Tag Archive

My mother draws her breath like a bad cartoon. No doctor can tell us what’s wrong with her, so we don’t let them bother her. She was always busy living, proliferating. Now she’s making a career of her one death. Dad doesn’t exist. Dad never existed. She had us without him. The realtor’s office is a waking nightmare. We’re buying her last house, which means selling one. What if? she says, then loses the thread forever. Her breathing is erratic and shallow, noisy, ineffectual, disturbingly occasional. Her tissues are in panic, but in her eyes a generous urgent willingness to laugh off what is after all the very funny comic horror of her confusion if only I will signal her please signal her that I too find it funny. This is richer than fear. My hair is on fire and only she notices but no one will listen and maybe after all it’s just a style. The realtor says my mother won’t earn interest on her escrow and I say Of course, and she has to trust her son whose hair is on fire but who doesn’t seem to notice. The realtor will not meet her eye. He aims his casual agency at me. His days begin and end in conflagrations. Commissions are the warmth radiating from buyers with their heads ablaze. He shows me where to have her sign and hands me a flaming pen. Mother forgets. The world she believes to be changing so quickly is really only breathing, bellows in, ashes out. I show her again where to sign. She searches my face for a clue. She’ll cry before she signs, I know, but dammit, this time she’ll sign. If I can hold my breath and take the heat, she’ll sign. Together we stand and burn.

Copyright ©1997