was king of some underground citadel and commanded all the moles and rats.
I had this dream last night, she told me, as we closed the door and walked down the stairs to the full truck. Into clean fresh air. She pocketed the spare key. Downstairs, I’d loaded the folding table and chair into the cab, behind the seats, so they could not be snatched out of the truck bed or fall out on a bumpy turn.
I dreamed he was surfing in Australia, she said, settling into the driver’s seat.
She turned on the ignition. Her profile was calm, a little worn, with just the faintest lines at the corners of her mouth pulling down. She faced me. Is it ridiculous? she said.
I pulled Grandma’s old bamboo salad bowl into my lap. My other hand behind the seat, holding everything steady.
I bet he’d like it, I said. I heard you can see millions of stars there.
She pulled away from the curb and drove for a while. It felt good, to leave. As she drove down Sunset, I learned the intricacies of the bamboo bowl, which was cracking on the side and had a bump on the uphill northern slant. Boxes slid in the truck bed, to and fro.
At a red light near Western, Mom turned to me. Her face drained of expression.
Rose, she said. Listen. We never finished this discussion. I want you to know. I’ll break up with him if you want me to, she said.
With Joseph? I said, tapping the bowl, smiling a little.
Her forehead creased, confused. I feel terrible that you found out about it at all, she said. I’ve tried to be so discreet-
You’ve been very discreet, I said.
She bowed her head. More tears leaked from the corners of her eyes and fled past the borders of her sunglasses.
You really don’t think your brother left because of this? she said. I can’t help but think it. You found out, maybe he found out-
I ran my fingernail along the crack in the bamboo bowl. Mom, I said. It wasn’t news. I’ve known since I was twelve, I said.
She stared at me.
Twelve?
Twelve, I said.
She counted aloud, numbers I didn’t understand. But that’s the year it started, she said.
I patted the bowl, in agreement.
Did somebody tell you?
No, I said.
Did you overhear something?
No, I said. Just a good guess, I said.
The light turned green.
You were always like that, as a kid, she said wonderingly, pausing. You would come hug me just exactly when I needed a hug. Like magic.
Mom, I said.
I love your father-
Mom, I said. It’s okay.
Cars honked behind us. She reached over to my cheek, my ear, touching my hair.
Go! yelled a car.
She moved along. A driver zoomed past and gave us the finger.
Look at you, tough guy, I said.
What a daughter I have, she said, driving. Look at
I kept my eyes on the road. Hands in the bowl. It was convenient, how my own survival came across as magnanimous.
It wasn’t magic, I said. You always looked like you needed a hug. Hey, Mom, I said. Remember how you said that Joseph would guide you? As a baby?
She gripped the steering wheel. Yes, she said, her voice cracking.
Does he?
She wiped her cheek. What do you mean? Does who?
Larry, I said.
Larry, she repeated. His name new between us.
I watched out the window, waiting. Convenience stores and restaurants and guitar shops passing by.
Not like your brother, she said, slowly. But he has been very helpful.
Then good, I said.
He’s a nice man.
I don’t want the details, I said. But good.
I know it’s wrong, she said, falling back into panic, shoulders rising. I know I should give him up-
No one wants you to give him up, I said.
At the house, we unloaded the stuff onto the lawn. A few boxes of clothes and science books. The leftover furniture. The salad bowl, and some mismatched silverware and plates.
I lifted a box. Where shall I put it? I said.
His room, Mom said, exhaling. Please.
I stumbled through the front door, arms full. Joseph’s room was now Mom’s part-time; she slept many nights there, since she said it was a way to feel close to him when she was missing him particularly. The counters were crowded with her things: blouse piles, turquoise bathrobe, jewelry on his desk, makeup on the nightstand.
We marched back and forth, stacking boxes against his wall.
Mom liked to look at his posters, and peer in his desk drawers, but the other unspoken advantage to Joseph’s room was that oak side door she herself had installed so many years before. It had its own lock and key, so she could come and go as she pleased, and since she still slept in, I never knew anymore how many nights she spent at home. If my father was troubled by her new level of independence, he did not breathe a word about it. They were kinder with each other than I’d ever seen, talking in lower voices, sitting closer to each other on the sofa, but even so, I often woke up in the morning to find him hunched over, leaving a tray with a cup of tea at the base of Joseph’s door.
My father still seemed shockingly unaware of anything that was going on, but based on what I’d tasted, it had occurred to me that inside my mother was some kind of tiny hospital, and my father drove around that one as vigilantly as he drove around the big ones laid out on the map of the city.
He and I hadn’t talked anymore about where my brother might have gone. No more theories of windows and checking. No more jovial assurances that we were all over-worriers. He took up jogging to give those restless feet a purpose, and sometimes, a couple hours after dinner, I’d stand at the front door and see my father circling the neighborhood in darkness, in his old raggy Cal T-shirt and shorts. When he ran up the walk, drenched in sweat, in the yellow glow of the porch light I could see a redness around his eyes that was deeper, ruddier, than the redness in his cheeks. He kept a towel outside on the flower-box ledge, and he would wipe down his face and pat his hair neat before he stepped foot back into the house.
When all was unloaded, and the truck was empty, Mom pulled me close and kissed my cheek and flooded me with thank yous so many times and with such elongated emphasis that it only seemed to prove the need for Larry all over again.
I went to work. She drove the truck to the lumberyard. For weeks, Joseph’s boxes stayed exactly where we’d placed them against the walls of his room. Mom said she couldn’t bear to look inside, so over a series of evenings, daylight extending longer, I finally unpacked them myself. When I found clothing I washed and folded it and put it back into empty drawers; I shelved the books, and the one pot he’d used to cook up ramen joined all our other pots inside the kitchen cabinet. I put a few of Grandma’s items-the salad bowl, the movable lamp-back in the side room, where they began. I tossed old sundries, like rice and pasta. I left the Morehead folding chairs and table leaning against the side walls of his closet, and I feared for a day when my father or mother had a spontaneous fit of grief or terror and called up Goodwill to give it all away.
