Slide - Kyle Beachy [48]
“Alright. It's a plan.”
I sat at the stop sign on the corner, waiting for a break in traffic. I looked over and saw the hyena kids at rest, sitting in a loose circle, watching me. I held a hand out the window, a sort of wave, and they stared back, completely still.
two
I ate one night I came home to find a figure alone in the darkness. It was my mother, seated with legs folded beneath her so they disappeared within her purple robe. With no legs and her arms close to her side, she looked like a chess piece set there on the couch.
“Mom? Jesus. I almost peed myself.”
“Oh, I'm sorry, honey. Normally when I can't sleep I sit in the living room, but I wanted to see you come in.”
“I thought this was the living room.”
“This? No, this is the family room. The living room has the fireplace.”
“Are you sure?”
She held the mug centered at chest level and stared in a way that I kind of wanted to drop to the floor.
“Why, yes, I'm sure. This is the family room.”
I was almost positive she was wrong, and I felt a certain warmth for this dash of parental fallibility The light on the answering machine blinked tiny red dashes.
“What keeps you up so late?”
“Thirty-five years of snoring from your father. You'd think by now, wouldn't you? You'd think one would adjust. But still, here I am.”
She shrugged and brought the mug up to her mouth with both hands. I slipped off my shoes and walked past her into the kitchen. She looked even stranger from behind, just shoulders and head. I tried to recall if her head had always been so round. I unwrapped a slice of American cheese and sat down in my father's recliner.
“Dairy” I said.
My mom sipped from her mug. “Are you enjoying being home?”
“Yes.”
Are you going to leave?”
“Mom.”
“When the snoring got this bad I used to think about sleeping upstairs in the guest bedroom. Just go up there for the night. I held out because I didn't want to hurt your father's feelings. Then one night, this was recent, within the past few months, I went up there. And do you know what? Something about the vents, maybe because the guest bedroom is on top of our room, and the vents? Anyway, the point is that he's even louder upstairs. I know it sounds impossible.”
“It's bizarre,” I said, “because I don't hear any of it. And trust me I've been awake.”
“No. It doesn't make it over to your room. I'm glad it doesn't bother you.”
By now my eyes had adjusted to the lighting and I felt bad about my initial shock at finding her here. And upon further review I decided she was right about the living room. Of course she was. This was more her home than anyone's.
“You've slept in my room?”
“No I have not.”
“Let me ask you something, Mom. Do you ever hear anything up in the attic?”
Her hands and mug went from chest to lap. “The attic?”
“I'm just wondering. Any sounds at all.”
“Is this about the squirrels?”
“Different than squirrels.”
“How different?”
“Just different.”
“No,” she said, raising the mug. “There's nothing in the attic.”
For several minutes neither of us was willing to speak or leave or do anything besides sit there.
“At least stay through the fall, honey. I know how much you love our falls in the Midwest.”
“Mom.”
“You were always saying on the phone how much you missed the seasons. There was that funny thing you said about smog doesn't count as a season.”
“You mailed me that box of leaves,” I said. “I loved that.”
“You and your father will rake the yard,” she said. “Do you know what that would mean to your father? To rake leaves next to you, side by side?”
“These allergies,” I said.
“Christmastime around here is so special. All the energy, all the trees hung with lights, the decorations at the Botanical Garden. It's going to be beautiful.”
A pause lingered.
And who can resist the spring? I don't have to tell you how nice our