world is a convenience store stocked with pretty things he wants and can have on his own terms and time. As of yet, he doesn't appear to have been drawn to any with pierced tongues.

    What Sharon knows is that Fisherman's Wharf is right in front of them, just like it said on the map, and the Wax Museum is just a block down the way there, and her family is headed toward it. They will walk in together, Phil will pay, and Lily will say the one in London is better, and Justin will look around for real girls, and Phil will ask the guide ridiculous questions, too loudly, but this is her vacation, and she will enjoy it, she will, it will go exactly as she has planned.