"I'm ashamed of you, Samuel. I never thought I could be, but I am."

She turned and left the room. I was trembling. I got out of bed and began pacing around in my underwear, thinking I could walk off the trembles, but this was a rumble that came all the way from the core of my being. It felt as if my head was going to burst. I heard her footsteps going downstairs. In another few seconds she'd be gone. My bedroom window overlooked our front path. I opened it, leaned on the windowsill, and waited for her to appear.

There she was, directly below me. I didn't know what I was going to say, but I had to say something. All the rage and frustrations of my seventeen years had become twisted into one hard, ugly knot, which fit rather neatly into the slingshot of my mind. It was time to let it fly.

"Hey, Mom. Up here."

She stopped, turned, looked up at me with what appeared to be mild curiosity. I could have spit on her from there, but that's not what I did. If only that was what I'd done!

What I did was to clear my throat and say, slowly and clearly, "I wish you were dead."

I was jolted by the sound of my own voice, but there was no way to unsay what I said, no way to pretend I didn't mean it. At that moment, I meant every word of it. My mother's eyes widened, and then she was smiling at me in a horrible, knowing way.

"I'm sure you do, Samuel," she replied. "Shame you don't believe in G.o.d anymore. You could pray for me to die."

She winked at me, kissed her fingertips, and blew me a kiss before turning to resume her walk to church. Anyone watching this scene from across the street would have thought it was a mother and son exchanging loving words on a Sunday morning. I watched her go until she reached the end of the block and turned the corner, and then I knew exactly what I had to do.

I started packing to get out of that madhouse, once and for all.

I had no idea of where I was going, but I had to be out before my hungover father woke up and before my fanatical mother returned. I had maybe an hour.

Where could I go? I'd never been anywhere. I had a little over five hundred dollars in the house, saved up from all my odd jobs, and I figured that would be enough to take me someplace far from Flushing.

Plans raced through my head, like desperate ghosts chasing each other. I'll rent an apartment (where?)...I'll get a job (doing what?)...I didn't know. How could I know? I was seventeen years old. All I could do was focus on the job at hand, which was to get all my stuff together and hit the road, any any road, in any direction. The mission was all about motion, not destination. road, in any direction. The mission was all about motion, not destination.

I had to get a suitcase from the spare bedroom where my father slumbered. The curtains were closed. It was dark and hot, reeking of his sour beer breath. He continued his openmouthed snoring while I yanked the biggest suitcase I could find out of the closet, causing a minor avalanche of clothes and shoes that did not wake him.

I packed rapidly, taking only what I considered to be the essentials, but I still had to sit on the suitcase so I could get it closed. I hefted the thing-it was heavy, but I figured I could carry it to the bus stop if I got it up on my shoulder. I rolled all but twenty dollars of my money into a bankroll, stuck it in a sock, tied a knot in the end of it, and shoved it into the zipper pocket of my Windbreaker. Then I slipped the twenty dollar bill into my pocket, and made sure I had exact change for the bus. At last, I was ready to go.

My father was still snoring. Ma.s.s was still in session. I was going to make it, going to do this thing. I hefted the suitcase and started for the stairs. It was going to be a brand-new life for me, away from the two of them. I'd call them later today, or maybe tomorrow, or maybe never. The main thing was, I'd be out of it. Never again would I be stuck in the middle of the madness.

I got down the stairs and already I was breathing hard from the weight of the suitcase. I figured maybe I should open it up and leave some of my stuff behind, lighten up.

No, I decided-no more delays. Catch your breath, pick up the bag, and go.

And that's what I meant to do, with every fiber of my being, except the phone started ringing as if it meant to jump off the hook. On the fifth ring I heard my father answer the upstairs phone in his gruff-sleepy voice, which I knew very well, followed by a cry of despair I didn't think could possibly come from a man like him.

My mother dropped dead on the way to the communion rail that morning, less than an hour after I told her that I wished she was dead. She was not yet forty years old, but she was overweight and her heart had had enough.

That's what everybody said, anyway. I was the only one who knew better.

A doctor standing behind her on the communion line did his best to revive her, but he was a podiatrist, and apparently anything north of the ankles was unexplored terrain for him. He probably couldn't have done anything anyway. She was, as the priest distributing communion wafers put it, "dead before she hit the floor."

More than that, she was dead before the final communion wafer could be placed on her tongue, and there were more than a few whispered laments in and about the church over this. Not that my mother hadn't died in a state of grace-if there was a perfect parishoner, she was it. But that last wafer on her tongue would have been the cherry on the sundae, the golden pa.s.s to fling the Pearly Gates wide open for her arrival. Another ten or fifteen heartbeats, and she might have made it.

The phone call to our house had come from the pastor, who told my father that his wife had collapsed on the way to communion. He grabbed me and the two of us literally ran to church. He'd pulled on last night's clothes and reeked of dead cigarette smoke, and he was literally whimpering as we burst into the church. I'd been there the Sunday before, of course, but this was probably my father's first time inside a church since his wedding day.

My mother was stretched out on her back, right where she'd fallen. Somebody had placed a pillow beneath her head, and a priest's vestment was draped over her body. There was an odd grin on her face, as if G.o.d had whispered the all-time joke into her ear just before stopping her heart. Her eyes were open, gazing straight up at the ceiling, through it, beyond it.

"Oh, Mary. Ohhh, Mary, what happened?"

Tears began to flow from my father's eyes, but not mine. Everybody thought I was in a state of shock, but that wasn't it. I was a murderer, and murderers don't cry.

And through the shattering, stunning, beyond-belief grief I couldn't help marveling at the power of this woman. In the last moments of her life, my mother had managed to defy all odds and get both me and my father to go to church.

An ambulance took the body away. My father and I went home to get ready to do all the things you do when a member of your family dies. My father was so completely out of it that he never even asked about the giant suitcase I'd packed, even though he practically tripped over it on his way up the stairs.

From then on, it was all a blur-the arrangements with the funeral parlor, the burial out on Long Island, the visits from ca.s.serole-carrying neighbors...How strange it was to be on the receiving end of sympathy ca.s.seroles! Through it all, I never told my father the fatal words I'd spoken to her before she went to church that final day. I never told anybody, until now.

Jake stares at me as I reach the end of the story, the way people look at a priest after a truly heartfelt sermon.

"Jesus, Dad. That's pretty...operatic."

"Let me say it now, if I've failed to mention it before, Jake-masturbation is not a sin."

"Never thought it was."

"In fact, it's probably the leading prevention of violent crimes."

Jake grins, shakes his head. "You okay?"

"Pretty good, considering that I killed my mother."

"You didn't kill her!"

"Were you listening to me? Did you hear what I said to her? I told her I wished she was dead. Minutes later, she died."

"I say shocking s.h.i.t to Mom all the time, and she's still alive."

"What kind of s.h.i.t?"

"Like, 'I refuse to take any more f.u.c.king cello lessons.' Things like that. I may even have told her to drop dead once or twice."

"That's different. 'Drop dead' is an expression, expression, something you say when you're angry. What I said was mean and cruel and... something you say when you're angry. What I said was mean and cruel and...deliberate."

"She said some pretty nasty things to you, too."

"Not as bad as what I said."

"Dad. You're wrong. You're blaming yourself for no reason."

"I think there's a reason."

"Is that why you dropped out of school?"

"I dropped out because none of it made any sense to me anymore."

"I can relate to that."

"My father had no problem with it. He thought I was going to enroll at the local public school. He got the tuition back and left it all to me."

And as I speak those words, I remember claiming my own tuition refund from Peter Plymouth, just yesterday. My G.o.d. History repeats itself yet again in the Sullivan family.

"Hang on, hang on," Jake says. "Your father left it up to you you to find a new school and enroll there?" to find a new school and enroll there?"

"Correct."

"So you just didn't bother enrolling?"

"That's about the size of it. By the time he found out what I'd done, I was a copyboy at the New York Star. New York Star. Got a taste of ink, and that was that. Had my first byline when I was eighteen, and two years later I was a full-time reporter. No way I was ever going to sit in a cla.s.sroom again." Got a taste of ink, and that was that. Had my first byline when I was eighteen, and two years later I was a full-time reporter. No way I was ever going to sit in a cla.s.sroom again."

"How'd you get the job at the Star?" Star?"

"I...sort of knew somebody there."

"Who?"

"It doesn't matter. Point is, I went and did it."

Jake slumps back on the bench, awed by what he's heard. "The b.a.l.l.s on you, Dad!"

I have to admit, it's a good thing to hear. "Yeah, I guess it did take b.a.l.l.s. It was also a stupid thing to do."

"Why?"

"Because my life could have been different. It could have been better."

"You think?"

"Sure. With the right education, I could have gone another way, instead of wasting my life cranking out c.r.a.p for the New York Star. New York Star."

"Yeah, but I never would have been born."

"Excuse me?"

"You'd never have been a newspaperman, and you'd never have gone to that movie premiere, and you'd never have met Mom."

This kid of mine, and the things he comes out with.

"I guess you're right about that."

I'm actually feeling a little better. It feels good to unload my secret, the kind of good you feel when nausea finally pa.s.ses and a light, cooling sweat breaks out all over your skin.

Jake pats my shoulder. "Everything happens for a reason, Dad."

"Is that so? Maybe I'll understand it better when I'm your age."

"I'm not just saying this stuff because I'm your son. You've been beating yourself up for a long time, and you should stop."

"How?"

"I don't know. But you deserve a break."

My face is wet. Tears are rolling down my cheeks. I cannot believe how hard my son is working to make me feel better. He actually wipes my tears with the back of his hand.

"You're quite a guy, Dad. You did amazing things with your life, when you were just a kid. A kid without a high school diploma!"

"Hey. That doesn't mean you you don't need one." don't need one."

"I know, I know."

"I do do have an eighth grade diploma from St. Aloysius. And I won the English medal, if memory serves. Even then I could serve up the bulls.h.i.t pretty good." have an eighth grade diploma from St. Aloysius. And I won the English medal, if memory serves. Even then I could serve up the bulls.h.i.t pretty good."

"Pretty well." well."

"Yes, that's correct. I was just testing you. Glad to see they taught you some useful things at that school."

I smile at Jake, who shakes his head in wonder.

"Your father must have been pretty impressed with you."

"Nah, he barely knew what was going on in my life. We pretty much just coexisted in the house after my mother died. We ate in front of the TV to break the silence. I'm sure he was relieved when I moved out."

"Why?"

I sigh, shrug, rub my eyes. "He probably suspected that I'd upset her badly just before she died."

"No way!"

"Deep down, I think he blamed me for what happened."

"You should have told him what you told me! He'd have understood. It's too bad you didn't clear the air before he died."

My hands are shaking. I squeeze them together to calm them. Another bus stops and the driver opens the door for us and waits, until Jake waves him away.

"Thing of it is, Jake, the guy's still alive, as far as I know."