Lydia Millet - How the Dead Dream

"Here's the thing. I don't know what happened between the two of you. This is my daughter here, and my job."

"Yeah," he said, waiting.

"But she can't have any contact anymore," she said. "I'm sorry, T. You know how much I hate to be in this position."

"You're kidding."

Susan coughed, and the cough wore on.

No.

"It doesn't-she's my best friend, Susan. I can't believe it. Is she really serious about this?"

"I think she's serious," said Susan. "Yes. I'm afraid she is, T. And I'm sorry, but I really do have to go," and she hung up still coughing.

He let his eyelids drop closed: a faint imprint of the great seal on the dollar bill, the glowing pyramid with its all-seeing eye.

He stood in the booth like a statue, testing the steadiness of his feet on the ground. He kept his eyes shut, and the sweat that had soaked his shirt cooled him in the night air. He started to shake. It came to him that beyond himself he had deprived his mother-she would be friendless once more.

He brought them to her and they were taken away again.

He needed Casey, he thought, because he liked her company, because her presence made him more than he was without it, but he could not deny that at the beginning he had also believed he was doing her a favor. That was where his arrogance had been. It was a mistake to think that because someone had fallen down, someone was injured or sick or less than complete, you were giving more to them by your association than they were giving to you.

It was a bad mistake.

He leaned for some time against the wall of the booth, still holding the receiver loosely till it occurred to him that he did not need to. The ears of unwashed men had greased the black plastic. Revolting. There was a sheen on the curving surface, the whorls and smudges of fingerprints.

He walked down to the waterline holding his hands out at his sides, feeling a need to wash them. But even as his legs moved him forward he knew a certain ambivalence or resistance, as though the leavings of strange men were also somehow the last touch of Casey, which would be washed off with the rest.

Still he plunged in his arms. The water was freezing.

His mother forgot him on a Thursday. On Thursdays they had dinner together; he brought over takeout and she turned from her puzzles. This time, when he knocked on her door in the early evening, pizza box in one hand, she tried to close the door in his face. He put a hand out to stop it closing.

"I didn't order one. It's not mine."

Vera stood behind her, shaking her head patiently.

"It's me," he said. "T. It's your son. It's our dinner."

He held out the box as though it might jog her memory.

"Yes," said Vera, and stepped through the door to stand next to him, an arm around his shoulders. "This is Thomas, Angela. Your son! He comes almost every day with his dog. Remember? You call him T."

"I don't. ."

"Let's go ahead and let him in now, honey."

"Dog. The white dog? The one with white hairs on it?"

"Yes," said T., and nodded.

His mother turned her back and left the door standing open. She sat down on a stool close to the television and stared at it. She did not meet his eyes when he bent to kiss her.

Onscreen a man prodded another man's chest with a finger.

"Is this the only symptom?" he asked the nurse.

"She's fixated on hair. Dog hair, people hair. She looks for hairs on the furniture and picks them off one by one. She can spend hours doing this. And she keeps throwing away her hairbrushes. Then we have to buy new ones. I bought two in the last week. And I dug one of them out of the trash with yogurt all over it."

"Organic," said his mother, and squinted at him. "Fatfree."

She turned back to the television.

She had forgotten which room was her bedroom, said Vera; she had slept on the floor of the corridor and her hands and feet had been icy when Vera found her. She had omitted to put on a shirt in the morning and gone outside in nothing but underwear and a brassiere; she had made her way to the building's laundry room, where Vera found her picking the gray fluff out of the lint screens.

He went over to his mother and knelt down between her and the television; she leaned to her left and then to her right to see past him.

"You remember me, right? Mom. It's me."

Part of him thought that speaking close to her face, holding her wrists, fixing his eyes on her own would snap her to attention.

"Mom?"

"Are you a criminal?"

"I'm your son."

She was staring glassily and he turned to look where she looked; a man punched another man in the face.

"Is that a joke? Or a lie?" asked his mother, more speculative than accusing.

"Why would I lie about being your son?"

"Maybe you want to steal something."

"If I wanted to steal from you I would just grab your purse and run."

"You're a criminal. You have a criminal mind."

"I give up, then. I'm a criminal."

"Are you still my son?"

"Yes. I'm also your son."

"I must not have brought you tip right. I did something wrong. Was I the wrong mother?"

"You were a great mother."

"Can you change the channel?"

"Sure. What are you looking for?"

"I just want to watch a show that's not about criminals."

He flipped through the channels, waiting for her to stop him.

"See? They're all about criminals. All the shows are about criminals. All of them."

"Do you want to watch the news instead?"

"All that is is more of them."

"OK. I'll let you have the remote back then. Here."

"Are you a criminal?"

He looked over at the nurse, who shrugged and bent down with a cup of tea for him.

"We've already been through that."

"I need to have a shower. I need to shave my armpits."

"Good to know. Go for it."

"It has sprouts in there."

She picked up a magazine from the end table and shuffled off toward the bathroom; he waited dranking his tea, and heard nothing. There was no sound of water running.

After he finished the tea he went to the bathroom door and knocked; his mother opened the door fully dressed and stood back slightly, waiting. Behind her the bathroom looked ransacked.

"Who are you?"

"I'm your son."

"The rapist? Or the murderer?"

"I like to flatter myself that I'm neither."

"I remember you. You like to do those crimes. The police come and solve them and have a trial with a pretty lady talking. You have to go to jail. Because sometimes you do killing, other times you do rape."

"I do mostly real estate."

She studied him suspiciously, at some remove.

"OK. I admit it. A little land speculation."

"I know you. I saw you there. You're the one from the program. Why do you even deny it?"

"Mom. I was with you in the living room, and we were watching TV. So let's not talk about me. Let's talk about you instead. I didn't hear the shower, is all. I wondered if you forgot. You said you wanted to have one."

"Oh," she said, and turned to look behind her. The floor was littered with toiletries and medicines; the cabinet doors were ajar.

"What are you doing there?"

"I thought…"

"Tidying tip?"

"I wanted to get rid of them," she said faintly, and looked down at the spread.

He remembered the vial of pills. He looked down at similar vials on the floor.

"Let me help you," he said.

He knelt down and picked up the pills, slipped them into his pockets as she turned away and began to handle a hairbrush, plucking at the hairs that were caught in the bristles. Pink plastic razors were everywhere. He would not confiscate her razors, but he wished that he could.

"This is all over the place," she said, holding a tangle of hair she had removed from the brush. "It gets in things. It grows on you.