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By Root 520 0

years old when that happened, and apparently a normal little boy. But then his panics started; and Mother’s life became the kind of tired riddle that wounding dreams set you to unlock. Such a cruel year: Bill gone, the letters from the school, the selling of the house, the move, and John all hopeless now and having to be kept at home. Bill sent checks. She never said he didn’t send checks. From Vancouver. Whatever was he doing in Vancouver …? Mother turned. Ah there: now John slept, his chin tripled over his plump tie knot, the four trails of liquid idly mapping his face, two from the corners of his mouth, two from his eyes, eyes that never quite went to sleep. Mother let him be.

Not until five or so did she gently massage him back to life. Waking was always difficult for him: the problem of re-entry. “Better now?” she asked. “After your lovely nap?” John nodded sadly. Then, together, hand in hand, they shuffled below to change.

For John the evenings would elongate themselves in interminable loops and tangles. Half an hour with Mother in the Parakeet Lounge, a friendly tweak on the cheek from Kiri, tonight’s Parakeet Girl. Parakeet Tombola, while the pianist plays “The Sting.” Dinner in the Flamingo Ballroom. The ladies’ evening wear: a fanned card pack of blazing taffeta. And then all the food. Mother went through the motions of encouraging John to eat something (she had his bottle ready but didn’t want to shame him, with the Brines there, and Gary, and Drew). John looked at the food. The food looked at John. John gave the food a look. The food gave John a look. John didn’t like the look of the food. The food didn’t like the look of John. To him, food never looked convincingly dead. And he got into hopeless muddles and messes with his partial (was that alive too?). He ate nothing. On the way to coffee in the Robin’s Nest, Mother liked to linger in one of the Fun Alleys, among the swearing children and the smoking grannies. John stood behind Mother as she lost her nightly fiver on the stocky fruit-machines. The barrels thrummed, the symbols twirled: damson, cherry, apple, grape. Exes and zeros, jagged, unaligned. She never won. The other machines constantly and convulsively hawked out silver tokens into their metal bibs, but Mother’s was giving nothing away, all smug and beaming, chockful of good things sneeringly denied to her. Maximize Your Pleasure By Playing All Five Lines, said a notice above each machine, referring to the practice of putting in more than one coin at a time. Mother often tried to maximize her pleasure in this way, so she lost quickly, and they were never there for long.

What next? Every evening had its theme, and tonight was Talent Night—Peacock Ballroom, ten o’clock sharp. The sea was high on Talent Night, with the waves steep but orderly, churning out their fetch and carry … Couples eddied toward the double doors, the prismatic women with their handbags, the grimly spruced men with their drinks. They staggered, they gagged and heaved, as the ship inhaled mightily, riding its luck. Someone flew out across the floor in a clattering sprint (this was happening every five minutes), hit the wall, and fell over; a purple-jacketed waiter knelt down by the body, yelling out orders to a boy in blue. Mother shouldered John forward, keeping him close to the handrail. She got him through the doors and into the spangled shadows, where at length she wedged his seat against a pillar near the back row. “All right, my love?” she asked. John hoisted his head out of his saturated suit and stared stageward as the lights went down.

Talent Night. There was an elderly gentleman with a sturdy, well-trained voice who sang “If I Can Help Somebody” and, as a potent encore, “Bless This House.” There was a lady, nearly Mother’s age, who with clockwork vigor performed a high-stepping music-hall number about prostitution, disease, and penury. There was a dear little girl who completed a classical piece on the electric organ without making a single mistake. That was the evening’s highpoint. Next, a man got up and said, “I, uh,