Heft - By Liz Moore Page 0,119

just as I do before games. I would stop myself from thinking anything at all.

But today it seems possible—just possible—to think about her in all her states, drunk and sober, tidy or messy or anything. The times she was a good mother, because they existed, they did exist, and the times she was very bad.

This was what happened the first time I realized she was really in trouble. She hadn’t gone to work in two weeks but she hadn’t yet been fired. I was a sophomore. I was fifteen years old. I took the train home and then got on the bus and by that time it was already very late. I don’t know what I was thinking of. I don’t remember much from those days. Already I fed and clothed myself. I made money for myself any way I could. I stopped at the corner store at the gas station and said hi to Frank and bought myself a roast beef sandwich and bought my mother a turkey sandwich. I bought us both chips. I was happy about something that I don’t remember anymore. Basketball practice maybe. It was winter. It was cold out. I was thinking maybe I could sit down with her and reason with her about going back to work. Everyone’s been asking about you, I would say. Dr. Greene keeps asking when you’re coming back. This was not true, but it seemed to me then to be the surest way to lure her back to work.

But when I walked up to the house it was all dark inside. No lights were on. I put my key in the door and turned it and said, Mom? Mom?

I was a kid.

I tried to turn the lights on but no lights would come on and I realized that once again she probably hadn’t paid the electricity bill. Shortly after that I would start looking for it in the mail and paying it myself. But that day I fumbled for the flashlight on the wall and used it to find my way into the living room and she was sitting there crying. She was wearing her robe and looking out the window and she was sitting in a chair slumped forward.

What’s the matter, I asked her, already very weary.

She shook her head and would not answer.

I got you a turkey sandwich, I said, and took it out of the plastic bag and put it in its white butcher paper on her lap. Set it down there without knowing what else to do.

She didn’t touch it.

Eat it, I said. You should eat that.

Then I had an idea, and I went into the kitchen and found a couple of birthday candles and some matches, and stuck them into a potted plant and lit them up. Then I put the potted plant on the hearth and I said, Look, Ma. A fire in the fireplace. Remember? A fire in the fireplace.

•

Come with me, I say to Lindsay. Please. I can’t go by myself.

But you should, says Lindsay.

But I can’t, I say.

Arg, says Lindsay, and her face puzzles up in exasperation. He’ll be like, who’s this girl?

—Then I’ll say Hi, Mr. Opp. This is my girlfriend, Lindsay Harper.

She rolls her eyes at this but she also almost smiles.

You really want me to? she asks me.

He said I could bring whoever I wanted, I tell her. And I want you to.

Because I’m out of gas, I say, and she thwacks me hard in the back.

I’m nervous, says Lindsay.

I’m nervous too, I say.

She puts on a dress to go to Arthur Opp’s house. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen her wear one. To school she wears jeans or her sports uniforms. She looks like a woman. I tell her so and she acts insulted.

In a good way, a really good way, I tell her.

Ready? she asks me, and I say yes, because I am.

• • •

Yolanda arrived this morning & has been helping me all day. Her parents are coming tonight from Queens.

“Oh my God,” she keeps saying. She whispers it under her breath. She is nervous for me to meet them. I imagine them as male and female versions of Yolanda. Thirty years older. I imagine them in hooded sweatshirts. I imagine them nervous, like she is.

We went for our walk after she got here & we saw the Dales & their sons. “See you tonight,” said Henry Dale, & I nodded rather smartly & casually, & then marveled over how natural it