I get home before Mom arrives. So I don’t have to worry about it while she’s here, I waste no time getting what I need. A few hours later the front door opens, and I sprint from my bedroom almost falling down the stairs. Mom’s home.

She’s closing the front door when I catch my first glimpse. It’s been almost a month since I’ve last seen her, but it seems like longer and at the same time like it was yesterday, if that’s even possible. She turns around and takes off her wooly black hat that seems to be an extension of her black hair, which falls just below her ears. I like the disarray of it, something different from everything else around here. The mess of her mop doesn’t last long as she gives her head a shake and moves the uniformly cut bangs away from her forehead. To me, she is the picture of perfection, her hair symmetric in its cut framing the keen features of her round face perfectly.

She catches my stare, returns a warm, sympathetic smile, and puts her arms out, beckoning me inside them. I oblige shyly. It always starts this way and then we settle in, but today I notice something different right away.

“Where’s my … your pin, the brooch I gave you?” It’s of Alexander the Great, the very first gift I gave her when I was only seven. As far back as I can remember, the General went on and on about the Macedonian King, how young he was when he came into power and how he started studying with Aristotle when he was thirteen. Mom probably doesn’t wear it all the time, but whenever she returns from a business trip, she always has it on, until today.

“I’m sorry, Harvis. I lost it the last time I was home, on the train.”

“On the train? Since when do you ride the train?”

She doesn’t answer, and I’m not sure if I posed the question as rhetorical. But she’s never not answered one of my questions before … under any circumstances. I skip it and move on. Nothing last forever, especially costume jewelry, and I don’t feel like prying. I’m clearly a little hurt, but I immediately try not to show it.

From there, we get formalities out of the way, her telling me about her dealings in Tokyo, Shanghai, Beijing, London, etc.—sometimes I lose track—and me telling her about school at Lincoln. She can’t be any more interested in basketball than I am in business. I’m not sure if either one of us is truly interested, but we should be. We have to be; this time is precious. It will end as soon as it starts.

After I take her bags upstairs, we sit in the kitchen and play more catch-up. She always seems to be smiling when she’s not talking, and she lets me talk more than she does, seems to require it actually.

Our conversation eventually loses steam, and we decide to go to dinner at a familiar Italian restaurant in Los Gardens. Cooking is not one of my mother’s many talents, and eating out is the order of the day and night usually. The General hires a part-time maid who comes a few days a week and cleans and cooks if someone is at home. This is not one of those days. I order my usual lasagna, smashing the sizable portion in minutes while she barely touches her tilapia. Slight in size my mother is, but she possesses the mental power and wisdom of the queens of ages, I like to say. When she does talk, her eyes seem to bore through me, and I lose track of her words. Her eyes have the shape of mine only smaller.

When she’s finished playing with her food, she puts her elbows on the table, intertwines her fingers, and rests her chin on them. She has bruises on her wrists, both of them. They’re faint but I can see them against her pale skin under the lamp over our table.

“What happened?” I ask, reaching across the table and examining her wrists.

“I fell.”

For an extremely intelligent woman her excuse is anything but.

“On the train?” I employ the General’s sarcasm.

“Nothing to worry about, Harvis.” She looks away.

It always bothers me that she calls me by my given name, no pet names like, honey or baby or even Harvey—eww! Something happened. It has to do with the Alexander pin and those bruises on her wrists, and she’s not telling. Stubbornness: another quality she and the General have in common.

She changes the subject, and I reluctantly follow. The conversation becomes interesting and somewhat funny as I talk about Soul and his crazy antics, about how Coach has more or less adopted him, on account of Soul’s sick grandmother not being able to handle the man-child.

When the waitress returns with the check, my mother gives her head a slight bow, at least the third one tonight. I equate it to the General’s salute as a show of respect only way more often and way more subtle.

When I finally exorcise her evil secret from my mind, I realize I’m content in this pause, and I sleep easy tonight, the first night in many weeks. My mother’s presence can have that effect on me. We spend the next days going to different malls and shopping. We go to the Phantom of the Opera where I take a few bony elbows to the ribcage to wake me up. A few days later, we check out a viewing of the science fiction thriller, Ultima Humana, and I wake her up a few times with an elbow of my own.

I get the latest basketball game for my game console and more clothes than I’ll ever wear. As we sit at a fountain in one of the malls, an advertisement at a kiosk directly to my right catches my eye. They have an AI chip coming out for some of the video games, and I get excited. She’s smiling at me when I come back to earth.

We have lunch today at a Los Tres Amigos, and we order a plate full of tacos. Of course, I will eat most of them.

“You want that game?” she asks.

“Huh?” I finish chewing a mouthful of taco.

“That game on the advertisement at the fountain, IA … you want that?” She hands me a napkin.

I take it and wipe my mouth. “It’s AI for artificial intelligence, Mom … not IA.” I think of the Incubus Apostles and shudder at what’s in store for them.

“What’s wrong?”

She reads me well, again.

“Nothing.”

“You thinking about your friend who lost his sister?”

“Yes.”

“Sad … very sad. Have you spent time with him? He will need you, and I would like to meet him. Maybe I can take you both to lunch, or we can all just spend a day together.”

I shake my head and cringe. That would be nice, but I know Naz would never go for it. It’s weird; she’s never met him, although she’s seen him before when he was younger. She probably wouldn’t remember. It was in passing at a park. Then again, that was a day to remember, the day I first got a look at the things he could do.

My phone buzzes in my pocket and my eyes or some other telltale sign must give me away as being distracted.

“Was that him calling?”

“No.” I look away from her. It always amazes me the way the booths and tables are designed and decorated in Los Tres Amigos. The benches in the booths are so high that only recently did my feet begin to touch the floor when I sit in them, and my mother’s don’t. Every color of the spectrum is represented in the art on the tables with scenes of early Spanish life in the Americas. My favorites are the conquistadors. There’s something to be both admired and feared about those ruthless professional warriors. I think of Naz again.

“Kaylie?” She takes a second, and this time successful, guess.

“Hailey, Mom.”

“I’m sorry. Hailey.” Names are not her strong suit. “Is she still meeting us for dinner later?” She looks worried.

“Yeah, but she’s gonna be a little late. She has to take the train in.”

“Oh, good.” She beams and then corrects herself. “Not that she will be late. That I’ll finally get a chance to meet her.”

“It’s not that big a deal, Mom.” I resist rolling my eyes, and I silently regret planning this evening’s dinner. The good part is that Hailey and my mother will have no trouble keeping each other entertained for hours. I just have to endure the ordeal.

“It is to me. That’s all you talked about on the phone before Thanksgiving. Don’t you still like her?” She senses my lack of interest.

“She’s cool.”

“Well, tell me about her again, how she talks and dresses, how she looks. You were so excited when you described her. Have you kissed her yet—”

“Mom!” Ugh!

She laughs, and I see her white teeth are not so perfect as I always imagine. “Well?” she prods, her smile transforming into a devious grin.

I recover, not taking the bait. “I’m only thirteen,” I joke. I pull my phone out of my pocket and find just the right photo of Hailey. She is pretty.

“For a few more days,” she challenges.

“Weeks,” I correct and hand her my phone.

“She goes to Lincoln.”

I can’t tell if it’s a question, so I give the appropriate response regardless. “Union … High School.”

“An older woman?” she teases.

“She’s only two months older than me.”

“She’s a cougar.” She laughs. “Then how did you meet her?”

“She went to Lincoln last year. She was a cheerleader.”

Mom frowns as anticipated. Hailey being a cheerleader was something I conveniently left out in our post-Thanksgiving talk. My mother doesn’t believe in superficial or shallow (as she calls it) endeavors for girls.

As she looks at the picture on my phone, she whispers, “Aleumdaun,” and then says it louder. “Aleumdaun.”

It’s one of her favorite words, but she rarely uses it, usually only when referring to me, since as far back as I can remember. She’s always wanted to teach me Korean. And I wouldn’t mind learning my mother’s language if we ever had the time. Maybe one day. But she’s right; Hailey is beautiful, and her beauty has taught me something valuable; beauty alone isn’t always enough.

Mom says a few more words in Korean that I don’t understand before the phone buzzes in her hand, bringing her back to the land of the free and the home of the brave. She tilts her head, apparently reading a message that has come through on my notifications. I resist taking the phone from her before she decides to give it back. That would be rude, and I have nothing to hide, not really.

“It’s Naz. He says ‘six more days and the party begins.’”

Like my father, my mother doesn’t encroach upon my privacy, but just the same, her eyes give me a reason to open up. She hands me my phone back and looks at me compassionately. It’s clear she doesn’t take Naz’s message in a literal sense that in six days a party will begin.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

I nod, but I need her to start it off, ask that right question.

“Your friend is in some trouble,” she begins.

Perfect.

“And your dilemma comes from your involvement in his trouble. You’ve already decided to help, so that’s not the problem. The question is, to what extent, and how much of you will be lost in the process?”

This is when my mother is the most amazing person on the planet, when she far outstrips the General in wisdom. I wonder—is this quality she possesses the magic that put my dad under her spell so many years ago? All I can do is nod.

“We are put here for one reason and one reason only.” She looks at me as if she’s the master, and I am a student in a dojo.

Maybe I am. “To help each other,” I respond. It’s something she and the General agree upon without exception or dissention. So it would seem by extension that would be not only my position but also my destiny, or in Naz’s case, fate.

She nods. “So you must go to your friend and be of service until time reveals that your mission is complete.”

That was easy enough. I snap out of my trance. The words she chooses give me not only her permission but her blessing. She and the General are in concert on my course of action, albeit their tactics are different.

The rest of my time with my mother is a blur. I am completely focused on the task before me. That evening with Hailey is like a dream, and I only vaguely remember Mom not being impressed.