SmokeLong Quarterly

In the kitchen, my father arranges pills into a plastic container that used to house cutlery. Blue, yellow, pink, white, blue, yellow. Everything perfectly spaced, with a built-in alarm buzzer my sister rigged up for him.

“Your mother is naked,” he says. “Backyard.”

I move to the sink and look out the window. Under a surprising winter sun, my mother sparkles from the metallic glitter she likes to drip all over her skin. She stands beside my father’s raggedy herb garden. I need to work on this, soon, buy some seeds or mulch or whatever it is a garden needs.

“It’s warm, Papa,” I say. “She looks cozy enough.”

“She looks like a fool,” he says. “We should get her,” he says, meaning: Go get her. “And, Sammy, bring her a robe for Christ’s sake.”

Her robe is diaphanous with a dragon’s head emblazoned across the back. The head is gigantic and deranged. Eyeballs like shards of glass.

Two weeks ago, I brought my mother home from a retirement village named Loblolly Luxuries. She had loved a man named Donald at Loblolly, but he died before it was expected and she came back home.

Home is an L-shaped rancher, white brick, new roof. Home is hot dog water on the stovetop, wine spills on white carpets, mice in the walls and a woman named Janice on my laptop. I pay her ten dollars an hour to touch herself and in all candor I wish she would smile more often. I’d give better tips, if she did.

“I know this robe is tacky,” my mother says. “Donald gave it to me. He had terrible taste but he loved to dance.”

“Sounds nice,” I say. “For real.”

“Last week,” she says. “Last week, guess how many words your father said to me?” She doesn’t wait for a reply. “Six,” she says. “He said, ‘Do you know where my thing is?’”

I count the words in my head. I don’t correct her. Instead, I lead her back into the kitchen. My father disappears. I fill the sink with suds and warm water and do the dishes by hand. In the last hour of my married life, Ruby had handed me a box, the last box, filled with kitchen utensils.

“You’re just like your father,” she said. “Apple off a tree.”

Now, my mother lines ornaments on the laminated countertop beside me. Three snow globes, five music boxes—a little parade. Over a silver music box, a tiny ballerina pirouettes endlessly. The dancer’s neck is long and her fingers reach for something unseen.

My mother shakes the globes and gobs of chemical snow fall on open fields, a New York skyline, and two rogue cows. She cranks the music boxes to life. Bach, Holly and the Ivy, and a lullaby so soft I want to crack open my skull just wide enough to let this music slink inside and live there for a while.