Uncle Dan refilled his mug and poured a second cup, which he handed to me, even though I loathed coffee. I looked at Nancy, studying her face, wondering if, beneath the age and the flab and the medicated haze, I’d find traces of me. Here was my gene pool; swim at your own risk. Growing up, I’d sometimes stare at that one image of her I had, the underwear ad from the Sears circular, searching her face for a connection, a resemblance in her eyes or in the color of her hair, even in the slope of her chin, but nothing ever clicked.
Over the years, I’d sometimes spot strangers in various public spaces who, in some vague, hard-to-pin-down way, reminded me of myself, and I’d wonder if it might be her, the long-lost mother who’d abandoned me, but the encounters were always fleeting or, after a better look, nowhere near a match. Only once did I really believe it was her: opening night off-Broadway for Confessions of the Midnight Chair, a sharply dressed woman in her early to mid-forties in the fifth-row center aisle, three seats in, whose face seemed eerily similar to my own. I considered approaching, but she disappeared before the final curtain, and when I asked Amy about her, she said she was pretty sure that the woman in question had been a guy in drag.
I watched Nancy’s face as she finished off the crumb cake. This is my mother, I thought, but the phrase sounded foreign, theoretical. I was the boy without a mother. How could that change? And why had Uncle Dan kept it a secret? On the phone he rambled through every picayune detail about the pizzeria, from the price of garlic powder to how many rolls of toilet paper The Jaybird went through each month, but about my mother reappearing, after thirty-eight years, not a word.
Nancy smeared another glob of cream cheese over the bagel, her eyes peering above the cereal box, sneaking a glance in my direction. His coffee finished, Uncle Dan placed his mug in the dishwasher and gave me a nod.
“I’ll be at the Jaybird,” he said, handing me a pair of prescription bottles, the caps undone. “Make sure she takes two of each before you leave.”
I checked the labels: Lipitor and Thorazine.
“See you later, Nance,” Uncle Dan said, leaning over and pecking her forehead. Despite the mouthful of Cocoa Puffs, she managed a smile, nearly beaming at the attention, and Uncle Dan patted her shoulder before hustling out the door.
My God, they like each other! I thought, and I wondered what was wrong with me that the possibility of affection between them felt so distasteful.
I shook the pills from the prescription bottles, two of each, and filled a glass with tap water.
In the driveway Uncle Dan’s pick-up choked itself awake, the chassis scraping the pavement as he backed into the street. From the bedroom I could hear the fake chatter of a morning show, some dumb celebrity interview and waves of forced, awkward laughter. Nancy put down the crumb cake and scanned the room. It was just the two of us. Kelly had gone jogging on the beach and wasn’t due back for another thirty minutes.
I set the pills on the table, next to the crumb cake. “Uncle Dan said you should take these.”
She popped the pills into her mouth, swallowed, then followed with a long gulp of chocolate milk. “Thank you,” she said, staring at me, perhaps her turn to search for resemblances, her baby boy ten feet away in the guise of a middle-aged man.
She spoke slowly, as if each word required assembly in her mouth before she could speak it.
“You look… normal,” she said. “Are you?”
“Mostly.”
“Good. I was… normal, too. Then I got… sick. Then I got fat.” She shrugged, as if it were all some random accident, which maybe it was. “I like living here with Danny.”
“He’s a good man,” I said.
“That woman…is she your wife?”
“No.”
“I was… married, twice. Not a very nice… man. He stabbed me. See?”
She pushed back the chair and stood, lifting her nightgown, the rolls of fat spilling out, pale and blotchy, a melting Jell-O cup of skin. She wasn’t wearing underwear, but her gut hung down far enough to cover her privates, thank God, and she held the nightgown just below her breasts. On her left side, above her navel, faded by time and nearly swallowed by fat cells, was a six-inch scar, the ghost of a jagged incision crawling across her stomach. Her legs were a map of varicose veins poking through cellulite. I looked away, repulsed.
“See?”
“Yes, I do,” I said, staring at my feet. She lowered the nightgown and finished off the chocolate milk.
“It still hurts. I… was thinner back then.”
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled.
She grabbed the cereal bowl and the two empty milk glasses, somehow holding all three with her one good hand and wobbled toward the kitchen. She trudged toward the dishwasher and I stepped aside, flattening myself against the counter to avoid her girth. She smelled of morning breath and sour sweat, and I baby-stepped away from her. The dishwasher snapped shut, and she turned to me, inches away.
“You were a good… baby,” she said, “…except that one night…you cried and cried. Sid wanted to smother you… with that pillow and put you… in a garbage bag, but I wouldn’t let him.” She tilted her head, gazing up, as if watching the memory play out across the ceiling. “I wouldn’t let him.”
She
