"She told you it was a man in his twenties. Why search in a school?"

"A hunch. No harm done."

"Not to you. What am I supposed to tell my teacher?"

"Tell him you talk too d.a.m.n much." He leaned over and flung open the door on my side.

Normally I wouldn't have confided in a soul, no more than I had confessed to anybody before Dr. Rokoko about the creep in the woods. Ashamed and angry, I wanted to punish the cop-and at the same time I was afraid of being punished. If Mom found out, she was sure to flare up as quick as a kitchen match, not caring who got burned. Still, people had seen me dragged out of school and driven off in a squad car. I couldn't hide what had happened.

My science teacher sent me to the office. There the princ.i.p.al listened to my story, then despite my abject begging that he not tell Mom, he said he had no choice. He phoned her straightaway, and I resigned myself to being beaten.

That evening at home, however, she caught me by surprise and was furious at the police, not at me. Next day she called in sick at Safeway and made me come with her to the County Service Building, fuming the whole time about false arrest.

Mother Courage. That was another role she gloried in. Whenever she wasn't playing Mother Discourage or Medea or Blanche Dubois, she was a defender of underdogs, a pugnacious righter of wrongs, a fearless protector of her family. That these campaigns frequently ended in losing battles didn't deter Mom. All that mattered at the moment was settling a score.

With her silver hair helmeted in a page-boy style, she marched off to war in a pair of pedal pushers and a man's shirt hanging loose at her hips. Yet no pinstriped state's attorney or swaggering sleek-suited defense lawyer commanded quicker attention. She demanded to speak to the chief of police and promptly got her wish.

A florid fellow, short-armed and thick-necked, the chief wore a starched white shirt that creaked like a bulletproof vest. In bemus.e.m.e.nt, he listened to Mom lay out her bill of charges, then inquired mildly, "Did your son notice the name and badge number of the alleged officer in this alleged incident?"

"Gil," I said. "His name was Gil. I saw his badge but not the number."

The chief lazily swung his eyes over to me. "What's Gil's last name?"

"I don't know."

"Can you describe him?"

"He's heavy-set and wore work clothes. You know, blue jeans."

"Well, that gives us something to go on. We have an officer named Gil." He instructed his secretary to call Officer Conroy.

Then the three of us waited in awkward silence. Awkward for me, that is. It's hard to remember what I feared more. That the chief would humiliate Mom, and then she'd take it out on me? Or that somehow they'd both turn against me?

The chief didn't appear to feel any stress. Not bothering to straighten the papers on his desk or lighten the atmosphere with chitchat, he stared at Mom, and she locked her belligerent gaze on him.

Gil arrived in uniform, carrying a visored cap under one arm as though it were a serving tray. When the chief summarized Mom's complaints, Gil said, "Gee, I don't get it. I've never seen this boy before in my life. And what she accuses me of doing violates our procedures. We're trained to treat juveniles with kid gloves."

"That's a lie," Mom said. "I know d.a.m.n well what you do to juveniles."

Petrified that she'd mention Maury-how would it help to tell them her older son was a convicted killer?-I broke in. "He put me in a room with the girl and pressured her to identify me. He prejudged-he prejudiced me."

"What do we have here?" the chief asked. "A Philadelphia lawyer?"

"He's smart and he tells the truth," Mom said.

"I believe my men are smart and tell the truth, too," the chief said.

"There were witnesses," I said. "Kids at my school. The girl."

Ignoring me, the chief asked Mom, "What am I supposed to do, ma'am? It's your boy's word against a police veteran of ... how many years, Gil?"

"Eighteen years."

"He's been on the force longer than your son's been on earth. Under the circ.u.mstances, what can I do?"

"Fire him," Mom flung back.

"Afraid I'm not going to do that on the say-so of a kid. Of course, if you care to file a formal complaint-"

"That's what I'm doing now. Complaining."

"-you'll need to write a letter and submit it to the review board."

"Why should I believe I'll do better with a letter than talking to you?"

"That's your choice, ma'am. Now I've got things to tend to."

"Me too," Mom shouted. "I'm missing work. I'm being docked a day's pay. I've spent half my life fighting courts and parole boards. What do you have to do to get justice in this state?"

The chief signaled that Gil should go. Then he stood up, dismissing us. But Mom wouldn't leave. And with a fascination that verged on horror, I watched her veer off into self-immolating anger. It came to me then, not for the first time and certainly not the last, that in my childhood calculus of fear this was what I dreaded most-Mom's meltdowns.

Nostrils spread, voice lowered to a menacing register, she reared back and lambasted the chief. To crack his smug veneer and leave him with a scar to remember her by, she called him a coward. She accused him of having a backbone as soft as a banana, and she doubted how hard the rest of him was.

She wasn't doing this for me, I knew. It answered some deep need of hers. If it all ended in tears, in bloodshed or even a jail sentence, that was a price she was willing to pay. She'd have piled abuse on him for hours had the chief not sauntered from behind his desk and out of the room. The two of us were reduced to silence again. Then there was nothing to do except skulk down the hall to the exit.

On the ride home, terrified that I'd become her next target, I talked to protect myself. I talked to calm my nerves. I thanked her for defending me. I told her I loved her and was proud of her. But as I gibbered away and watched her hands and prayed they'd stay fastened to the steering wheel, I recognized that for all her brave standing up to authority Mom was ... was wrong in the head. That was the politest way of putting it. And it was the hardest thing for me to accept. It's hard even today to acknowledge that the woman whose love and approval I craved, and who seemed to me, then as now, remarkable in so many respects, is clinically disturbed and dangerous. I didn't know how to deal with it back then. I don't know now.

At 4 p.m., darkness drops over London like a stage curtain. Some people find the early winter nightfall profoundly depressing. I regard it as a good excuse to pour a drink. Back in my conservatory, I measure two inches of Irish whiskey into a coffee mug, postpone the call I promised to make to Mom, and memorize the script of what I'll say.

Then I commence punching numbers-twenty for my discounted long-distance service, followed by the U.S. code, the Maryland area code, and finally the digits of her home phone. After a single ring, I hang up and redial. Since it's the signal she insists on, you'd expect her to s.n.a.t.c.h up the receiver the instant the second ring crosses the Atlantic. But no, I have time for a leisurely sip of whiskey. Because of her poor hearing, I suppose, the rings-four, five, six-have to wash over her in vibrating waves before she notices.

"h.e.l.lo," Mom warbles as if from the bottom of a dank well.

"It's Quinn."

"Where are you? You sound like you're right in the next room."

"I'm in London."

"Is it cold there? It's cold here," she says.

"It's nice and invigorating." Another sip of whiskey warms my innards. "Candy told me you wanted to talk."

"What I want to do is talk in person, not over the phone."

"Good. It's been too long since we've seen each other. I should be in the States sometime this spring. I'll stop in Maryland."

"I need to talk to you sooner." Her voice strengthens in her old habit of command.

"I don't think that's possible, Mom. Not with the schedule I have."

"What are you doing that's more important than your mother?"

If I were her director, I'd discourage this tonal shift. In one line she's sad Ophelia drowning; in the next she's the tyrannical mother ruling with an iron fist over the House of Bernarda Alba. Like the weak tubercular son in Long Day's Journey into Night Long Day's Journey into Night, I grope for an alibi. "I've agreed to write my memoirs. The publisher has me on a tight deadline."

"That's wonderful, Quinn." The truculence evaporates from her voice. "Tell me about it."

"Not much to tell yet. I'm just starting."

"I'll pray for a best seller. Do you need pictures? Candy and I were going through photographs yesterday."

"It's not that sort of book."

"Readers would love to see you as a baby. I hope you don't dwell on the bad parts. Be positive and write about all your blessings. And don't be too hard on me. I'm hard enough on myself these days and don't know how much longer I'll last."

"I'm sorry to hear that. What seems to be the problem?" With this question I'm uncorking a bottle that could be bottomless. To fortify myself, I pour a second Irish whiskey.

"I remember and I regret ..." Mom's words trail off in what may be a fault in the connection or a bit of internal editing. "I remember, but I don't regret. I'm afraid I won't go to heaven unless I clear the decks with you kids."

"Please, don't feel you need to do that with me. I'm fine."

"You may be fine. I'm a wreck. Half of the time I don't know who I am. I look in the mirror and can't figure it out."

"We all have those days."

"The doctor calls them panic attacks. I don't see what I have to be panicked about. Just life, I guess. These spells last for days unless I pop one of my pills."

"What pills?"

"I have a whole bunch. Xanax is the best."

"You take Xanax?" Pictures of druggie old stars in decline or young ones plagued by stage fright come to mind. "Did a doctor prescribe it?"

"What do you think? I bought it on the street?"

"What else do you take?"

She recites a list-Atenolol, Senequan, Celexa, Synthroid, Restoril-as if reading labels off the vials on her end table.

"Sounds like you might be overmedicated."

"That's what Candy says. But without medicine, I can't sleep and I can't wake up. I have terrible dreams."

Much as I empathize, I have no desire to compare nightmares with Mom.

"And every day I have to get up and dress and hurry downstairs," she says, "because if I stay in bed, Candy blames it on my being depressed. That gives her another excuse to bring up a.s.sisted living. She claims I'll be happier there. But she just wants me out of the way."

"No, she loves you and has your best interests at heart."

"She loves somebody else now. Bet you didn't know that. He wants her to move to North Carolina."

"Good for Candy. She deserves some happiness."

"How much happiness do you suppose this Leonard Lawrence or Lawrence Leonard gives her? He's a dentist, almost retirement age."

"I'm glad she has someone who loves her."

"I tell her, I say, do you know the definition of a sixty-five-year-old man that's good in bed? It's one that stays on his side and doesn't snore."

With my fist wrapped around the whiskey, I believe I catch sight of fox eyes in the garden.

"Candy, all kids," Mom goes on, "think their parents have no clue about s.e.x. They don't accept that their mother's made of flesh and blood, and that at a certain age the flesh was weak and the blood was hot. Dad and I, we fought a lot. Mostly my fault. I had a filthy temper and I'd smack him around to get a rise out of him and remind him I was alive. But after the worst fights, we had the best loving."

Alternately an Irish Catholic prude and an outspoken bawd, Mom has always had this cringe-making habit of sharing more information than anybody, especially her children, care to hear.

"Want to know something funny?" she says. "I've started thinking about Jack. For a long time I didn't, but now I do. I remember he was the one that locked the doors at night before he switched off the lights and came to bed. I haven't felt safe since he died."

"I didn't know that," I say for want of something better.

"There's lots you don't know."

"Well, one thing I don't know-and it worries me-are you eating? Candy says you canceled Meals on Wheels."

"I drink Ensure every day."

"What about meat and vegetables? What about a hot meal?"

"To h.e.l.l with cooking! Men retire. Why not women? I can't be bothered fixing food."

"You don't have to. Let me pay somebody to do it for you."

She draws a weary breath. "Eating bores me. The doctor says I have that disease where you lose interest in everything."

"What disease is that?"

"He wrote the name down on a slip of paper, but I lost it. It's one word."

"Anhedonia," I suggest.

"That sounds like more than one word."

"If you'd let somebody clean and cook and keep you company, you'd feel better."

"How good am I supposed to feel at eighty? I don't want strangers nosing around, ordering me to do this, do that in my own house. The women in that line of work, they can't even carry on a conversation. Most of them-now don't accuse me of being a racist. I've lived on the same street with them for decades-most of them are black and they have a chip on their shoulder. They grump and gripe and do as they d.a.m.n well please. 'Don't you like your job?' I ask them. 'You deserve a better one, like singing or dancing. Something to cheer you up.' I say, 'I'm sorry about slavery and segregation and all that. But I didn't have anything to do with it. My people sailed over on a boat from County Cork and worked for a living.'"

"Please, promise me you don't say that, Mom."

"Why not? They don't care what they say to me. Last summer when Candy went to the sh.o.r.e with Leonard, she hired a nurse to babysit me. First thing she said, this nurse, she says, 'Lemme see you sit on the toilet and get up off it. We don't want any dribble accidents.' I told her, 'd.a.m.ned if I will. You go directly to h.e.l.l. I may be old, but I haven't lost my dignity.'"