walking in on her while she was in the shower, on the toilet, and once—horribly, when I was nine—straddled on top of my father as he sat in his office chair. I was familiar with her full breasts and their dark, downward pointing nipples; the paleness of her belly marked by the crisscrossed scars from two Cesarean sections; the dark patch of pubic hair that had mystified and frightened me as a child; the tiny, snaky, blue veins on her outer thighs. This was all familiar. What was strange, and strangely disturbing to me, was the new leanness, the pronounced curve between her hips and her waist, the enviable tautness of her belly.
She stopped going to the gym sometime after the divorce. She was still thin, but it just looked like a tired skinniness, even a frailty—the muscles were gone from her arms. I didn’t want to see her like this, either. Tonight, especially tonight, I did not want to see her even a little unclothed. I needed the illusion of order, of distance. We were not friends or even roommates. She was still my mother, just staying in my room for a short time.
When I walked back in, she was still wearing her coat, unbuttoned, the cream sweater and brown cords underneath. “Uh, can I…” She sat on the foot of the guest bed. Her legs were crossed, one hand resting on Bowzer. She’d taken off her boots, showing the pink socks she had borrowed from me. “I forgot my pajamas. They’re down in the van, I mean. Do you have something I could wear?”
I gave her some leggings and a long-sleeved sweatshirt that I’d gotten during training, “TWEETE HALL STAFF” emblazoned across the front.
“Aww.” She held it up to her chest, swinging her head from side to side, her curly hair brushing against her shoulders, her small, silver hoop earrings staying completely still. “I’m one of the gang now. This makes it all worth it. Really.”
I studied her smile. It was hard to tell if she was just joking around, or if something had actually happened to her attention span. In any case, she seemed to take my silence as a reproach—she looked away as she slid her coat off.
“I’ll tell you the whole story,” she said, pulling up her sweater with a quick yank. The T-shirt underneath came up with it, revealing a beige bra and, when both arms were fully raised, the faint outline of ribs.
I sat at my desk and opened my chemistry book, to a diagram of some chemical reaction, something to look at besides her. “Why didn’t you tell me you were having money problems?”
She said nothing. I did not look up to see her face, to find a clue in her expression. I heard a zipper unzip, her heavy sigh. I kept my eyes on my book, my eyebrows furrowed with feigned concentration. I could not say now, or even then, what kind of molecule I was looking at.
“If you need to stay up, I can sleep with the light on,” she said.
I looked up. She was in my leggings and my staff shirt, getting under the covers of the guest bed. Bowzer, lying at the foot of the bed, stood, stretched, and made his careful way up to her arms. “It won’t bother me,” she said. “Your father used to watch television in bed, and I got used to it. Really, I’m tired enough, I’ll go right out.”
It wasn’t true. They used to fight about the televison. My father liked to set it to a timer, so he could fall asleep with it on. My mother had a velvet eye mask, and headphones that played white noise; but she said she couldn’t keep the flicker of the television, the hum of it, completely out. She needed to sleep in the dark, she said. That last year before the divorce, I had twice woken up to find her sleeping in Elise’s old room.
“That’s okay.” I shut my book. “I usually go to bed about now.” I stood up, looking around the room. She’d left her bags on the floor by her bed. They were zipped up, arranged neatly, and pushed out of the way.
“Do you need anything?” I stood by the light switch, my eyes on her bags. “You want some water or anything? I can go get it. It’s no problem.”
She shook her head. She already had her head on the pillow, her eyes closed, Bowzer spooned up against her. “Thanks,