When the mother woke the following morning her body was as sore as it had ever been. In her sleep she’d drooled and sweated like the son and there the fluids had formed a kind of crust across her body and the bedsheets and the air. The mother’s hair stuck to her cheek skin. The crust had spread across her eyelids and down her nostrils and in the grooving of her ears so that it took almost an hour with her nails digging as at blackboards before she could see well enough to cross the room.
In the bathroom the mother washed her face and body in the shower with the coldest water the house could make, holding her head against the pressure close with her mouth open, sucking spray. She could not seem to bring her mind and body out of sleeping. She could not quite bring her mind to think. The coldest water rinsed the mother and slicked bits off her body into the drain. The shower water exited the shower and the bathroom and the upstairs and the house. In its exit the shower water traveled deep into and through the ground, met with other water that women and men within the neighborhood and others had used to clean or clear their bodies, water which would later be filtered and fertilized and redistributed on the earth—it would be mixed with bourbon in a dark room to help take the shaking out of a certain kind of man—it would be mixed with sugar and Kool-Aid powder at a young lady’s seventh birthday party for the pleasure of the young lady and her seven guests, each of whom would bring a gift—it would be given to the sick to help with sickness. The water, via the mother and her others, would taste delicious. One day the water would return to rain.
While the mother dressed and did her hair and makeup—even in sweat she kept a way—she imagined a set of unseen hands lifting objects from rooms in the house. The mother had already begun packing the house up for moving in her mind. It hadn’t been that long since they packed the last time. A certain percentage of the family’s belongings were still boxed in the garage and attic—things the family did not need really except to help them remember who they’d been at other times—things that could have been removed and burned or melted down and the family would not have known the difference. Material of this nature comprised 62 percent of their belongings’ mass. She imagined massive hands wrapping the beds and chairs and sofas in brown paper and sealing them with tape. She imagined the house lifted off the ground—brought to hover above the next house. She imagined the house turned on its side—the house turned fully over—its contents raining into place—the contents in the new house and the house made of years as yet to come, congealing and all else et cetera gone away. The family would be happy. They would be happy. They would be happy. They would be happy. They would be happy. They would be happy. They would be happy. They would be happy. They would be happy. They would be happy. They would be happy. They would be happy. They would be happy. They would be happy. They would be happy. They would be happy. They would be happy. They would be happy. They would be happy. They would be happy. They would be happy. They would be happy. They would be happy. They would be happy. They would be happy. They would be happy. They would be happy. They would be happy.
They would be happy.
The mother could already taste the sweet indulgence of the low-fat imitation butter and sugar-free jam spread on the one-quarter wedge of a low-fat coupon-bought whole-wheat bagel that had been the mother’s breakfast every morning for seven years. The mother worked her hand in circles of contentment across her belly, as she had while pregnant with the son.
The mother walked through the bedroom past the bed into the hallway and stopped. From the doorway in the hall there the mother could see into the son’s room.
The son spread-eagled on the mattress, his hands clasped against his mouth—his thin arms stretched all taut through his pajamas emblazoned with shapes the mother had thought were Mickey Mouse heads when she bought them, though on closer examination she saw the ways the shape wavered from the popular icon into a thing she could not name—and yet she let the son use them for sleep. The son’s torso seemed to have expanded—swollen perhaps, the mother thought first, reeling, with relapse, with new disease—though as she crossed the room she saw how the son had pulled on several layers for protection, as had she that other evening, every sweater that he owned, all ringed and hot and worn and chubby, the outermost sweater showing the son’s name in neon puff-paint like the one the mother often wore, a pair of garments bearing their names, each, which had been given to them both at the same time, some occasion, though the mother could not think of who or what or when.
Around his neck the son had wrapped a scarf. Over his head he had a ski mask. Around his feet he’d wrapped old T-shirts and on his hands he had baseball gloves, one turned the wrong way to fit the thumb. The fabric on the son’s hands and legs was smeared with something runny. The son’s hands clutched a shovel. The son didn’t answer when she shook him. She found dirt nuzzled in his clothes. She stripped him clean layer by layer, like peeling some huge orange. The son was not opening his eyes. The mother said the son’s name—again, again—her voice all flat. The son’s skin was stretched and splotched in spots as it had been most of his sick year—a year now carried in the mother’s flesh memory as a tiny colored lesion, one polka dot.
This child. This child. This child here. The mother inhaled and touched the son. She touched the son again a different way and said the son’s name and touched her forehead. She spread her arms and said the name and held the son and kissed his fingers and tried to sing the song she’d always sung—a song she’d dreamt up when the son was still inside her, a song she used to calm their blood—though now she could not quite hear it—she could not think of all the words.