“What did you ask me? I can barely remember my own name, let alone what happened the other day.” The old woman frowned, eyes glistening with internal pain. It was bad enough that she was losing her mind, worse was the realization of it, and the fact that she was helpless to stop it.
“About coming to my house.”
“I’d love to visit. I don’t get out of this damn apartment for weeks at a time. It drives me nuts. I’ll go anywhere.”
“Not to visit,” Sarah said, voice low, compassionate. “To stay.”
“For good?” The old woman’s eyes widened. Her lips parted, but no words came forth. “I… I’d love to, but… I can’t. I can’t leave this old place.
“Mom, I think maybe it would do you some good. I talked it over with John, and he says he’d give up his den for you to use as a bedroom. That way I could be near you, take care of you. I come out here for a little while every day, but it’s not enough. I don’t think you can take care of yourself much longer.”
“Well, as long as I
“But
The old woman gazed at the window, watching the raindrops race each other from the pane to the sill.
“I’d like to go outside,” she said. “Take me out.”
“It’s raining. You’ll catch a cold.”
She chuckled. “That’s what I used to tell you girls when you were little.”
Sarah nodded. She knew.
“Will you go over to the supermarket for me, then? I need some things. I need spaghetti. For dinner.”
“I already did,” Sarah sighed, forcing back the steadily mounting anger and resentment. “I left the stuff on the counter.”
The old woman turned, nodding as if seeing the brown Waldbaum’s bag for the first time.
“Oh, yes,” she said.
Mother and daughter watched each other wearily.
“I’ve got to go, Mom,” Sarah said. “Eddie’ll be getting home from school in a little while.”
“I understand.” But the old woman’s eyes were filled with fear. She didn’t want her daughter to go and leave her alone. She wanted to go back with her, live there instead of here, hoping that things might be better somehow. But they wouldn’t, she knew that. He would find her. He would know.
Sarah started to move away from the table, but her mother’s hand sprang out and clamped her around the wrist. The old woman’s fingers were bony but strong.
“Please,” she said in a husky voice. “Don’t go yet.”
“Look, Mom, I—”
“I want to tell you something.”
“What?” Sarah said impatiently. “What is it?”
“Well?” Sarah said, with a mixture of annoyance and concern.
“It’s nothing, dear, nothing really. Just… I love you, Barbara.”
Sarah’s face fell. “I love you too, Mom,” she said.
Darkness. The old woman lay in her bed, curled up like a fetus, pores sweating and her body shivering from the midnight cold. She waited, knowing he was coming, if not this minute then the next, or the one after that, or—
Was that a sound?
She could hear the noise of the wind and rain battering the window from behind the drapes, but over that, she thought she heard something else.
Like the creak of the front door being pushed open.
No, just her imagination. Ghosts don’t use doors. Or did they? And who said he was a ghost? She didn’t know what he was, where he came from. It didn’t matter.
She curled herself tighter, becoming a human ball, as if she could make herself so small she’d be lost in the vast blackness.
The waiting was the worst. Knowing he was coming and not knowing how long. The nights seemed to stretch endlessly, each one taking a few more seconds of the day, and soon there would be no more sunlight, only this dark, both inside her head and out.
The soft tread of feet along the parquet floor of the hallway. She was old and her senses had dulled over the years, but she could hear well enough to know. It was him. He was coming. Finally.
Fear tightened her throat. The old woman told herself that she would ignore him this time. She wouldn’t tell him her secrets, not any more. Because once you told him your secrets he kept them. Forever.
She felt rather than saw the doorknob being turned, and her body stiffened as she watched the door yawn wide. She could only barely glimpse the outline of his body as he emerged from the fabric of the night.
“Hello.” His voice was soft, but she heard it clearly; its cold penetrated to her marrow.
A million miles away, rain drummed at the window.
“Hello, Marian.” She didn’t ask how he knew her name. Of course he knew. Soon, he would know everything, and she, nothing.
“Would you like to talk?”
But she ignored that voice, drowned it.
“Would you like to talk?” he repeated.
“Yes,” the old woman said. “I would.”
“Tell me something, then.”
“Where should I begin? There’s so much…”
“Anywhere. Tell me anything. We’ve got plenty of time.”
She considered this. “Did I ever tell you about the trip Herman and I took to California?”
“I don’t believe so,” he said.
She opened her mouth, and before she could even think, the words fell from her lips, one after the other, like anxious children tumbling over each other’s heels.
MAMA’S BOY
by C.S. Fuqua
Everyone could see where Carl Baker was headed, even me. After two years on his belly in Vietnam, Carl had come home with a habit most people called “a shame.” They’d shake their heads, say, “It’s terrible, but I hear a lot of ’em get hooked over there,” and go on about their business, figuring that sooner or later he’d get his head together and body clean. After all, he had his mother. In time, with her help, he’d be fine.
I was twelve then. We lived in a remote northern part of the county directly across a pond from the Baker house. I saw Carl nearly every day, walking around the pond, hands in pockets, glassy eyes staring into the ripples of the water. I’d stand beside him sometime for upwards of half-an-hour before he’d acknowledge me. Then we’d toss a football or take a walk through the woods. He’d tell me about the women he’d been with in ’Nam and the
