An excerpt from Bitter Milk
(Picador, 2005)

By John McManus

So many things were dying in Loren’s mind, ideas mostly, the thoughts that all was as it should be, the confidence that things wouldn’t end. Still, he loved Mother and he ate the grilled cheese she’d made him, along with a sweet gherkin and a handful of salted and peppered potato chips, and afterwards she asked him if he wanted to go on a drive. He was suspicious, because she never wanted to go anywhere anymore. It had to do with the state of her mind. It upset her to see how other people were living when she had to live as she lived. So he tried not to say yes too vigorously. Maybe he’d get to go all the way to another state. He’d never been to one before. The sun was just beginning to set when he ducked his head under the fallen cherry tree to get in the Chevette. Mother, already in the driver’s seat, turned the ignition and flooded the engine with gas. She prided herself on what a good driver she was, and Loren loved riding with her. Gravel shot up ever which way as we backed down the driveway. We drove north on Stump Road, and then we went west and north and east and up and down on various other roads; that’s how the roads are around here, spread across the land as if someone had spilled a can of worms. Mother pointed out butterfly weed in a ditch on Chota Road among the wild carrots. I was watching her carefully to make sure she wouldn’t cheat and violate the terms of our wager, but she seemed to be holding up her end of the deal. She had a whole bunch of flower names like toadshade, fleabane, purslane. She was one of those special people who knows the name of every flower and tree and bird and fish. It’s hard to say whether she really knew them or was just making them up. We passed the Primitive Baptist Church, where Mamaw’s hole had already been dug up for the funeral the next morning. Then Mother pulled into a gravel driveway. We couldn’t see a house, but the mailbox said Carnetta Sledge, and Mother let the car idle awhile and then turned it off.

Mother, we shouldn’t be here. We don’t know who lives here. Mother, we’re sitting in someone’s driveway.

Do you remember what I told you about?

She turned to him and seemed to laugh, but the noise ended as soon as it had begun. Loren saw how sad her eyes looked. She wasn’t supposed to have gray hairs at thirty-five.

About what? He said it louder: What?

The flowers, she said eventually.

What about the flowers?

Is it ironweed or butterfly weed that’s purple.

I think it’s ironweed.

You sound like you don’t know.

I don’t need to know, because you know.

You hear the words and you don’t see any colors.

I think it’s ironweed, Loren said.

I don’t remember, either. I don’t have any idea.

Soon, I thought, the man who owned this driveway would appear with a shotgun. He’d kill Mother first so Loren would have to watch her die. Loren wanted to die first himself, but then Mother would see it, and she’d suffer. He was a man and she was a woman, so he should be the one to suffer if there was suffering, but he didn’t want to.

I’m sorry I wasn’t listening better, he said.

It was my fault, not yours.

I’ll ask Miss Rathbone.

That woman’s as ignart as anybody. Don’t go bothering her.

If Mother were still in school, Loren thought, she’d be in the thirty-second grade.

Can we get out of this driveway now? he said.

What is it you’re in such a hurry for?

He couldn’t think of what to say to make Mother understand. He shouldn’t have to explain it; mothers were the ones who were supposed to explain things. They were supposed to make their children feel safe.

I was gonna tell you something, but I can’t if you’re staring like you want something.

You’d better watch out, I warned her. Don’t give it away. That’ll ruin it.

There’s nothing I want, said Loren. Go ahead and tell me what you were going to tell me.

You just said there’s nothing you want, Loren.

I want to know what you were telling me.

Whatever it is, I warned, you better not tell him.

Whose driveway is this? he said.

You don’t know her. It’s just some driveway.

I had nothing to worry about, I knew then, because whatever she wanted to tell him, she was too ashamed. Maybe it was her wager with me, or maybe it was something else. I’m not ashamed of the wager, but I accept myself for what I am. What I am is what I am, and I see no reason to make people think I’m anything other than that.

Loren felt calmer when Mother put the car in reverse. Out on the road no one could shoot us; roads belonged to everyone. The trumpet flowers in dark gullies never made a sound. Just before home, I saw where our old fort in the woods had been. The squirrels had been the soldiers; we’d been the Cherokee. The leaves were bastard swords. Loren had clutched a brittle stem and stabbed himself and fallen into my arms. His sword was brown and crumbled to the earth; it was October, in the time of dying leaves, when he’d still been thin enough to take his shirt off. I saw that the leaves had rotted into dirt, covering the rocks and logs we’d gathered, so the fort could no longer be said to exist. All Loren wanted to know now was why Mother was mad at him. There were several reasons why she might have hurried to bed without goodnight or even putting away the butter and cheese; she might have been upset about Mamaw, she might have been unhappy in general, her troubles might have been acting up. They got worse each time, and Loren wished he could feel it in his own body for a while, so the two of them could understand each other.

Think about yourself more, I said. It’s too late for her. Let’s get out of here.

I can’t get out of anywhere, I’m nine years old.

There are places where things happen.

Things happen here, too.

Like watching the mirror to keep from eating?

We share a first memory: I was in the crawlspace. I’d asked Mother why I should ever listen to what she said, and she had banished me. She was fixing red velvet cake; it was our birthday. Loren stood above me, in the house, ignoring what I told him through the floor. He watched Mother stir the ingredients together. Mother spread icing onto the cake and looked upon her work and nodded. I had to stay in the crawlspace for fifteen minutes. Maybe it was longer. I walked up and down its bald dirt slope. I grew to love that space and hid in its dark mold many a time.

Loren ate some peanut butter crackers, some apple butter crackers, and a bowl of applesauce. He watched the road through the living room window, and though he knew it wasn’t an important road he imagined it full of travelers bound for faraway places. A thin crescent moon rose above Chilhowee Mountain. Whenever Loren looked at the moon, he stopped being bored for a moment. He wished there were a hundred things like looking at the moon to do each day, so the days would be a hundred moments shorter. He walked along the border of the yard where we’d played freeze tag a long time ago. When we were eight, a year was an eighth of our lives; now we were nine, and it was a ninth, which meant our lives were getting shorter. Mother said every year was twice as short as the last, which meant we’d be half dead at eleven, and Mother was already four-fifths dead. Her body was dying around her mind. That was why she wanted out of it.

He decided to stay awake until sunrise and see if all those hours were really there. Eventually he was in a deep nightmare that I caused by moving myself into his blood. This wasn’t easy, and before long he dreamt a heart attack. You best not die, I said in the dream, they’ll have to buy your coffin in the husky section. Things are more expensive in the husky section. Mother needs every last penny of this money she’s getting. We made a bet. As soon as she gets that money, she’s out of here.

When his heart attack had finished killing him, he awoke. Mother was bent over him, cooling his forehead with a wet washcloth. At first he thought she was a ghost, then he felt guilty for thinking such a thought about his own mother. He couldn’t tell if he’d been asleep. He touched his fingers to his eyes and found them swollen.

What was all that noise? she said. Were you having a nightmare?

What would we do if cars quit working? he said. He didn’t know where his question had come from, but the grocery store was twenty minutes away. How would anyone buy things?

I guess we’d walk, said Mother.

But it’s too far.

Horses. We could ride a horse.

You don’t know how to ride a horse.

Just cause I’m a woman doesn’t mean I can’t figure it out.

You don’t even have a horse, he said, his voice rising. No one does.

We’d trade in the car and get a horse instead.

What if there was a war and they shot all the horses and everything blew up and nothing worked and the army came to shoot us?

Hush now, said Mother.

There’s not even a lock on my window.

She lifted her glass of buttermilk from Loren’s bedside table and sipped from it. Buttermilk was the one thing in the refrigerator Loren didn’t like. It was staining the sides of her glass. He wanted to go see if she was in her room sleeping in her bed too, if there were two of her.

Can I sleep in your bed tonight?

I feel like I want to sleep alone, she said.

He could sense the light brown of the peanut butter mixing in his stomach with the dark brown of the apple butter, turning white in reaction to his acids. He could use a separate blanket in her bed; they’d draw a line down the middle. She kept the door locked at night now, and he wondered if she slept at all.

I wouldn’t mind your snoring. I could move my own bed into your room.

Why don’t you just sleep with Luther. Luther doesn’t snore.

Yes he does. He’s just the same as you.

If we’re the same, you’ll be fine sleeping with him instead.

I don’t mean you’re the same as him. That’s not what I meant at all.

He wanted to tell her he loved her more than me, but he couldn’t say it. He imagined himself saying it. He tried to hear his voice, not just how it sounded inside his head, distorted by his skull, but the real thing. He thought of different ways to put the words. His brain was sweating with our names. I would have gone away. I never wanted him not to love her.

That’s what you said, sweetie.

I don’t know why I said it.

It’s okay. It didn’t hurt my feelings.

She turned out the light and left the room. When he was younger, she used to sing to him at night, to keep him from being scared. She’d sing folk songs, old Child ballads from her Joan Baez songbook, and he would sing along: Matty Groves, House Carpenter, Mary Robinson. In all the songs, young girls died because men had hurt them. Some were sent to the gallows for crimes they didn’t commit. Some drowned at sea; others fell ill and became ghosts, trapped indefinitely in limbo between earth and the next world. He considered that everything Mother had ever done to help him feel safe had only made him more afraid.

It won’t matter about the lock on your window, I told him. They can blow the whole earth up all at once now. But don’t worry about it; you won’t know, because it’ll happen so fast.

He shivered beneath his comforter and counted numbers to try to sleep. They scrolled quickly by, and he wished he could slow them down. If a bomb blew him up, he thought, he’d never know the date. Footsteps creaked through the walls, and he prayed for it not to be burglars. He was wide awake. Today could be the number on his grave. If the bomb blew, he wanted to spend his final living instant memorizing it, burning his headstone’s numerals across his mind.

He dreamed he vomited jars and jars of pasta sauce, whole stewed tomatoes riding it like capsized lifeboats, but then it was just blood.

The next morning was the funeral, and Loren went to the bathroom to get ready. He was scared his suit would already be too small for him after two days’ time, but it wasn’t, although the belt was tight. He hated belts and pants in general. If Mother got to wear a suit, he thought, he should get to wear a dress. He’d have been ashamed to do it, and it made him admire his mother for her lack of care. Adults never had as much of a problem with shame as he had.

When he took off his pajama bottoms, he saw that his boils had grown worse.

That’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen, I told him. The pustules looked like oily kernels of popcorn. I wanted to touch one and know if they were hot or cold.

What if they keep getting worse until I die?

I was the one that made them get worse. I doubt if I’ll let them kill you, though.

Stop it, Luther, it’s got nothing to do with you.

Why are they there, then? Did you put them there yourself?

It’s hidradenitis suppurativa. It’s completely natural.

That’s about as ridiculous as that gender diphtheria business.

He stared fearfully into the bathroom mirror, wondering if the boils would cover his whole body. The doctor had said it was caused by sweat beneath his belt buckle. Losing weight would help. If he were a girl, he wouldn’t have a buckle at all. If he were a girl, he wouldn’t even have been fat. It was probably his own gender dysphoria causing him to overeat, because the condition was hereditary and would keep progressing until he died.

Stop trying to explain your problems like that, I told him. I was the one who caused it, and I couldn’t kill you even if you wanted to. I’m not allowed, and anyway what would be the purpose of all that I’m doing if I wanted you to die?

What are you talking about?

It’s complicated. It has to do with where your loyalties lie.

I don’t have any loyalty to you. I hate you.

Things might change, though. Mother might be going away for a while.

Loren heard Mother stirring in the next room, so he finished putting his suit on and went to the living room, where Mother stood in the same black suit she’d worn to the viewing.

Are you going somewhere? he said.

To the funeral, Loren. You know that. I swan.

After the funeral, though.

Did somebody tell you I’m going somewhere?

Why were we in that driveway yesterday?

Luther’s not somebody you should be listening to.

Just tell me where it is you’re going to go.

Maybe to the grocery store, I guess. We’re out of just about everything.

Loren went to the kitchen to make sure the stove eyes were off before we left, and then he checked the coffeemaker and the stove eyes again and the coffeemaker one more time and the stove eyes. Mother was going out the door, though, and he didn’t want her to think he was eating. She hadn’t even noticed. She was already sitting in the Chevette, staring blankly into space. Loren got in the car too, and she drove down the driveway and away. Her seat belt was in her free hand.

Put your seat belt on, said Loren. We’re moving.

I was around back when cars didn’t even have seat belts.

But cars have always had seat belts, since they were invented.

Really? Where were you when they passed the law?

How could they make cars without seat belts? Why would anyone do that?

There’s things you ought to worry about more than seat belts, Loren.

Was she threatening him? Was she going somewhere, as I had said? Why would she consciously want her own son to worry?

Just forget I said that, Loren. I don’t want you to be fretting all day and night. Everything’s gonna turn out okay in the end.

The funeral was at the same Primitive Baptist Church with the same nameless valley spread out below us. The marquee read Anger is a wind blowing out of the lamp. I soared up to the rafters and beyond them to the summit ridge of the mountain, all the way to the lookout tower on Look Rock. No one noticed me there, and I descended again. Loren stood around like a half-inflated ball, nervous, because this was his first funeral, and he didn’t know what he was supposed to do.

Don’t worry, I said, I’ve been to lots of funerals.

No you haven’t.

Yes I have.

No you haven’t.

Yes I have. Don’t worry about it.

Everyone was there, all the great-aunts, second cousins, friends from Mamaw’s sewing group and knitting group and quilting group and crocheting group. Loren wondered if Mother would have this many friends too when she was Mamaw’s age. He was continually pulling his pants lower to try to move his belt below his condition. The pallbearers were Cass, Papaw, Dusty, and a man barely old enough to be an adult. Loren had never seen him before, and apparently Mother hadn’t, either. She started into the back of that fourth pallbearer’s head. She spent most of the whole ceremony staring into his head. She was liable to burn a hole in the back of his head from staring so hard at it. When the service was over, she went to Ruby and demanded to know who it was.

Somebody Cass knows from that turkey shoot.

The most important turkey shoot of the whole season?

Right, the one that’s more important than the other ones.

You think I can’t lift a coffin, then?

Why would you want to go touching coffins, Avery?

Why would you want to bury anybody at all? Why not let birds nibble out our guts on the side of the mountain?

I know you said don’t tell you what you are no more, Avery, but whatever it is you think it is you are, you’re not.

What’s this little prick’s name, anyway?

The turkey shoot kid?

The fourth pallbearer.

Gurney Flinchum.

So that’s more respectable than I am?

Don’t ask questions you don’t like the answers to.

I could lift that coffin all by myself, Ruby.

What’s the point of that if it’s already in the dirt?

And why not Loren? What about him?

I paid for the coffin anyway. I guess I’ve got a say in who touches it and who don’t.

Ruby, as soon as that money comes in I’m paying my share and you know it.

I wouldn’t want that, Avery. Can’t you ever accept some charity?

If that’s charity then you can suck my asshole.

It’s your condition causes you to say things like that.

Daddy says it all the time and you don’t raise a finger.

So you want to be more like Daddy? That’s what this is all about? There’s an admirable goal. Anyway the payment came through this morning. I can deduct the coffin part from your check if that’s what you want. But I don’t know if Mommy would want to lie in rest in a coffin that you’d helped pay for. I mean I’m not being mean; I’m just saying.

Mother crossed the churchyard parking lots to where a few of the men were gathered around their trucks. Loren prayed she wouldn’t make a scene, because scenes made him nervous. Papaw would eventually make one himself anyway, so Loren saw no need for Mother to make one, but I figured she might as well shake things up a bit by making a scene before anyone else could. She marched straight up to the fourth pallbearer and tapped him on the shoulder.

You’re pretty strong, she said, aren’t you?

Gurney Flinchum stopped talking to Cass and Dusty about turkeys and turned to Mother. She was about six inches shorter than any of them. Gurney looked frightening to Loren, but Dusty was the one he was most scared of. Dusty was one of those pervasive people who just pervades everything. Everywhere his signs had been hammered into the ground. Thousands upon thousands of men would come all the way from Knoxville to live in his houses, he said. He must have thought he had the whole county figured out. He didn’t understand Mother one bit, though. Gurney probably understood her even less, but he was a stranger, and Loren was expecting him to fall right back out of their lives as quickly as he had entered.

Why don’t you arm wrestle me? she said.

What would be the point of that? said Cass.

This is between me and Gurney. Gurney, are your arms too sore from carrying that coffin to arm wrestle me?

They ain’t sore. I just don’t see the point, though.

Then I guess you and Cass are a lot alike. Neither one of you can see the point. I understand now why you’re friends. I know this is a funeral, a tragic time for all involved and if there’s only one thing that can be expected in this sad time, it’s to show respect to the deceased, but I don’t know the deceased that well, in fact the deceased told me I was an abomination and I haven’t been in much contact with her these past nine years, so why don’t you humor me a moment and help me prove a point.

Gurney looked at Cass and Dusty, who both shrugged, and then he unbuttoned the cuff of his shirt and rolled up the sleeve and put his elbow on the hood of his Chevrolet truck. Most of the other people were watching too. Loren was watching, and I was certainly watching. Mother didn’t bother doing anything about her sleeves. The suit was already dirty anyway, and I doubt she planned to wear it again anytime soon. One two three go, she said. Immediately the strain on both of them showed. Their faces tightened and grew red. Neither arm moved. Loren was terrified of what might happen. The danger of games was that the game could be lost. People were watching, and Mother stood to be humiliated. She might prove she was incapable of being a man. Maybe Gurney had something to lose too, but Gurney didn’t seem to care.

He’s not trying, I said.

Yes he is, Loren said, they’re tied.

Mother and I are tied too, but that doesn’t mean we’re both trying.

Trying to do what? What would you be trying?

He was the stupidest person in the world, and I don’t know why I continued caring about him so much. What was in it for me? What made me want him to succeed? Whatever it is I’m good at, I wanted him to be just as good, so we could be good at it together. If that meant causing mischief, tearing things down, abandoning them, setting ourselves against the world, then fine, Loren should have been willing to do that too. We could have been having a lot of fun together. Mother was miserable. She wasn’t any fun, and that wasn’t what Loren wanted to hear. I guess he wanted to make his body as uncomfortable as hers, but what was the fun of that? I flew above him to show him the opposite of what he was doing to himself, or what she was doing to him by being a part of his life at all. I soared through the trees at hundreds of miles an hour, but Loren ignored me, focusing on the arm wrestling. It had gone on for more than half a minute. Mother’s arm looked like it would give out any second. Loren had the sense that Cass and Dusty were rooting against Mother. Why would they go against their own family? He was glad Papaw wasn’t watching. Papaw was by the grave, arguing with the preacher. They’d given Mamaw a grave that didn’t have a view of the valley. Loren looked toward the church, and when he looked back, Gurney’s arm was pressed flat to the hood of the truck. Gurney had lost, and Mother looked crazed. It didn’t seem appropriate to congratulate her. He tugged at his belt. His feet hurt in the black dress shoes; next time he’d go barefoot. Was it bad to think about other funerals? He didn’t want to cause anyone to die. He closed his eyes and shut his brain so no one’s name would come to mind. He tried to think about Jesus to keep anything else from happening, because Jesus was already dead. The faces of the graves gleamed on the hillside from steeple to sun, and Loren catalogued the names and numbers, bold and capital, that were carved in stone.

Papaw looked into the grave and said, Well, there won’t be any more Mamaw.

Eventually everyone meandered into the church. Only certain kinds of flowers were displayed; you couldn’t pick just any old flower for funerals. Papaw continued arguing with the preacher, his arms in the air.

Don’t sorry me. Everybody done put their hundred-dollar clothes on.

You’ve had that suit since 1962, said Ruby.

Money looked the same then as it does now.

They had those buffalo heads, said Cass.

You weren’t even there.

I was there just like you were.

Your eyes was still closed.

You’re thinking of mice.

And that cake looks like a wedding cake, not a funeral cake.

Ruby threw her arms into the air too. I guess I should be glad I can even talk, she said, looking at the general murmur in the room.

Loren went to the table and chose a piece of cake and ate it quickly so no one would think, There he goes again, of all the times. Ruby saw him and used him as an escape from Papaw.

You’re so lucky. Everything’s ahead of you. So many places to go.

You go more places than we do, Loren said.

Who’s we? You don’t mean that little thing of yours again.

Me and Mother, I mean.

She nodded. I wish I was in your place.

Of course she doesn’t really want to be fat like you, I told him.

That’s my piece of cake you took, Papaw barked. Give it here.

Loren laid the plastic fork on the saucer, but it wouldn’t balance, so he stuck it into the cake upright.

Good God, said Papaw, don’t eat no more of it.

Loren tried to hold on, to hand it over the right way, but he let go at the same time as Papaw. Cake bounced down the front of Loren’s suit, icing his pants leg from the knee down to the cuff hem.

That was your fault, not mine, said Loren.

Just had to have one more bite, didn’t you? I give your mama eighty dollars to buy that suit. Things is more expensive in the husky section, cause they’re bigger.

Papaw noticed suddenly how the whole room was watching him shout, and he got louder and said, Listen up. Ain’t nobody better die no more. I can’t afford suits for every damn funeral. He headed toward Mother, digging his wallet out of his pocket as he walked, then pulling cards out of the leather folds. Ruby was maneuvering through the crowd too as Papaw shouted, Take it all. Go sell it to all them Japs down in Monroe County.

I don’t know what you mean, said Mother.

Won’t even be the money left to plant me right. You’ll plant me in a pine box.

Father, said Ruby, I want you could be a little quieter.

My daddy use to say you can want in one hand and shit in the other.

That pine box might do you a world of good.

I don’t even know what the hell it meant. How could you want in a damn hand.

Loren wandered through the conversations. Will not even care for her own yard. What possesses her to drive a Chevrolet I don’t know. Likely did not eat sufficient eggs as a child not that I blame poor Birdie. Drives into that city up there you couldn’t pay me the money to go.

The old ladies fell into a hush whenever Loren approached. He got tired of it and went outside, where the sky had grown plump with gray clouds that hovered in the distance, shedding their mist, threatening to irrigate Mamaw right back up out of her grave. The funeral couldn’t last forever, and eventually we got to leave. Mother drove home a different way, past one of Dusty’s new developments. The sign said Dustin Drake, Developer. Dusty built subdivisions out of farms and woods; he’d moved here just two months ago when he married Ruby, and he was excited because of all the land. Maybe he could develop the whole mountain. Dead trees lined the new street of the neighborhood we were driving past. Power poles were being erected. Loren played with his seat belt and unfastened it.

Why does Dusty build subdivisions?

Where else would people live?

I’ve read books where people walk to everything.

That sounds nice.

Why isn’t it like that here?

Things used to be safer than they are now.

What kinds of things?

Just things in general. Be happy you don’t have to walk. Kids in poor countries still walk all over the place. That’s why we have cars.

Aren’t you going to make me put my seat belt on?

We’re going twenty-five miles an hour.

You can get killed at twenty-five.

So put your seat belt on.

You have to make me do it.

Put it on, then, I’m making you.

I don’t want to.

You just said you did.

You’re not doing it right, though.

Then just don’t talk to me! Just look out your window and shut up.

Loren didn’t see how everything worked so well. He knew he wasn’t supposed to be nervous about what would happen five years in the future, but he couldn’t help it. He wanted Mother just to say it was okay, to pat him on the head and say relax, you’ll know what to do, you’ll figure things out, you’ll find the answers, but she wouldn’t say any of these things. As we pulled up to the house I reminded him of when times were better, when he was younger and smaller and Mother’s condition wasn’t so far along, and she wore her hair longer and shaved her legs and her voice wasn’t as deep and she hadn’t started wearing her chest binder. She would take him down to Roulette Spring to pick blackberries as if the two of them were friends of the same age. They’d walk together through the thorns until they had enough blackberries to make pies all year round, and then they’d lie together in tall grass and the sun would tan them together. In Loren’s memory that was how the whole year had been. He’d had a vague sense that Mother was unhappy, but for the most part she was happy. He would put violets in his hair, which had been long and blond, and he imagined people wouldn’t know he was a boy. But then they’d made fun of him in kindergarten, and Mother had cut his hair, which had turned brown in response. Things had been bad ever since. Loren’s good memories seemed like a curse. It would be nicer to remember when things had been worst of all. He tried to think of such a time. Things would certainly be worse in the future, and if he could only remember the future, he might have been able to take solace in remembering memories, as everyone else on the planet seemed to do. He wandered the house thinking these thoughts. It was hard to torment someone who cared about only one thing in the entire world, but Mother decided to help me. She knew the best thing after a time of extreme personal loss was to get right back to work, so she went outside and started chopping down the hedges. She wasn’t going to let anyone criticize her yard. She hacked away at the forsythias, which were dead, and the junipers and hollies, which appeared to be alive. She hacked at too many branches at once; leaves fluttered down but wood remained. Her bandanna was soon drenched in sweat.

You’re not cutting any of the branches, Loren said.

You think I’m not getting anything done? Useless woman. Can’t clean up her own yard.

Loren needed to think of something to say so that he wouldn’t just be staring at her, so he thought of a lie: I remember what that dream was about.

That dumb thing about the horses and cars?

You died, and I couldn’t remember what you sounded like.

You remembered horses, but my death slipped your mind.

We have to buy a tape recorder so I can record your voice.

We can’t afford something like that, Loren.

You keep talking about getting a bunch of money.

Just listen close to what I say, and you’ll remember and stop talking about dying.

If you die, you’ll have been dead half my life before I’m twenty.

We’ll see how well you remember my voice then after I’m gone.

It already sounds different than it did last year.

My voice? she said.

Uh-huh. I don’t mind, though.

She cut a small bush down completely with one snap of the shears.

It took that bush nine years to grow that big, said Loren.

How would you know how long it’s been growing, anyway?

You said you planted it when I was born.

Well I said a lot of things.

Mother surveyed what she’d done to the bushes and breathed carefully as if to say, You did this, this was you, and he wondered if she wanted to prune him too, so that the rest of him would grow back the right way. It occurred to Loren that there should be a separate word for how she was staring into the dead chestnut tree, the way of staring where you weren’t even trying to see the thing before you. It made Loren want to cry, but he blinked it back.

Are we going to Ruby’s for Easter tomorrow, to dye eggs?

I might let you go on alone, she said.

What do you mean? How could you not go color eggs?

Well, you asked if I was, so I said no.

We’ve colored eggs at Ruby’s every Easter since forever.

She lives at a different house now. We’ll see what happens.

What’s going on, Mother? Why are you being so weird?

I’m a weird person, Loren.

No you’re not, you’re a normal person.

Would you be sad if I died?

Of course I would.

I don’t think I’m very sad about Mamaw.

It’s different. Mamaw was older.

Oh, sweetie, said Mother, suddenly hugging him tight. She looked desperate to say something, on the verge of tears. Something blocked her from talking. It never occurred to Loren that something was me. I started wanting to do something nice for him. At the same time, I started to worry she was about to renege on the bet, and that he’d run away with her.

Do you trust me? she said.

He nodded, frightened of her tone.

You’re just gonna have to keep trusting me, then.

Her grip was the tightest of anyone who had ever touched him. How many people had touched him before? It was at least five people. He wished she’d quit; his shirt was getting wet. He thought about the box of cookies in the fruit basket. She let go of him and resumed cutting. Soon the house was naked to the wind and road and trees, and Loren sat alone in it eating cookies, reading a book in which people aged more quickly the higher on a mountain they lived, so that every moment was more valuable. He thought about what he could do to make himself trustworthy enough to confide in. He lied sometimes about how much food he’d eaten. Mother probably knew that. He figured she was dying to tell him what was going on. If only he could stop being secretive and admit he felt the same way so they could truly understand each other. On the other hand, it might make her feel even worse, because she’d know she had passed her problems on to him. No, she’d understand he didn’t blame her. None of it was her fault. He felt grateful to be alive at all. If he weren’t so secretive and selfish, he’d have thanked her by now for giving birth to him.

That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard, I said. I never thanked anyone for creating me.

You say everything’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever heard.

That’s because everything you say gets dumber each time. Anyway, I didn’t ask her to bring me into the world.

She didn’t bring you into the world.

Yes she did.

No she didn’t.

Yes she did.

And that was the last thing I said to him, because I too was bound by the terms of the wager, and it was time to abide, and wait. Loren went to bed and lay awake most of the night. When he awoke late the next morning, Mother was gone. The Chevette wasn’t in the driveway, and she wasn’t in the bathroom or under her bed or in the closet. Loren looked in the laundry room and in the kitchen cabinets, in her cedar chest where she’d saved her dresses for Loren in case he’d been a girl. He unfolded a yellow one and held it up to himself. How would he color eggs without Mother? The weeds were getting high; soon someone would have to mow the grass. Maybe Mother had gone to buy a new car that didn’t have so much pollen on it, or she was out rescuing turtles from the road. He didn’t mind not being with her if it was just a few minutes, but it had already been more than a few minutes. He looked under the house in the crawlspace, with the skillets. Coming back inside, he found a note on the porch weighted by a stone.

Call Ruby, it said. 555-6110, she’ll bring you to color eggs.

Courtesy of John McManus