My search through the park had been a success: two ancient bottle caps, their fluted edges rusted; a few sharp brown shards of a broken beer bottle; and a dark iridescent crow feather. After stowing them in a backpack, I simply had to return to a special corner of the park that I’d discovered: a little circle of trees that offered a green tunnel to the sky, its borders subtly altered by swaying branches. I stretched out on the grass and watched bits of cloud pass by, wispy expressions that dissolved into a sheer blue so calming that I felt ready for whatever new characters Mother might be concocting back home, even if I didn’t know why she might be concocting them.
At the time I hadn’t heard of anything called a multiple personality disorder and so couldn’t consider this possibility, yet even now I doubt that term could ever explain my mother. She’d simply started a game, a silly game out of boredom or sadness, and too soon that game’s logic led her away from where she’d started, led her away from us.
If only I’d known how far, that day when I returned home and stood before the open side door, listening to Laurie and Dan in the backyard arguing some variation of It’s My Turn. Their dispute wasn’t very serious—the squeaks of two swings punctuated a lazy sparring that seemed mostly designed to trigger Mother’s intervention, though she didn’t seem to be taking the bait. Where was she?
I ventured into the quiet house. “Hello?”
“Is that you?” I heard her call from upstairs. “Finally! I’ve been waiting for hours.” She barged out onto the landing, an exasperated smile on her face. “There you are. What kind of a repair service do you run, anyway?”
She waited for me to explain myself and enter whatever drama she was plotting, and her toe tapped away at the banister like an improvised, impatient timepiece.
So I once again entered into another game with the simple phrase, “Excuse me, ma’am?” though I also couldn’t help wishing that I could take back my words.
“You should’ve been here hours ago.”
I sighed. “I had a big job over at the Carleton place. If I were you, I wouldn’t complain. You’re lucky I showed up,” I groused, exhilarated that I could reprimand her. Was this the sort of freedom adults enjoyed every day?
She chuckled bitterly. “Oh, do I feel lucky.” Setting off down the second floor hall, she called back, “At least don’t take your time now that you’re here.”
I hurried after her and she led me to the one room in the house I never felt comfortable entering, even on Christmas mornings when Laurie, Dan and I dragged our parents from bed as early as we dared. Hesitating at the doorway, I surveyed the night tables and their mysterious drawers that none of us could ever bring ourselves to open, the large bed and its plush covers, and a seascape painting on the wall with waves always about to crash down on the headboard.
“Excuse me,” Mother said, “but you can come into the room; we don’t have problems with the door hinges. Actually, the problem’s right over here,” she said, struggling to open a screen window. She peered outside and then she pushed halfway through, her legs dangling in the air for a brief awkward moment as she scrambled out onto the roof.
“Wait!” I shouted in my own voice.
She peered back inside, her face framed by the window, both hands clutching the sill. “You’re wearing work boots, aren’t you?”
I glanced down at my sneakers—they’d certainly keep a good grip. “Sure,” I repeated, trying to recover my confident repairman’s tone. “But ma’am, why don’t you let me see what the trouble is?”
“How are you going to find it unless I show you?” she said, and scrabbled away on the roof.
I stood before this window that was now much more than a window: if I crawled through I’d have to become the workman in my mother’s story. Except she wasn’t my mother, I reminded myself, she was just a very odd woman who was going to give me a rough time on this job.
“I know you get paid by the hour,” I heard her say, “but as far as I’m concerned the clock doesn’t start until you’re out on the roof.”
I clenched my teeth. The customer’s always right. I eased myself out feet first, testing the shingles’ gritty surface on this roof that tilted like the deck of a dangerously listing ship. Only when sure of a steady grip did I turn around.
The front yard seemed miles away, unaware of me and yet at the same time waiting for my feet to slip. Queasy at the first hint of the shingles’ faintly tar-ish aroma, I was ready to scramble back inside. But Mother had clambered to the peak of one of the dormers, and I fought my fear and followed. Using a bird’s nest in a nearby shade tree as a guide, I kept my eyes from the shifting clouds and the patient ground below. Finally I reached her, unable to hide my nervous little gasps.
“How long have you been in this business?” she asked quietly.
“Longer than you’d think, ma’am. Now what’s the problem?”
Tapping the angled shingles with her feet, she said, “Just look at this roof. It leaks. It started in the bedroom—there’s a terrible stain on the ceiling. That’s not all, of course—you can’t imagine what else’s been ruined inside. And it’s spreading everywhere.”
With a slow sweep of my head I regarded every shingle: each as ordinary as the other. “The roof appears all right to me. Are you—”
“Oh you, where are your eyes? Look at this.” She stamped her feet. “And this here.”
“Well, maybe I was a bit hasty—”
“And this, and this …” Mother pounded at the shingles with her fists, working her way up to the crest of the roof.
“Wait,” I said, climbing after her, “I see what you mean—”
“Mommy!” I heard Laurie cry out. “Mommy come down!”
I reached the top and there were my brother and sister below, rushing to the edge of the house. Laurie began weeping. “Please, please,” was all she could manage, staring up at us.
“It’s just the brats,” Mother said. “Ignore them, they’re always crying about something.”
I sucked in my breath at her words. Was Mother playing a mother who didn’t love her children, or had she confessed something? Her steady gaze waited for a reaction. Was I still a workman in her eyes, or merely a child who impersonated one? Once again the awkward angle of the roof pulled at me. I knelt down, my eyes squeezed shut, and decided I’d lost my patience with this woman—it was time to wrap up the job.
“Ma’am?” I ventured, “I’ve seen this sort of thing before. So I’ve just applied … Protecto-Guard … on all the problem areas.”
She didn’t move, she just kept watching those poor wailing kids, not a touch of concern on her face, and I tried again. “Excuse me—”
“Protecto what?” she replied, her voice husky, barely audible.
“Guard. So if you’ll just follow me,” I said, assuming a tone of professional impatience. “I can get to my next job down on Sycamore Street.”
I tugged at her resisting elbow until she nodded and let me lead her carefully down the roof. Emboldened, I kept up a distracting patter: “As you can see, Protecto-Guard dries quickly, and gives off no unpleasant odor. And it’s inexpensive too.”
The woman didn’t say a word, though I could tell from the amused line of her mouth that she was listening. I decided to charge her extra just for being such a pain in the ass. But first I had to get her off the damn roof, so when we reached the window I shuffled to the side and motioned for her to climb back in.
She grabbed the sill with both hands, then closed her eyes and leaned back.
“I’m in a hurry,” I grumbled, alarmed that she might let go and fall. “Please, after you.”
With a sharp grunt she pulled through the window, as if returning inside were painful. Following too quickly, I scraped my shin but kept quiet—I was a grown-up, after all, with no mother nearby to offer any sympathy.
I could hear the woman’s two kids running up the stairs, bawling. She turned to me and looked as if she might start complaining again, so I pointed to the ceiling. “See? No unsightly stain. I’ve fixed everything. Protecto-Guard really works wonders, and you’ll find that the ceilings everywhere in the house are just as stain free.”
“It’ll come back,” she murmured, and then took my brother and sister into her waiting arms.
*
Pretending that what had just occurred could somehow be forgotten, we settled once again into our unspoken pact of normalcy: Mother set to work in the kitchen, while we took our places on the living room rug before the television. But I found no delight in the transformations of Felix the Cat’s magic bag, even when it unfurled into a tank and routed his enemies.
Dinner that evening at first maintained its usual dreariness, with Mother matching Father’s silence, but after a few minutes Laurie set her head on the table and wept, her shoulders shaking. When Mother leaned over, cooing comfort, Laurie shivered away from any touch and slunk down in her seat.
“Gladys?” Father asked. “What’s the matter with Laurie?”
Before Mother could reply Laurie wailed, “Mommy climbed up on the roof today!”
“The roof?” Father repeated, and with those words he unknowingly entered our secret life.
Mother said nothing, her face strained with surprise. She turned to Dan and me, the two other witnesses to today’s extravaganza. What she saw in our faces couldn’t have reassured her.
“I want an answer,” Father said, glancing around the table.
“It was nothing at all … Mother began uncertainly. “I thought there was a, a squirrel in the attic, and I wanted to check to see how it maybe, might have gotten in—”
“Michael was up there too,” Laurie said to her plate in a small, sniffly voice.
“Yes, I forgot,” Mother replied, eyes wary. “Michael helped me look, didn’t you honey?”
I couldn’t take part in another of Mother’s stories. “We were up there because you said the roof was leaking.”
“I said?” was all she could manage, open-mouthed at my desertion.
“Well?” Father asked, an edge in his voice. “Squirrel or leak?”
“Squirrel,” Mother said.
“Leak,” I repeated less confidently.
Mother attempted a breezy laugh. “Really, it’s plain to see that the roof doesn’t leak.”
“We don’t have a squirrel in the attic, either,” I forced myself to say, “but you said there was a leak.”
“I don’t know what’s come over your son,” Mother announced, turning to Father.
Your son. Was she once again looking out at us from behind another character? “You’re lying,” I squeaked out, amazed at my daring.
“What did you say?” Father hissed. Mother’s thin smile made me realize my misstep—with no one else on the roof, it was my word against hers.
“I asked you a question,” Father barked.
Laurie hiccupped with teary misery, but I wouldn’t allow myself to cry. “I, I said—”
“Michael’s telling the truth,” Dan said, breaking his silence.
“I suppose you were on the roof too, young man?” Mother replied airily, her triumph nearly at hand.
“No. But you lie all the time. You pretend you’re not our mom.”
“What is the matter with you kids?” Mother said, standing, her back to the refrigerator.
Now Father stood and pinned us with a stern gaze. “It’s time to apologize to your mother.”
Refusing to back down, Dan shook his head. “We won’t. She tells lies all the time. Every day.”
“This little game you’re playing isn’t funny,” Mother said, striding toward him, her finger poking in the air. “Not one little bit!”
Dan didn’t blink. “We don’t want those other people, Mom.”
“We want you,” I added. “We want you back.”
“We do, we do,” Laurie croaked out, her voice raw from stifling sobs.
“I won’t allow this!” Mother cried, fists raised and shaking. “I won’t allow this!”
Father reached out and held her wrists. “Gladys,” he said in a surprisingly tiny voice, “what’s going on?”
*
Dinner abandoned, our parents locked themselves in their bedroom, where they spoke in angry whispers, indecipherable even with my ear to the door. Dan and Laurie sat hunched before the television like defendants waiting for a jury to announce its deliberations, and I joined them. We stared with little pleasure at one show after another: comedy then car chases then comedy. When the news anchors casually offered us the world’s latest disasters, Dan and Laurie lay on the rug, their eyes barely open. I turned off the TV. Harsh whispers still drifted from our parents’ door—who could tell when they’d be done? I gently shook my sister and brother and led them up the stairs.
The next morning we found Father alone in the kitchen, preparing a breakfast of runny scrambled eggs, and toast with only the edges burnt. We ate without complaint, feeling guilty over our well-kept secrets, and we waited for him to ask us just what had been happening these past few months. Instead he stood by the sink, hot water pouring over last night’s dirty dishes, and he stared at us as if our school portraits on the wall had suddenly come to life, as if there was far more to us than our minor daily disputes, our culinary prejudices, our unpredictable nighttime fears.
Father left the kitchen and returned to more hours with Mother in their room, so long that Laurie had time to break into Mother’s makeup kit in the bathroom and smear her lips an awkward, off-centered red that I made her wash off. Then Dan began to fret. “It’s our bowling day, when are we—”
“Oh, be quiet,” I said.
Perhaps Father heard us, for he appeared minutes later, strangely cheery. “Anybody ready for bowling?” he asked, adding, “And guess what? Your mother’s coming too.”
At first we were silent. I couldn’t imagine Mother would enjoy the bowling alley with its toppling pins and unruly din, but how could I explain this to my father?
“Does she really want to come?” I ventured.
He hesitated. “Of course she does,” he replied, trying to convince himself and us.
“Dad, I don’t think—”
“Look, we could all do with a little healthy athletic activity,” he said, his voice defying contradiction. “Off you go to the car—we’ll be right with you.”
We sat in the backseat for several long minutes, and when our parents finally appeared they walked down the front steps together with an offhand ease, Mother nodding agreeably to something Father whispered in her ear. She settled in the front seat and turned to gaze at us with affectionate indulgence, much like our old, familiar Mother. But as I stared out the window at the storefronts melting together as we sped by, I suspected the woman sitting in the front seat might be artfully impersonating our mother.
When we pushed open the bowling alley’s glass doors, Mother winced at the clatter of pins. She entered bravely into the air-conditioned air, following after us to the main desk, where Father went through his ritual inspection of the bowling shoes. Mother held her pair up with two fingers, swinging them in unison. “What strange creatures,” she said, feigning astonishment. Then more pins smashed behind us and she closed her eyes.
We claimed our lane, laced up our shoes, and Mother accompanied us to the racks of bowling balls. Running her hand along the rows, now and then she’d turn a ball so that its three finger holes faced out, and she’d peer at the dark round eyes, the open mouth.
Mother returned to our lane empty-handed. “Nothing to your liking?” Father asked. “Want to borrow mine?”
“No thanks. I think I’ll pass on the first game and contemplate my fashionable feet,” she murmured.
“What?”
“Oh, I’m just a little tired,” she replied, her smile set cheerily. “I’d better rest up for the second game.”
Mother didn’t rest at all. She paced back and forth and back again as we took our turns, her face stiffening at the clash of pins. Father never looked back at her, determined not to condone her unsportsmanlike behavior, but Laurie’s lips trembled at Mother’s brittle mask, and I couldn’t stop gnawing my fingernails.
Mother paused only once, after I’d clinched a spare. She stared at a last, lone pin that spun swiftly on its side; then she turned away as it was scooped up by the reset mechanism. Surely by now she understood that this entire game was target practice against what refused to stay down.
I decided I simply couldn’t add to her misery: on my next turn I sped the ball at a sharp angle, directly into the gutter. Father restrained himself from offering advice, even when I repeated my mistake. But I offered Laurie a knowing glance and she caught on to my scheme and followed along. Then Dan joined in, simply for the love of mischief. Gutter ball after gutter ball confounded Father while Mother’s face seemed to soften, and once again we were in her thrall.
“What’s going on here?” he declared. “Wipe your hands before you bowl—what’s on those fingers? Don’t I always say absolutely no potato chips during the game? Where are you hiding them?”
“Sorry, Dad,” I sighed, feigning despair. “It’s just—bad luck, I guess.”
We continued ignoring his complaints. Father threw three stunning strikes in a row as a rebuke to our miserable performance, yet still he seethed.
When Dan stopped at the line as he always did, preparing to push the ball, he so overtly aimed it toward the gutter that Father sputtered. The bowling ball slipped from Dan’s hands and it crept down the lane, aiming straight for the pins.
“No!” Mother rushed past us, down the lane after the ball.
“Gladys, back here—get back!” Father called after her.
She caught up to the ball, her hands framing its curve. Kneeling, she cradled the ball in her lap and I knew what she saw: the deep-pitted eyes of its face, its silent, howling mouth.
The pins in the next lane erupted and Mother clutched at her head, the same way she’d held the bowling ball.
A few balls continued speeding down the lanes, their distant clatter echoing. Then the entire bowling alley was quiet, except for the churning hum of fallen pins being reset.
“Stop,” she said, her arms now stiff and palms up as if she were directing traffic. “It’s … very important … that everyone … stop.”
Laurie began to whimper, and Father called out wearily, “Gladys, that’s enough.” She stared back at us without recognition—whatever she was about to do, we’d only be minor obstructions.
Three lanes down, a fat man laughed and shook his head in bemusement before reaching for his bowling ball. He lifted it before him and eyed the distant pins.
“No, you mustn’t!” Mother cried.
The man shook his head again, took a few lumbering steps and released the ball. At the crash of flying pins Mother shook, as if her hidden selves shuddered within. Father ran down the lane, nearly slipping on its polished surface before he reached Mother. Her face immobile, and she offered no resistance as he led her away.
Somehow we managed to make our way through the confusion of a gathering crowd to the main desk. We returned our bowling shoes, filled with shame and misery, and the register rang and Father fumbled with his wallet as he kept a grip on Mother’s arm. Laurie, Dan and I huddled in a tight circle of misery about them when we left the bowling alley, a misery that enveloped our car when Father drove from the parking lot.
Back home, our parents once again disappeared into their room for another mysterious conference that would last all day. At the click of the locked door, Dan fled from our house for the call of the neighborhood, and Laurie ran downstairs and threw herself on the couch, face pressed tightly into the pillows. Her body heaved with sobs.
I gently shook her shoulder. “Hey, Laurie, hey, it’ll be all right,” I murmured, my voice utterly without conviction as I gazed out the living room window. The ominously darkening clouds tempted me to chase after Dan, but I was afraid to leave Laurie alone. When my sister was finally done with all that weeping that no parent came to comfort, she rose from the couch. Her pale face seemed emptied of tears forever.
Unable to bear the sight of that stricken look, I had to turn away. Remembering that I had a few fingernail slivers to add to my collection, I escaped to my room. As I approached those containers neatly spaced apart from each other on the shelves, a terrible thought ran through me: they were just a bunch of shreds and scraps and castoffs that added up to nothing, pieces of a puzzle that could never be put together. My throat constricted, for a moment I had trouble breathing, and then that thought disappeared, banished, surely, by my collection’s soothing qualities. Yet when I slipped the slivers into the shot glass, it was without my usual twinge of pleasure.
I woke that night to thunder that echoed the afternoon’s din of bowling pins. Please don’t let it wake up Mom, I thought. Between those reverberating claps, a rhythmic banging kept up outside, an unnerving slam, slam, slam that seemed it might never end.
What could that be? I crossed the dark room and peered out through the windswept torrents lashing against my window, just able to make out our neighbors’ porch, illuminated by a dim outside light. The screen door swung open from the wind and then its spring pulled it shut, opening and closing like a perpetual coming and going of invisible guests.
A brilliant shaft of lightning cast our own rain-streaked house into momentary relief, and I caught my breath at the sight of Mother standing at the hall window, staring down at that swinging door. Then it was night again. Had I imagined her? I stood and waited for another bolt, all the while listening to that awful, insistent banging, but when a shivering light again surged through the darkness, the hall window was empty.
*
Morning brought the distant, disembodied chatter of birds, and the sun streaking through the curtains. Our parents’ door lay open, though the bedroom was empty, and we found no one downstairs. I looked out the window at the driveway—the car was gone, so perhaps Father had left for the Sunday paper. But where was Mother? We hurried out to the backyard and called her name, and received no answer.
Small branches littered the lawn, and a single wooden shingle dangled at an odd angle on the side of the house. The soaked grass felt spongy beneath my feet, and above drifted one lone cloud, a straggler from last night’s storm.
I turned in a slow, tight circle as I took in the round lonely cloud, my head stretched back, and then I turned a little faster, enjoying the spinning. I spun more and more, creating a circle of sky as if I were that funnel of trees in the park, and I closed my eyes and imagined I could separate from my body and float away. Yet when I felt in danger of sweeping out of myself I stopped suddenly, opening my eyes to the world dashing dizzily around me: the neighbors’ houses elongated into a circling, speeding train, my brother and sister squeezed into one blurry child, and that single cloud spun above like the point of a top.
Without speaking, Laurie began to twirl too, her arms extended. Even Dan joined in, and we twisted about the backyard, whirling until giddy from our dizzy steps. We stopped and let the world slow down and suddenly there was Mother, watching us from the edge of the lawn, her arms folded across her nightgown.
She took a few groggy steps forward and her lips moved oddly, silently. Then she managed to gurgle something, her words so slurred we couldn’t understand her. Was this morning’s character supposed to be some sort of derelict? We turned our backs on her, unwilling to enter into any new game, and we kept up our own, turning in circles before our swaying mother.
She shouted out words so undone by a thick tongue that we stopped our twirling. But she wasn’t looking at us, her eyes were on that loose shingle on the wall.
She lurched past us and her hands scrabbled at the rough wooden square until she tugged it off. She flung it behind her, just over our heads, and it sliced into the hedge. Then Mother pulled off another shingle, and another, revealing an underlying layer of coarse black paper that her fingernails scratched at, and I couldn’t tell if she was trying to tear our house apart or somehow work her way back into it.
Pieces of the house, like scattered tiles, littered the lawn, and we ducked as more shingles whirled in the air above us. Finally Dan grasped at Mother’s arm and he tried to pull her away, but she shook him loose with an awkward shove, almost falling herself, her hair swinging wildly.
Swaying on woozy legs, she clutched at her stomach as if it, too, held something that must be torn away, and then something thick, and green, slipped from a corner of her mouth. Mother’s face split wide open into a long, terrible moan, and her eyes filled with what I have always since believed was sorrow and regret.
She toppled over, and lay so still, staring straight at the sky, that we encircled her, unsure of what to expect. “Mom?” Laurie whispered. We knelt around her, waiting for any slurred answer, and we bent so low we saw ourselves contained in her unblinking eyes like a tiny, concave photograph. We were Mother’s secret audience, caught together for one last long moment before we allowed ourselves to understand, before we split apart in terrible grief.