I slapped on a fresh patch like I was snapping a seat belt around my middle. I had bathed and fed Carter Junior and put him to sleep upstairs in his donut doggy bed, and then I tiptoed downstairs and carried a chair into the middle of the living room and stared at the inside of the front door like it was a movie that hadn’t yet started. It had been a crazy day so far and it wasn’t over yet, because once the sun goes down around here it seems like all the action starts up.

But when I ran back from Dad’s this morning, with the sun high in the sky and a flock of birds chirping in the backyard, the telephone had rung. I looked out the kitchen window where Olivia was wearing a pair of my jeans and a T-shirt and Carter Junior was wrapped in a blanket and wearing a hat as they played the game Olivia now called “human birdfeeder.” She had sprinkled bread crumbs all over their clothes and about a hundred birds seemed to be sitting on them. They were smiling. I was smiling, and I picked up the phone and then I was grinning.

“Joey?” Mom said excitedly.

“That’s my name!” I said like a cartoon woodpecker. “Don’t wear it out.”

“You sound full of life,” she said brightly in her old playful Mom voice, and instantly my special gift nearly floated me off the floor as my lungs filled with the hot air of happiness.

“You sound super extra-great,” I said.

“I am,” she said. “I feel like an old junker that went into the shop and I’m coming out all snazzed up.”

“Snazzy!” I repeated because I love words with extra zz’s in them. “That sounds pawzzz-i-tive.”

She laughed. “How’s Carter Junior?” she asked.

“Perfectly Pigza! Bigger and better and looking for you,” I said. “He’s talking now and eating steaks and smoking cigars and he wants his sweetheart mom!”

“Hmmmm,” she hummed, like she could taste him. “Can’t wait to kiss his belly.”

“I’ll give him a bath,” I said. “So he doesn’t taste like one of the dogs.”

“Is Olivia still there?” she asked. “It was so nice of her to visit me.”

“Yes,” I said, “But I’m bummed out because she’s going back to school.”

“You’ll be doing the same,” she said, reminding me. “So give her a kiss goodbye for me.”

“Will do!” I said snappily, and smiled because now I had a reason to kiss her.

“Have you seen your dad around?” she finally asked.

I knew that was coming. “Yeah,” I said.

“Oh,” she replied coldly, and her voice changed so quickly that right away I felt like someone poked a hole in my lungs.

“Did he try to steal the baby?” she asked.

“He borrowed him for a moment,” I said quickly, “but I got him right back. It was like a tiny visit between them,” I added so she wouldn’t get worked up.

“Oh,” she said again, and went silent. I didn’t think silence was a good place for her so before she could get all knotted up about Dad I blurted out in my happy voice, “So when are you coming home so I can bake you a cake?”

“Tonight,” she gushed. “I’ll be home for dinner. I’m packing up my stuff and I’ll see my therapist and after that I’m dropping by the hair salon to get my nails done and a pedicure and I’m coming home all dolled up to see my boys.”

“We’ll be here waiting,” I replied, with a big smile on the inside. She sounded just like my old mom because when she had a manicure and a pedicure it was like she also had a mental-cure.

“Love you and see you soon,” she said, and the moment the receiver went down I was in a hyper-panic.

“Olivia!” I hollered out the window. “Have you ever baked a cake? I need a cake for Mom—like a cake the size of a whale.”

“Shush,” she said softly from where she and Carter Junior were together like statues of Saint Francis with birds eating out of their hands. “Just call the bakery,” she said in a half whisper, “and order one. That’s what we do at our house.”

That made sense because I didn’t want to mess up the kitchen, so I picked up the phone and ordered Mom a carrot cake and when the baker asked if I wanted to write something special on the icing I knew exactly what to say. “Inner Strength. Self-Love. Pigza Pride. You have it!”

“How about just saying, ‘You are the number one mom in the world’?” the baker asked.

“Nah,” I replied. “She’s number one in her own way.”

Hearing from Mom and ordering the cake was a really extra-cheesy, extra-good start to a day that I knew was going to be a rough ride down a long road, and I wasn’t sure what would be waiting for me at the end.

In the early evening Olivia and I took Carter Junior and walked quietly down to the bakery and picked up the cake, but it didn’t feel like a cake for a celebration because when we got back home Olivia said, “It’s time for me to go.”

I put the cake in the roach-proof refrigerator while Olivia put on her black school dress and folded up her extra panties and shoved them in a pocket. Then she hung her HELP! Blind Girl Hitchhiking! sign around her neck. “I’m ready,” she announced, and stood by the front door. “Do you want to say goodbye?”

“I’m holding Carter Junior in my arms, so don’t hit me with your blind-girl stick,” I said. “But I just want to say that I really love having you as a girlfriend.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Are you going to kiss me goodbye?” she asked. “Because if not, I’m out the door. I can’t stand a lingering exit.”

I stepped toward her. She reached out for Carter Junior and I handed him over.

“He’s first,” she said, and gave him so many kisses that I was jealous. When she gave him back to me I thought she had used all her kisses up. But she had one more.

“You’re next,” she said.

I held Carter Junior on my hip and stuck my neck forward. I closed my eyes and we carefully moved closer like two real blind people kissing. It seemed to take so long to reach her face I wondered if I had missed it and might just kiss her on the earlobe as I passed by. But it turned out okay. It was like closing your eyes and slowly pressing your fingertips together. It was a perfect kiss. Then I kissed her again for Mom.

“Take care of Carter Junior,” she said.

“I will,” I promised.

“Be good to your mother,” she said. “She needs you.”

“I will,” I replied.

“Learn braille and write me,” she said. Then she leaned forward and whispered in my ear, “Send me secret Pigza love letters that I can keep in a drawer wrapped in black ribbon and sprinkled with rose perfume.”

“Perfumed Pigza?” I yelped, and made an icky face. I really wasn’t ready for that. Plus I had another problem. “I have lousy spelling,” I said.

“Guess what? I have really lousy reading,” she replied. “Relax. You worry too much.”

Then she turned the lock on the front door and pulled it open.

“Sorry the porch light is out,” I said in a goofy voice.

She smiled, then in an instant she lifted her blind-girl stick and cracked me hard across the shin. “Don’t forget me,” she said.

“Never,” I whimpered. “I think this one will leave a scar.”

“That’s body-braille for love,” she said. “It should hurt until I return for Christmas.” And then just as she had arrived she turned around and tap, tap, tapped her way down the steps and thwack, thwack, thwacked her way to the corner and took a right and my heart went with her, but since I was the man of the house I had to take care of Carter Junior plus I had a guest arriving so I went back inside and locked the door and got his dinner ready and bathed him and put him to bed and then I got the chair and set it in the living room and from that moment I have been staring at the door.

I was worrying about Olivia. I wasn’t an oracle. A real oracle actually sees into the future and knows all the details—the good and the bad—of what is about to happen. But nobody can really do that. I couldn’t see how her journey would go but hoping for a happy ending is kind of the next best thing to being an oracle. I closed my eyes and hoped that Olivia made it back to school okay. I hoped it so much that I could see her get into a nice car with a good older person who would drive her directly up to the front door of her school and say to her, “Good luck with your anger management,” and she’d reply, “Thank you, kind person, but my boyfriend Joey Pigza helped me get that under control.” Then she would walk into the school and tap her way down a long hallway to her dormitory and crawl into her own bed and the next morning wake up with hope in her heart and a big black outline of Carter Junior in her head where that black box had tortured her for so long.

I could imagine it all with my eyes closed and it made me feel hopeful. And then the moment I opened my eyes it happened.

“Ding-Dog!”

It was Mr. Fong with dinner, I thought, but when I hopped up and opened the door it was not Mr. Fong. It was the other delivery guy, my dad, and he had delivered himself. He was standing with a suitcase in one hand and a bag of take-out food in the other.

“Where is Mr. Fong?” I asked.

“We’ve all eaten enough pizza for a lifetime,” he announced. “From now on it’s Chinese food. It’s your mother’s favorite.”

I reached out and took the food. “Come in,” I said.

“The food might be cold,” he warned. “I’ve been waiting across the street. It took you long enough to say goodbye to your girlfriend.”

He walked into the kitchen and looked around. “It’s so clean,” he said. “Nice.”

“And no more filthy roaches,” I pointed out.

“I hate them too,” he agreed.

“We have something in common,” I said.

“We have your mom in common too,” he added nervously, and pressed his fingers against his face as if a piece of it needed sticking back on. “Is she here?”

“Not yet,” I said. “Carter Junior is asleep and I’m waiting for her.”

He looked up at the ceiling as if he could see Carter Junior in his donut doggy bed. “How do you think your mom will act when she sees me?” he asked.

“Well, when I’m hopeful about it I see her coming into the house and seeing you and not splitting your head open with a meat cleaver, or mine for letting you in, and then she’ll run upstairs and check on the baby and when she sees that he is okay then she’ll take a deep breath and count to ten and then she’ll come downstairs and I’ll kiss her a lot while she kisses me a lot and tells me I did such a good job and was her man of the house and that I was her anchor while she got better and then she’ll spot you hovering in a corner looking pretty pathetic and right at that moment it will be time for me to go to my room, and quite honestly, the rest is up to you two. I’m not an oracle. I’m just a hopeful boy. I can imagine how everything turns out really well, but it will be up to you and Mom to make it happen.”

“That’s kind of what I’m hoping for,” he remarked. “Do you see anything else?”

“Just that I’m wired because you are wired because your mom was wired,” I said. “So it figures that I love Carter Junior because Mom loves Carter Junior and if you love Carter Junior then we’ll all love you too.”

He nodded. “That’s real good,” he said eagerly. “Can I tell her that?”

“No. Or yes. But whatever you tell her it better come from the heart and you better live up to it because even though you are here I’m still the man of the house. You got that?”

“Yes,” he mumbled.

“Now go set the table,” I ordered. “If she comes home it would be a really good start to have dinner like a family.”

While he got the plates and knives and forks and napkins I got the cake out of the refrigerator and onto a platter and set it down right on top of Mom’s plate like she could just drop her face into it and eat the whole thing. I thought all that sugar would put her in the right mood.

Then Dad and I sat down, but we didn’t serve the Chinese food or talk to each other. We were like little plastic family-member statues just staring at the door and waiting for the unknown to happen.

Then I heard it in the distance, tap, tap, tap. It turned the corner and was coming up our street. Then it got closer and louder. And then it was in front of our house. Tap, tap … and then there was a little scream.

It couldn’t have been Olivia returning because she always made everyone else scream. I jumped up and in an instant ran out onto the front porch. The light from the open door shone down the steps. Mom was at the bottom with a shopping bag in one hand and her purse in the other. She was standing unevenly with all her weight on one high heel because the other one had snapped.

“Welcome back to the House-of-Pigza,” I cried out and threw my arms up into the air like I was a human firecracker going off.

“Dang shoe,” she said. “What an entrance!”

She kicked off her other shoe and ran up the stairs and gave me a big hug just as I had imagined it. Then she kissed me all over. Then she said I was her anchor and her man of the house like I knew she would.

And then the other man finally got up some courage and stuck his head around the doorjamb.

“Hi, Fran,” he said, sheepishly. “Welcome home.”

She just stood there shaking her head. “I knew it,” she said dryly. “I could see it clear as day in my mind as I was walking up the street. I said to myself, Fran, be prepared because that crazy, no-good husband is going to be in your house looking for a second chance for the hundredth time.”

Wow! She really was an oracle!

“Well, you always had good vision,” he replied with as much of a smile as he could manage on his messed-up face. “Now come on in,” he said. “Someone baked you a cake.”

The first thing she did was go upstairs and get Carter Junior, and even though he was sleepy she brought him down and I could see where her lipstick was all over his little beaming face.

Then she saw her cake and took a moment to read it, then turned to me with tears in her eyes. I was grinning like a lunatic and hopping up and down along with the dogs. “We’re two of a kind,” she said.

“Double that,” Dad added in, and pointed toward Carter Junior, then poked himself in the chest. “House rules are that four of a kind beats a pair of Pigzas every day of the week.”

Mom looked over at him. I could read her mind. She was going to make some crack about face cards. But then she thought better of it. Instead, she said, “Well, welcome back, stranger. You better be playing with a full deck.”

I stood there watching them and thinking that I should say something about all we had gone through in the past and our great future together, but then there are times when saying nothing is like being the most all-seeing oracle in the world.

“I’m going to my room for a while,” I announced. “It’s been a long week.”

I kissed Mom, then gave Dad a hug and didn’t look back as I closed my bedroom door and kicked off my shoes. Maybe it’s a little bit of a spook house having Mom and Dad back and a big photo of my wired granny smoking a cigarette on the wall over my bed, but it’s my house and they are my dark shadows and bright panes of light and under every roof there is a wacky family and this is mine and I love them. I think I’m finally going to have a good day. So don’t be a stranger. Stop on by. There is always an extra slice waiting for you at the House-of-Pigza.