Everything that happened next was only possible because my mother was absent. It wasn’t that she left the house much, it was that a part of her had abandoned her body and now resisted coming back.
Maybe that fragment of my mother was an astronaut, and on one of her journeys through outer space she had come across D (who since the moon landing had developed the habit of peering at the sky every so often) and had decided that the part of her that did come back would stay with him. Or, rather, with us.
But touchdowns are never easy and, during hers, my mother lost half the vision in her left eye.
In that blind spot, what I referred to as my double life started to take place.
A mother who was whole would have noticed.
Did that make my mother irresponsible?
I don’t think so; I think that, instead, life had been a bit irresponsible with her.