even smoke the filter.
“Mom,” I say again.
There is no reaction to indicate she’s heard me. All interactions with my mother are like talking with someone over a bad long-distance connection. There are extended lapses between responses, and some things get lost entirely. As has been my habit for years, I start to mentally count: One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three Mississippi.
“Huh?” My mother mumbles at last. Her head slowly turns in my direction, right as I reach thirty Mississippi.
Her eyes never meet mine, but fixate on a point somewhere beyond my left shoulder. Throughout our conversation they will undoubtedly dart between that point and a similar one hovering in the vicinity of my right ear.
“Got any plans tonight?” I ask.
With one fluid movement, she puts out the burnt stub of her cigarette in the Niagara Falls souvenir mug on the windowsill. I watch the cigarette butt smolder among the dozen or so other stubs, while she taps a fresh one from her pack and lights it.
She smokes.
Meanwhile, I count. One Mississippi. Two Mississippi.
She finishes that cigarette and immediately lights yet another. I’d say my mom smokes like a chimney, but I’m pretty sure even a chimney observing this behavior would be like, “Whoa, lady, take it easy.”
Out of all my uncles, Dune is the one who makes a special effort to look after Mom. He talks to her even when she doesn’t answer. Brings her special treats that she’ll only take one or two bites of. One time I asked him why, and he explained how way back when they were little kids, Mom and Dune were the youngest two in the family and were pretty tight. “Right up until she met your father, I woulda said we were best friends,” he told me, sounding super sad and non-Dune-like. It’s always weird to hear about my mom from before. I’ve only known her this way, so I sometimes forget that she was once normal. Well, as normal as my family gets, anyway.
Thinking about all this stuff is depressing, so I go back to counting.
At fifty Mississippi there is still no answer, so I figure I might as well fill in the blanks for her.
“Staying in then, Mom? Well, I’m going out and wanted to know if you’d check on the uncs. They went a little overboard on the beef stew and I’m worried they might not be feeling so good.”
Mom sucks hard on her cigarette, then turns away from me to exhale a long plume of smoke out the window. When she turns back, she focuses on my face. It’s so strange to have her eyes on mine that I almost look away.
“You’re dressed as your father, in his boots made to walk over anyone who got in his way,” she says, in her strange, high-pitched voice.
I look down at my feet, practically bare except for the few bits of leather winding between my toes and around the back of my heels. Then I look back up at Mom.
“Yeah, it’s a costume party,” I tell her. “One where you try to make it real hard for people to guess who you’re dressed as.”
“Anyone with eyes can see who you are.”
“Well, maybe I’ll get lucky and some eyes will fall out.”
Mom blows a mouthful of smoke up to the ceiling. “If you’re lucky.” Then she stands and marches toward me and for a moment I’m afraid of that lit cigarette in her hand. Not that she’s ever been violent—she usually goes out of her way to avoid me. But she’s being weirder than usual, and I have no idea how to predict her next move. So I take one step back and then another and another, until the wall is at my back and Mom is directly in front of me.
Her cigarette-free hand comes up and covers my heart. “I’m a part of you too, Lennie. You were both of ours, but then he took and I gave and you were left between us, but no longer quite of us.”
I am not really sure how to respond to this, but Mom doesn’t wait for an answer. She takes a step back and holds her cigarette between us, with the glowing red tip pointed toward the ceiling. “Make a wish,” she says. As if it’s a birthday candle. Or a jar of shine and we’re doing my uncles’ toast.
I sigh. And then play along. “I wish you’d check on the uncles tonight while I’m gone.”
It’s like she doesn’t even hear me. “You get