Crackle again.
“It’s Davey, Ma. I’m home.” I hated using that term, but I had to. The door didn’t click. Was she considering? I pressed the buzzer. “It’s Davey, Ma!” I shouted into the crackling once more. The door clicked, reluctantly it seemed, and I scooted in before she changed her mind.
I pulled open the elevator door and stepped in. This old elevator, from the 1950s, struggling under the weight of years, musty with the aromas of pot roast and futility. I hadn’t been in an elevator since I could remember, since that night, perhaps. I got out on the fourth floor, made the right to our old apartment, and rang the bell there. I heard a fumbling with locks following a long pause, as she probably checked me out in the security peephole. She opened the door.
“Ma. It’s me,” I said, bending to embrace her.
“Oh, Davey, you’re killing me.” She pushed me away. “Why didn’t you let us know?”
“I wanted to surprise you.”
“Well, you have. I never knew what to expect. You didn’t write.”
“I couldn’t, Ma. I was too ashamed.” I was lying immediately, back to myself of old. I’d be high as a kite next.
“Come in, come in, let me look at you then.” She took my hand in a Pentecostal grasp of her own and drew me toward our living room. She had withered a bit, and her hair, like mine, had thinned, though hers nestled in soft cirrus clouds above her head. What was left of mine was shaved close.
“Ma, I’m so sorry,” I lied again.
“I can’t get over it,” she said, sitting down in a recliner that still had the same crocheted throw I’d last seen who knows when. She stared at me, as if I were an apparition of the sort she prayed against. “What are you doing here?” Her tone had shifted quickly, as if she realized it was me, and not my brother come back from the dead.
“I’m from here.”
“Not for ages. Not since you left. The only time you came back, there was trouble.”
“I’ve been through a lot. I’ve changed.”
“So have we all.”
“I wanted to see you.”
“What is it you need?” Sharper now, again. I could never fool her. “Is it money? What are you doing? When did you get out?”
“Ma, it’s not money.” Though it was, it always was, in the end. And at the beginning. I noticed on the little table next to her recliner a photograph of Jimmy and me, from our reckless teens—when weren’t we reckless though?—taken at our cousin Patty’s wedding. I had hair, Jimmy life. My mother saw me eyeing it. Tears had begun to shine in her eyes. “Last night. I came right here.”
“We never knew anything about you.”
“I was safe there. As safe as you can be. In there.”
“That’s not what I meant.” She paused. “You were never safe.”
“I was though, on my own.”
“I’d already lost one son.”
“There’s no excuse. I know.”
“And after that night, after you come back for one day, you and Jimmy—”
The phone rang. Mom stopped sniveling and picked up the receiver. “Of course I’m crying. Yes. Yes. No. Not that. Davey’s here. Yes. No, don’t come. I don’t know if he wants to—no. He didn’t. I’m fine. Yes. No. Alone. I will. But…no. I’ll try.” She put the receiver down and kept her eye on it for a second, as if expecting it to spring to life again.
“How’s Bella?”
“Oh, she’s angry she isn’t here.” She turned her face to me.
“That’s nothing new.”
“Don’t start.”
“I haven’t. I just came to see you.” Bella was a necessary by-product of the visit, like gas.
“Do you expect to stay here?” Not unkindly. Not motherly.
“No. Don’t worry. I thought I’d spend a little time with you—”
“Before moving off again.”
“You don’t want me here.”
“You don’t want to be here. You never did. Ever since your father died.”
“That wasn’t it.”
“And what have you found on your travels, your wandering? What great insights have you uncovered? We’ve been in the dark for, what, twenty years? You’ve been here and there and shut up without a word. Except for that one time, that one night, that one day when everyone knew. But since. It’s like we’ve been dead.”
“You could’ve considered me in some friary somewhere if that would’ve helped put your mind at rest. You always wanted me to be a priest. And I didn’t want to bother you.”
