before, but now she sat both of them on her sofa and insisted they see the priest at her parish and formalize their vows. Our father himself was the offspring of a single mother who was notoriously irresponsible: a floozy, Gee often said, who had not been married when her son was conceived,thus sealing forever in Gee’s mind the firm line between the two of them, where respectability was concerned. Worse, in Gee’s estimation: the son was a charity case at the school. Someone who raised tuition, Gee lamented, for other working people. What our father’s mother thought about all of this—the baby, the marriage, Gee herself—is lost to time. I cannot, in fact, ever recall meeting her. She did not attend our mother’s funeral: an offense that Gee will take to her own grave.
In Gee’s telling of things—the only version of events that I have ever heard—Lisa and Daniel, our parents, got married in private at Holy Redeemer, on a Wednesday afternoon, with Gee and the deacon as witnesses. Then Gee took Dan in, giving her daughter and her new son-in-law the middle bedroom in the house, taking rent whenever the young couple could give it, and telling the rest of the family the news as slowly as she possibly could. Head held high. Defiant.
Five months later, I was born. Kacey a year and a half after that.
Four years later, our mother was dead.
----
—
Of the years in between my birth and my mother’s death, there are memories, still, if I quiet my mind sufficiently. It is rarer and rarer, these days, that I can. On a shift, sometimes, inside my patrol car, I remember being in the backseat of a car that my mother was driving. No car seat, in those days. No seat belt either. In the front seat, my mother was singing.
From time to time it happens, too, when I’m at the refrigerator, any refrigerator, at home or at work: a quick vision of my young mother complaining to Gee, in Gee’s kitchen, that there’s nothing inside. Oh really, says Gee, in another room. Then why don’t you put something in it.
And a pool. Someone’s pool. Rare to be at a pool. And the lobby of a movie theater, though I’m not sure where it was, and every movie theater is in Center City, now, and the others are closed or converted to concert venues.
I remember my mother’s youth, the way she seemed like a child herself, or a peer, her skin clear and smooth, her hair still the shining hair of a child. I remember, too, the way Gee softened around her, becamestiller, stopped moving, for once in her life. She laughed in spite of herself, put a hand over her mouth at her daughter’s antics, shook her head in disbelief. You’re nuts. She’s nuts. This must be the nuthouse, Gee said, looking at me, grinning, proud. Gee, in those days, was kinder, bewitched by her funny, irreverent daughter, unaware of the fate that would befall her, and all of us.
Harder still to recall are the memories that come to me in the still dark of my bedroom. Whenever Thomas is in close proximity to me, little-boy head right next to me, whenever I am close enough to his skin to breathe its scent—there—just there—is a flash of my own mother beside me in my childhood bed. My mother’s face, young face, my mother’s body, young body, covered in a black T-shirt with writing on it that I cannot read. The arms of my mother around me. My mother’s eyes closed. My mother’s mouth open. Her breath the sweet breath of a grass-eating animal. I am four and I put one hand on her cheek. Hello, says my mother, and she puts her mouth on my cheek, talks into my face, and there are the teeth and the lips of my mother. My baby, said my mother, over and over, the phrase she used most in the world. If I try very hard, I can still hear her saying it in her high, happy voice, which sometimes carried inside it a note of surprise: that she, Lisa O’Brien, had a baby at all.
----
—
What I do not recall is anything to do with my mother’s addiction. Perhaps I repressed it; or
In Gee’s telling of things—the only version of events that I have ever heard—Lisa and Daniel, our parents, got married in private at Holy Redeemer, on a Wednesday afternoon, with Gee and the deacon as witnesses. Then Gee took Dan in, giving her daughter and her new son-in-law the middle bedroom in the house, taking rent whenever the young couple could give it, and telling the rest of the family the news as slowly as she possibly could. Head held high. Defiant.
Five months later, I was born. Kacey a year and a half after that.
Four years later, our mother was dead.
----
—
Of the years in between my birth and my mother’s death, there are memories, still, if I quiet my mind sufficiently. It is rarer and rarer, these days, that I can. On a shift, sometimes, inside my patrol car, I remember being in the backseat of a car that my mother was driving. No car seat, in those days. No seat belt either. In the front seat, my mother was singing.
From time to time it happens, too, when I’m at the refrigerator, any refrigerator, at home or at work: a quick vision of my young mother complaining to Gee, in Gee’s kitchen, that there’s nothing inside. Oh really, says Gee, in another room. Then why don’t you put something in it.
And a pool. Someone’s pool. Rare to be at a pool. And the lobby of a movie theater, though I’m not sure where it was, and every movie theater is in Center City, now, and the others are closed or converted to concert venues.
I remember my mother’s youth, the way she seemed like a child herself, or a peer, her skin clear and smooth, her hair still the shining hair of a child. I remember, too, the way Gee softened around her, becamestiller, stopped moving, for once in her life. She laughed in spite of herself, put a hand over her mouth at her daughter’s antics, shook her head in disbelief. You’re nuts. She’s nuts. This must be the nuthouse, Gee said, looking at me, grinning, proud. Gee, in those days, was kinder, bewitched by her funny, irreverent daughter, unaware of the fate that would befall her, and all of us.
Harder still to recall are the memories that come to me in the still dark of my bedroom. Whenever Thomas is in close proximity to me, little-boy head right next to me, whenever I am close enough to his skin to breathe its scent—there—just there—is a flash of my own mother beside me in my childhood bed. My mother’s face, young face, my mother’s body, young body, covered in a black T-shirt with writing on it that I cannot read. The arms of my mother around me. My mother’s eyes closed. My mother’s mouth open. Her breath the sweet breath of a grass-eating animal. I am four and I put one hand on her cheek. Hello, says my mother, and she puts her mouth on my cheek, talks into my face, and there are the teeth and the lips of my mother. My baby, said my mother, over and over, the phrase she used most in the world. If I try very hard, I can still hear her saying it in her high, happy voice, which sometimes carried inside it a note of surprise: that she, Lisa O’Brien, had a baby at all.
----
—
What I do not recall is anything to do with my mother’s addiction. Perhaps I repressed it; or
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