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by Ron Koertge

  Her shoulders sag some more. “I’m solely responsible for at least a thousand square yards of ladies’ wear.” She ticks off brands on one hand. “Liz Lange, Xhilaration, Mossimo, Merona Slimming Solutions. And then there are the UPC numbers.”

  Thinking about it seems to wear her out. She closes her eyes. Colleen and I look at each other: Did my mother nod out over a corn dog?

  Just then somebody else in a Target vest stops, touches Delia on the shoulder, and says, “Who are your friends, honey?”

  She’s a big, strong woman who radiates energy. She reminds me of Queen Latifah (real name Dana Elaine Owens), who was good in Chicago and just won my heart in a little movie called Last Holiday.

  My mother actually wakes up a little. “Oh, Monique. This is Ben. He’s all grown up.”

  I get to my feet. “We haven’t seen each other in a while.” I put one hand on Colleen’s shoulder and introduce her.

  “That’s a pretty blouse,” Monique says. “You didn’t buy that here.”

  “Fell off the back of a truck headed for New York.”

  Monique smiles. “Well, I should be getting back. Guess who has to zone men’s dress pants?”

  Delia checks her watch. She puts both hands flat on the table and is about to push herself to her feet when Colleen says, “Look at this.” She grabs my good hand and sets it beside my mother’s. They actually are alike.

  Then she’s on her feet. “Really. I can’t be late.”

  Colleen shoos her. “You go. We’ll clean up here.”

  Delia puts both hands deep into the pockets of her smock: no hugging today. “Well, thank you for coming. I really enjoyed myself.”

  We watch her walk away. Hurry, really. Or scurry. I take a deep breath and sit down. Colleen thumps the table with one fist. “I think we made some progress today, doctor.”

  “It’s like she doesn’t get it. That it’s been twelve years. That I’m her kid. Is she ever going to ask about Grandma?”

  “Speaking of Ms. Congeniality, when are you going to tell her?”

  I shake my head. “That I found my mom? I don’t know.”

  “But you will, right? You have to.”

  “Eventually.”

  Colleen digs for her keys, points to the exit. I take her hand, and she leads me away. I’m almost as comatose as my mother.

  “Unbelievable,” I say once we’ve cleared the door and are outside again.

  “Yeah,” she says. “Not like the movies, where Mommy says she’s sorry and then the violin section kicks in.”

  “She hasn’t seen her kid for twelve years, he shows up out of nowhere, and she says, ‘What a coincidence.’”

  “Get in the car, honey. Stop thinking for two minutes.”

  “She can’t be like this all the time, can she?”

  “We’ll find out, okay? We’ll come back. She could be part of a shadowy netherworld of Zombie Moms, at which point we’ll have to get out the flamethrower.”

  I fall into the seat. Colleen reaches across and fastens my seat belt. She kisses me and puts her warm cheek against mine. “It’ll be fine. You’ll be fine. You’re kind of in shock — that’s all. Anybody would be.”

  As Colleen drives, I keep thinking: That’s my mother? That’s the person I thought about and worried about and, when I was little, anyway, cried myself to sleep over? Holy shit!

  “You okay, sport?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Talk to me. We meet this genie, okay? And we each get three wishes. You know what I’d wish for? Huge boobs. Then you’d never ever want any girl but me. Huge boobs and a movie theater. What would you wish for?” She leans and pokes me with an elbow. “C’mon. What would you wish for?”

  “I know you’re trying to distract me. Thanks, but I’m okay.”

  “Bullshit. I’m really interested. What would you want if you could —?”

  “Okay, okay. Fine. Two good arms and legs and a car, okay? That’s all. I’d just like to be a regular kid with a car.”

  Colleen swallows hard. “Well, fuck. Now I’m going to cry.”

  “I didn’t cry back there.”

  “You totally did. People were staring at you. They were taking pictures. You’ll be on YouTube tomorrow — Former Orphan Outdoes Niagara.”

  “Will you just stop?”

  “Fine.” She scans the traffic all around us and mutters. “Like a bunch of salmon going upstream to spawn. Big honkin’ mortgages, rug rats in the back, grills on the patio, all the beer they can drink.” She shudders, and it doesn’t look like she’s pretending, either. “Talk about Night of the Living Dead.”

  “You remember Night of the Living Dead?”

  She takes her eyes off the road to tell me, “Oh, Ben. I remember every second of every movie we ever saw together.”

  When we get home, I say to Colleen, “Why didn’t Grandma tell me my mom was twenty miles away?”

  “Ask her.”

  “Now we know she knew.”

  “Ask her.”

  “Why didn’t she tell me?”

  “Will you shut up?” Colleen gives me a little push down the sidewalk. “Ask her. Then call me.”

  Grandma’s in the kitchen. It looks like she’s been doing Wii Fit Plus, because she’s in loose yellow pants and a black top. Her shoes are by the door — side by side, toes aligned. Her feet are smooth and white.

  She says, “Right on time,” without turning around. I watch her add some turmeric to a pot of rice.

  “I just saw my mother.”

  I get a little rush saying it like that. Fast and merciless. The spaz as assassin: that has a nice ring to it.

  Her wooden spoon never stops moving. She doesn’t turn around. She just says, “Did she contact you?”

  I shake my head, even if she can’t see me. “I found her. She lives in Azusa.”

  “I know, Benjamin.”

  I take a step forward, toward the little table where we’ve eaten a thousand meals. Its white napkins and spotless glasses. How many movies have I seen where things get hashed over in the kitchen? People throw things or lunge for the drawer with the knives. That won’t happen here. “I know you know. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  She turns the fire down and goes to the cabinet for spices. Which she pretends to look for, even though they’re all in alphabetical order. I know she’s stalling for time. Finally she says, “Your mother wrote to me a while ago about this particular move.”

  “So,” I say, “you knew where she was all along?”

  She nods. “Periodically she’d get in touch and ask for money.”

  “And you’d send it?”

  “Yes. It was never very much.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I convinced myself it was in your best interest not to know.” My grandmother finally looks right at me. She examines a silver saltshaker like she’s never seen it before. “At least in the beginning, it wasn’t like you didn’t have enough to deal with. I’d sit in the waiting room at the physical therapist’s and listen to you whimper.”

  That stops me for a good ten seconds. “But what about when I was older? Why didn’t you tell me then?”

  “I didn’t see the point. And I distinctly remember a conversation not long ago. You asked me if there was enough money to search for Delia, and I said, ‘Do you want to do that?’ And you replied, ‘No, not really.’”

  “But you knew where she was then.”

  My grandmother just nods as she stirs one of her vegetarian concoctions, then takes a tentative sip.

  I tell her, “You can eat if you want to.”

  She either can’t look at me or doesn’t want to. “I’ve lost my appetite. Would you like some?”

  “I’m not hungry, either.” I turn a see-through bowl around and around. “Why did she move back down here if she doesn’t want to see me?”

  “I think she might.”

  “Did she say that?”

  “Not in so many words.”

 
“Well, I saw her first, and she looks like she’s had a hard life.”

  “Delia was always fragile. I wasn’t surprised when she finally went to pieces. In those days, I had you most of the time, anyway. If your father was out of town, she couldn’t keep you overnight. The day she left, he was in Sacramento and you were wearing shoes two sizes too small. I wasn’t sorry to see her go. When you were with me, I knew where you were; I knew you were safe and getting enough to eat.”

  I can feel — as Colleen would say — the f**king tears start way down inside me somewhere. Not in my head, where you’d think. Somewhere else. Deeper. Redder. Like my heart. “So she didn’t leave because of me? Because I was just a crippled pain in the ass nobody would want?”

  She shakes her head, and even her thin, rich lips quiver a little. “Is that what you think? Oh, Benjamin. She couldn’t get dressed most mornings. It had nothing to do with you.”

  I get up and stand against the refrigerator. I let my forehead touch the big coolness. What was that story Colleen told me? That when she was little, the refrigerator would tell her she was a good girl and the sun liked her.

  When I turn around, when I can turn around, I tell my grandma, “You haven’t seen her?”

  “No.”

  “She’s pathetic. Lives in this crappy apartment and drives this old car.”

  “How did you get to Azusa?”

  “Colleen drove. And don’t start. Colleen was really nice, and Delia liked her. I could tell.”

  Grandma lifts the clear coffeepot and then changes her mind. But she doesn’t sit down. She leans against the stove. She’s not slumped, exactly. My grandmother never slumps. But she does look relaxed. Relieved, maybe. Has this secret about my mom — where she lives, how much money she wants, when she wants it — been, like, this boulder Grandma had to carry around?

  “Are you angry with me?” she asks.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “About?”

  “Everything?”

  I get up and stand close to her. She keeps her hands at her sides, but I hold them anyway. “I just can’t believe my mother works at Target.”

  “And we don’t know for how long. Two years ago, she moved twice in six months.”

  Grandma turns away and reaches into the cupboard for a cup. One of the beautiful, fragile ones she likes. The ones she never wanted me to use. For me she bought big, sturdy mugs with superheroes on them.

  “Have some coffee,” she says, handing me the cup, daring me to hold it steady while she pours. “You’re old enough now.”

  So we sit there together. The light through the superclean windows is sharp. I think of that one chair on my mother’s porch. Maybe she likes sitting out there by herself, soaking up vitamin D. Maybe she’s perfectly fine. Finally I say, “I guess Colleen’s living with Marcie for a while.”

  “I know. I called Marcie not long after you left this morning. Colleen and I had breakfast together. She makes terrible choices, but she’s a very bright young woman.”

  “You orchestrated that move?”

  Grandma shrugs. “I thought it was in her best interest.”

  “What a cool thing to do.”

  “Or I’m just an old meddler who ought to stop micromanaging people’s lives.”

  I scoot a little closer. “When I was little, I know I had C.P., but I was basically just a kid, right?”

  “Of course. Maybe a little more patient than most. You’d sit for hours with your Slinky. Do you remember that?”

  “Kind of.”

  “You liked Matchbox cars, and you had a Thomas pedal train that you just adored.”

  “I could do that? I didn’t just pedal in a circle?”

  “You managed. And you enjoyed coloring, but you weren’t good at it.”

  “What?”

  “Well, you weren’t. You had this lovely coloring book about a farm, but the sheep were blue and the cows were red and the farmer and his wife were green. They looked like they’d just disembarked from a very difficult voyage.”

  “Where was my mom when I was busy making farmers throw up?”

  “Doing her best. It was always your father or I who took you to the doctor or to the hospital for therapy. Your mother hated hospitals. On her good days, she’d get you out of bed early, take you to too many places, feed you too much ice cream, wear you out, and bring you home because you cried. On her bad days, she wouldn’t come out of her bedroom.”

  “Didn’t she need a therapist or a shrink or something?”

  “I got her to see Dr. Alvarez once. She called him a quack and threw the pills out a window.”

  “Where’s Dad in all this?”

  “He seemed to make all the difference. She was at her best around him. He took her just seriously enough. He’d come home from work, tease her into getting dressed, and take her out to dinner.”

  “Where was I?”

  “With me.”

  “I remember sitting on her lap. I remember that she smelled good.”

  “She could sing. Do you remember that? She sang for your father.”

  “And now she’s stacking T-shirts, figuring out that the white ones go with the white ones.”

  Grandma stands up, takes both cups, rinses them in the sink. “I knew this day was coming, and I dreaded it. I was afraid you’d be upset with me.”

  “You were probably right to not tell me anything. What were you supposed to say, ‘Your mom wrote and asked for another thousand dollars’?”

  “She always asked about you. She always asked, “Is Benjamin all right?’”

  “And that’s supposed to make everything okay?”

  She lets her hand land on my shoulder. “I think I’ll lie down. Don’t you feel like lying down?”

  “A little, I guess. You go ahead.”

  In my room, I call Colleen, and she barely lets it ring once.

  “So?”

  “I’m okay. Grandma and I talked. How about you?”

  “How about me what?”

  “You’re at Marcie’s now.”

  “I know. It’s weird. I have to work and stuff. Keep things clean. Do some dishes. Not bring any guys home, especially the syphilitic lepers I usually shoot up with.”

  “Give her a chance.”

  “Call me, like, every twenty seconds, okay? I’ve got the blue phantods.”

  “What are they?”

  “Better than the screaming meemies, worse than the willies.”

  I know better than to nag Colleen, so A.J. and I trade a couple of e-mails, mostly about if I’m going to call Blake Edwards back and finish the interview. But I don’t tell her I’ve seen my mother. I turn on the TV, and wouldn’t you know it — on TCM there’s Mommie Dearest with Faye Dunaway! No way, Ms. Dunaway.

  Next morning when I wake up, I think about Colleen, just across the street at Marcie’s. Safe and sound. IFC is going to show Grizzly Man in a few hours. It’s a great documentary. I’ll make some popcorn and Colleen and I will watch it later on.

  Then my phone rings, and it’s Marcie.

  “Don’t get upset,” she says, “but Colleen is in the hospital. She didn’t want to upset you, so she called me first. She’s fine. Really. Little bump on the head.”

  I lean against my dresser. “What happened?”

  “She didn’t say. Just a car accident about one o’clock this morning.”

  “Was she loaded?”

  “Why don’t you come over. I’ll fix us something to eat, and then we’ll go to the hospital.”

  “Shouldn’t we go now?”

  “There’s no point.”

  I take the phone away from my ear. I’ve been pressing way too hard. “Sure there’s a point. She’s all by herself.”

  “She’s not going to know if she can come home today till the doctor makes his rounds. Probably, but they’re careful about head injuries. They’re just being cautious.”

  “So it’s not just a bump on the head but a real i
njury?”

  “Ben, she’s fine. Completely coherent, completely penitent. Just come over when you get cleaned up, okay?”

  A few minutes later, I’m at Marcie’s front door.

  “Your hair’s still wet,” she says. “Get in here before you catch a cold.”

  Marcie leads me to the nearest bathroom, throws a towel over my head, and rubs vigorously. “Let me get my hair dryer.”

  “I’m fine. We should go.”

  Marcie points to a clock. “Colleen said after ten o’clock. I’m not driving back and forth two times for nothing. I leave a deep enough carbon footprint.” She puts her arm around my shoulders. “Come on. There’s something I want you to see.”

  I follow her into the kitchen. I can see two bowls and a half gallon of milk. She points a small remote at the little flat-screen on the counter, and on comes something called If You Can’t Stand the Heat.

  “What’s this?” I ask.

  “I taped it the other night. It’s a great little documentary about these Hispanic kids in San Antonio and their culinary arts class.”

  “I don’t want to watch a movie. I want to see Colleen.”

  Marcie pulls a chair away from the table. “Will you just relax?”

  “No.”

  “Watch this establishing shot,” she says.

  Anything to get this over with and get out of here. I pretend to be interested in a slow pan of a rough-looking neighborhood. Some graffiti, empty stores with FOR LEASE signs in the windows, guys on street corners, finally a high school complete with guards everywhere and metal detectors.

  Then I meet the main characters — Javier, who’s a soccer player; Alanna, who’s got a sister in a wheelchair; and Mrs. Perez-Quiñones, called Mrs. PQ. She’s the culinary arts teacher.

  Marcie pushes a bowl of granola in front of me.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Who said you were? Check this out — ten seconds just on Javier’s muddy shoes, and all that fancy footwork on the soccer field, and then boom! Smash cut right to his hands dicing celery. Whoever made this knew what he was doing.”

  I look at the clock, pour some milk over the granola, and take a spoonful of cereal. On the screen, Javier is arguing with his girlfriend. She wants him to go somewhere with her, but he’s got a job after school, and there’s soccer practice, and Mrs. PQ is prepping the class for a big cook-off in Dallas.