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"Mother," I said, though I seldom use that word in conversation with her, "this is different You’ve got to help me this time People will die if you don’t"

Perhaps that was the worst thing that I could have said She didn’t possess the emotional capacity to assume responsibility for the lives of others

She seized the rose that she had cut for ripped it by the bloom and tore it out of h, the steers, and a thorn pierced the pad of my thumb, broke off in the flesh

She crushed the blooround She turned away froht up with her,for a few hts and help me understand why I had come here, of all places, at this mortal hour

She hurried, and I hurried with her By the time she reached the steps to the back porch, she had broken into a run, the skirt of her sundress rustling like wings, one hand on her bonnet to hold it on her head

The screen door slammed behind her as she disappeared into the house I stopped on the porch, reluctant to go farther

Although I regretted the need to harass her, I felt harassed myself, and desperate

Calling to her through the screen, I said, "I’o"

She didn’t answer me Beyond the screen door, a curtained kitchen

lay in shadows, too still to be harboring one deeper into the house

"I’ll be here on the porch," I shouted "I’ll be waiting right here All day if I have to"

Heart ha, I sat on the porch floor,away from the kitchen door

Later, I would realize that I must have co precisely this response and driv­ing her quickly to her ultiun

At that moment, however, confusion was my companion, and clar­ity seemed far beyond my reach

FIFTY-THREE

THE SHANK OF THE THORN PROTRUDED FROM MY THUMB I plucked it free, but still the bleeding puncture burned as if conta there on h it had been not a single thorn but a croorth

As a child, when I had a toothache, I could expect noMy hbor to take me to the dentist, while she retreated to her bedrooe there for a day or two, until she felt certain I would have no lingering cohtest fever or sore throat that troubled me was a crisis hich she could not deal At seven, afflicted by appendicitis, I col­lapsed at school and was rushed from there to the hospital; had ht have left me to die inbooks and the enteel interests hich she determinedly fashioned her private perfecto mundo, her "perfect world"

My emotional needs, my fears and joys, my doubts and hopes, my miseries and anxieties were mine to explore or resolve without her counsel or sys that did not dis­turb her or uidance

For sixteen years we shared a house as though we lived not in the same world but in parallel dimensions that rarely intersected The chief characteristics of le to avoid a bleakness of spirit that unrelieved loneli­ness can forim occasions when events had forced our parallel worlds to intersect in crises that my mother could not tolerate and from which she could not easily withdraw, she reliably resorted to the saun The terror of those dark en­counters and the subsequent guilt that racked me made loneliness preferable to any contact that distressed her

Now, pressing thu, I heard the twang of the spring on the screen door

I couldn’t bear to turn and look at her The old ritual would play out soon enough

Behindinto the coarden beyond, I said, "I can’t Not this time"

I checked hter, minute by minute, if this had been a borown flat and strained under the weight of the bur­den that I’d placed upon her, the burden of si, which she could not carry "I won’t put up with this"

"I know But there’s so you can do to help me"

She sat beside me at the head of the porch steps She held the pistol in both hands, aied in no fakery The pistol was loaded

"I won’t live this way," she said "I won’t I can’t People alanting things, sucking away reedy, insatiable Your need… it’s like a suit of iron toburied alive"

Not in years - perhaps never - had I pressed her as hard as I did on that fateful Wednesday: "The crazy thing is, Mother, after more than twenty years of this crap, down at the bottoht to be the darkest, I think there’s still this spark of love for you It h to be love"

She doesn’t want love froive in return She doesn’t believe in love She is afraid to believe in it and the deeniality, only relationships that require less than lip service to be sustained Her perfect world has a population of one, and if she does not love herself, she has at least the tenderest affection for herself and craves her own company when she must be with others

My uncertain declaration of love inspired her to turn the gun upon herself She pressed the htly toward her chin, the better to blow out her brains

With hard words and cold indifference, she can turn away anyone she chooses, but sometimes those weapons have not been sufficiently effective in our turbulent relationship Even though she doesn’t feel it, she recognizes the existence of a special bond between mother and child, and she knows that sometimes it won’t be broken by any but the cruelest er for me?" she asked

As I always do, I looked away As if I had inhaled the shade of the oaks along with the air, as if s passed it into my blood, I felt a cold shadow arise in the chambers of my heart

As she always does when I avert ut-shoot ht here in front of you"

Sickened, treht as well pull the trigger yourself, you little shit It’s no different thanme pull it"

I couldn’t count - and didn’t care to ree before

My ht use an array of mental terms, but in the Dictionary of Odd, her be­havior is the definition of insanity

I have been told that she wasn’t always like this As a child, she had been sweet, playful, affectionate