"He called me into his bedroom, took off his belt, and told me to pull down my drawers. I was eleven, old enough that this was humiliating. I pleaded and cried and explained that I was scared of the dark and the rats. He said, 'I'll teach you to be scared.' Then he beat my b.u.t.t red.

"I suppose he meant to teach me to be scared of him, not the dark. But I learned a different lesson. I learned if you're scared you better not show it."

While there's much to admire from a professional angle, Mom's Hallmark card performance grates a little. The script's too neat, the message aimed too blatantly at the heartstrings. When I offer neither praise nor encouragement, she says, "I've been doing that ever since. Hiding my feelings. Hiding my fears."

"Don't we all."

"Some of us a h.e.l.l of a lot more than others. Am I boring you, Quinn?"

"Not a bit. I was trying to picture you as an innocent young girl."

"This wine's gone straight to my head. Why'd you let me drink it?" Bracing her palms on the table, she pushes herself to her feet. "I better lie down."

Cradling the pillow, she wobbles into the living room. I'm free to join her. Or be a b.a.s.t.a.r.d and stay here. Reluctantly, I leave the bottle and trail after Mom.

She's lying on the couch with the pillow under her head. She might be a patient composing herself for a session with a shrink. Her arms are rigid at her sides, her legs crossed at the ankle. I deposit myself in a chair beyond her sightline. The resemblance to my appointments with Dr. Rokoko would be complete were it not for her ratty housecoat and the copies of Modern Maturity Modern Maturity and and Consumer Reports Consumer Reports on the coffee table. on the coffee table.

"Move around where I can see you," Mom orders.

I do as she demands, perching uncomfortably on a corner of the coffee table.

"I guess you're wondering why Maury and I argued."

"You made it clear that's between you and him."

"He's probably already blabbed to Candy. You deserve to hear it too."

"We're beyond that, aren't we, Mom? Worrying what we do or don't deserve?"

She stretches out a hand and clamps onto my knee, destroying any illusion of therapeutic boundaries. "He's shook up because I asked him to kill me."

"Jesus, Mom!"

She grips my knee tighter. The veins on her wrist engorge in high relief. "Don't take the Lord's name in vain."

"I hope it's not in vain. I'm praying you didn't do that."

"Well, save your prayers. I did."

"How could you?"

"Who the h.e.l.l else am I supposed to ask? Candy has her head in the clouds these days. She doesn't care about anything or anybody except Lawrence. And you're not the type to get his hands dirty." She speaks as if she were asking for no more than gardening help. "You're so concerned about Maury's tender feelings, ever stop to consider mine? You know I'm fed up with life. You know I can't look after myself. You know I hate the idea of wasting my savings on a.s.sisted living."

"I told you I'd pay for everything."

"I don't want everything. I want one thing. I want to die before it's too late."

"You're a Catholic. You should believe it's never too late. It's up to G.o.d when you die."

"Don't lecture me about Catholicism." Her eyes blaze behind her lopsided gla.s.ses. "You don't even go to Communion."

"I'm not the one who wants to die."

"You will. Mark my words, one day you will. And I hope to Christ your kids don't abandon you like mine have."

"n.o.body's abandoning you. We're all still waiting on you hand and foot. What more do you want?"

She yanks the pillow from under her head and pushes it at me. "Smother me."

I shove it right back at her, and she hugs it to her chest like a baby and breaks into great gulping sobs. "Wait until you're old," she says.

"I don't have long to wait."

"Wait until you're alone."

"You're not alone. You're cut off. That's your choice, not mine." My impatience has given way to piercing anger. "You're the one that abandoned us. G.o.d forbid that we might need you. It's hard enough getting you to answer the phone or the front door."

She wilts and for once seems to be weighing what I've said. "You're right. I'm an awful mother. Please put me out of my misery. I'd do it myself, but that'd condemn my soul to h.e.l.l."

"What about my soul?"

"You can go to confession afterward. You have all the time in the world to repent."

"What about my sanity? Having murder on my conscience?"

"A guilty conscience might bring you back to the sacraments."

"So this is all for my sake?"

"Don't be such a smart aleck. Sooner or later, you have to make peace with the Lord."

"I'd rather make peace with you," I say.

"We're not at war. We've had our differences, our disagreements. Nothing we can't patch up." Her voice turns treacly. "Come here on the couch beside me."

As much as I might complain about her detachment and the distance between us, I'm more fearful of being close to her. I never know what she'll do. I'm never sure what she'll ask of me and what my answer should be. Still, I move over to the sofa.

"Lie down," she says.

"There's no room."

"Sure there is. I'm skinny as a minute and don't take up any s.p.a.ce."

I lie back, precariously balanced, half on the couch, half off it. Her body radiates no heat, and the hand she latches onto mine feels dry and fragile.

"Remember how we did this when you couldn't sleep?" she says. "I'd stretch out beside you and we'd talk. Even when you were a little boy we had wonderful conversations. You always understood me."

"Since we're on the same wavelength, Mom, tell me something. What is it about me that makes you believe I'll do what Candy and Maury won't do?"

"You're different."

"You mean I'm the heartless type who'd murder his own mother."

"I mean you're strong, decisive, merciful. Candy's scared of her own shadow. Maury's afraid too. I told him I'm leaving him money in my will. So he's worried the cops'll suspect he had a motive."

"And I don't have a motive?"

"Correct. I'm not leaving you a cent. And if the cops ever questioned you, you'd have them eating out of your hand. Maury, he'd fall to pieces, just like last time."

"Yeah, last time," I say, then go silent. It a.s.sumes a shape, a palpable weight, this silence. It slowly presses things to a single sharp point.

Mom stirs beside me. "I suppose you read the papers in the cedar chest. I left them there for you."

"I guessed that. What I haven't figured out is why."

"You get to be my age, close to the end, you like to put your affairs in order. Fill in all the blanks."

"There are still plenty left. I didn't notice your statement. Didn't you give one?"

"The cops asked some questions."

"So what did you tell them? Did it happen the way Maury described?"

She springs to a sitting position, like a puppet from a box. "What's that got to do with what we're discussing? You think I enjoy going over it again and again?"

"You've never never been over it with me. The one time I asked, you cracked my head against a wall." been over it with me. The one time I asked, you cracked my head against a wall."

"I was a couple of years younger, that's what I'd do now."

"I bet you would. You ask an awful lot for somebody who never gives."

"Never gives? I gave you life. I gave you love. I gave you opportunities. A d.a.m.n sight more than your brother and sister ever got. Why are you torturing me?"

"I'm not torturing you. I'm saying you're one-sided. You ask for a final favor. And such a small one! But you won't even talk to me about Dad's death."

"s.h.i.t on this." She tries to stand up; I pull her back onto the couch. "Get your hands off me!" she screams. "I'm not bargaining with you."

"Of course you are. That's what this is. That's why you left Maury's papers for me to see. It was your opening bid."

"What kind of monster, what kind of doubting Thomas, have you turned into?" She's straining to break free.

"The kind whose mother taught him never to trust anybody."

"I feel like I raised a snake. Why are you doing this to me?" She stops struggling and rolls onto her side, pulling her knees to her chest. The slippers drop from her pitiful, swollen feet.

"I sacrificed everything for you three kids," she wails. "I loved you and didn't want to lose you. Now look how it turns out. You hate me and I've lost everything."

"I don't hate you, and it's up to you how things turn out." Then I wait, and the solid block of silence resettles.

Turtling her neck, Mom slowly raises her head. "If I tell you, will you do what I asked?"

"Let me hear what you have to say. I'm not making any promises."

When she buries her face in the upholstery, I fear I've lost her. But in a m.u.f.fled voice she says, "Hope you're not squeamish. This is more than any child should know about his parents. Jack and I never had a peaceful marriage, but the s.e.xual part was strong. We went at it most nights. When I was pregnant with you, though, he calculated you couldn't be his. He kept track of his bets on the calendar and he figured he'd been on a bender for days around the time I got knocked up. He wanted me to have an abortion. But I said h.e.l.l, no."

"I thought that was Tom Trythall."

"They both pressured me." With her face against the upholstery, her words sound slurred, as if coming from an old radio speaker. "That's what Jack and I were fighting about that day-whether you'd be born or not. Candy had gone off to a movie, but Maury was home, listening to the blow-by-blow."

"Dad was. .h.i.tting you?"

"No. I smacked him. It wasn't a love tap either. He just grinned to make me madder. He had this trashy habit of staggering home half-crocked and washing up in the kitchen sink. So he didn't have a shirt on. I went on yelling at him and he went on sponging himself. Afterward he was as likely to kiss me and carry me off to bed as he was to grab and shake the daylights out of me."

There's a catch in her voice. "The thing of it is," she says, "I was holding the butcher knife. To get his attention. I'd done it before-waved a knife around and threatened to chase him out of the house unless he changed his ways. Normally he'd sweet-talk me. But this time ... I don't know."

She starts to rock, like Maury. "I don't remember stabbing him. I honestly don't. In my mind's eye, he bellies up to the butcher knife and it just slides into him. Like times when we were drunk and dancing naked in the dark and suddenly he slipped inside me. Simple as that. He groaned and his eyes got real wide. Then they shut. I pulled out the knife and the blood started gushing like water from a fountain. It splashed all over me. I screamed, and Maury ran into the kitchen and started screaming too. He grabbed the butcher knife, and I grabbed it back. He grabbed it a second time, and I went to call the ambulance.

"By the time I came back, Maury was on the floor beside Jack. At first the rescue squad didn't know how many were dead. Maury and Dad looked like two corpses laid out on a slab. But when they felt for a pulse, Maury went nuts at being touched and thrashed and kicked. It took three of them to wrestle away the knife and pin him down.

"Maury yelled at them, 'He was hurting her. He was always hurting her.' The cops handcuffed him, and before I could say a word, they dragged him out of the house and tossed him into a squad car. That's the last I saw of him until that night in jail. Detectives took me upstairs for questioning. Wouldn't even let me change my clothes. I was blood-soaked to the skin. Meantime the ambulance crew was in the kitchen working on Jack. But it was too late. I could have told them that."

"What did you tell them instead?"

"Who?"

"The detectives."

"They asked so many questions, I don't recall all I said. Basically it's what I told you-Jack bellied up to the knife and next thing I knew it was in him."

"I don't suppose you mentioned that the knife was in your hand, not Maury's?"

She rocks harder in a negative shake of her head. "A cop from the squad car rushed upstairs and said Maury already confessed. I saw then how things stood, how they were slipping away from me. The state I was in, the only chance of this situation working out, I thought, was to let things take their course."

"You mean"-I squeeze her hip to stop her from rocking-"let your son take the rap."

With a gust of her old belligerence, she asks, "What was I supposed to do? I thought the best thing was to claim Maury was defending me."

"And what did you expect the police to do? Pat him on the back?"

"I expected them to put him in a mental hospital where he'd get treatment-which he d.a.m.n well needed. I never in a million years thought they'd indict him for first-degree murder. But the state doctor examined Maury and said he knew right from wrong and could stand trial."

She flips onto her back, and her voice gains firmness as she goes on. "I went to the pastor and confessed the truth, and he swore he wouldn't give me absolution unless I set the police straight. So I admitted to them I was the one with the knife. But they didn't believe me. They accused me of being a good mother, taking the blame for her son."

I switch from the couch to the chair. My every emotion is undermined by skepticism. I should be shocked, horrified. But how much of her story can I believe? I wouldn't put it past her to trick me into euthanizing her. "Why didn't you go public and plead for your son?"

"Jesus, Quinn, that's something you'd do in a movie. This was real life. I wanted to help Maury, not make a spectacle of myself."

"You should have helped him by saying he wasn't a murderer."