“Yes, you did,” Janelle says.

“Well, I gotta be going,” Cecil says.

“What’s up with dreaming about fish?” Dingus asks.

“It means somebody supposed to be pregnant or something like that, doesn’t it?” Lewis asks, standing at the screen door again.

“It most certainly does,” I say, and if I wasn’t on so much medication right now, I’d swear that Janelle and Cecil, and even Paris and Dingus, all look like they just seen God or a goddamn ghost.

Ten Thousand Things

“Did you like the halibut, Mama?”

“It was different, that much I can say. Seem like it had kind of a vinegary taste. I ain’t complaining, but I was sure in the mood for some fried pork chops smothered in gravy.”

“I don’t fry anything, Mama.”

“Of course you don’t, Paris. Anyway, what I really liked was the dressing on that salad and that crumbilay stuff you made for dessert.”

I chuckle. “It’s called crème brûlée, Mama.”

I’m lying next to her in her bed. I’m surprised she’s still up. After all, it’s almost one o’clock in the morning. We’ve been playing Trivial Pursuit since right after dinner. Lewis won. Mama just watched. She abandoned us a little after eleven. The TV is on with no sound. We’re half under the covers and half out. Everybody else is asleep, except Lewis. I hear the TV out there and the ice in his glass clinking. His mind is probably flitting from one thing to another, because he hasn’t learned to compartmentalize like the rest of us. I feel sorry for my brother, really. He’s so smart he’s dumb. Sometimes I feel like I’ve got too many circuits going at once, too, but I unplug a few in order to get the pace down to a manageable level so I can do one thing without thinking about the ten thousand other things I still have to do. I often wonder, will I ever have a day with nothing on my “to-do” list?

“Paris?” Mama’s over near the edge, and I can just barely feel her body heat. I slide closer to her, which I can tell makes her somewhat uncomfortable, but I take hold of her arm so she can’t squirm away.

“Yes, Mama.”

“Is the mattress all right?”

“It’s very comfortable,” I say.

“I had it on layaway for the longest. It’s a Sealy, you know.”

“It’s nice.”

“I got a bed and dresser on layaway at Thomasville. You ever bought anything from them?”

“Nope.”

“For my money, they got the best layaway plan in town. You can take your time and pay ’em twenty dollars a month, they don’t care. And their furniture ain’t cheap. It’s good quality and very sophisticated. I love that store.”

“I’m glad you do, Mama.”

“I need to do something in here, but it might not be worth my time and energy.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I don’t feel like talking about it right now.”

“Okay,” I say. The bed, chest of drawers, and dresser in this room are clearly from the seventies but everything in here is well kept. The sheer cream curtains have been starched and ironed. I know she did them herself. Mama’s always been clean and neat. I like that about her. Her perfume bottles are all lined up on the dresser, even though some are thirty years old and only full of fumes; there are round containers of dusting powder with various paisley prints and flowers with mint-green vines swirling around the curves; tons of lipsticks, some of them I know are at least five or six years old because I can spot about ten pink Fashion Fair tubes that Janelle, Charlotte, and I gave her for her fiftieth birthday. There’s no sign of jewelry, because, even though most of it’s costume, Mama still keeps it hidden in her drawers, between all her “raggedy” underwear (and she’s got stacks of them), because that’s where a thief probably wouldn’t look. Daddy gave her a diamond so small that when it fell out she didn’t even notice. It’s in the box with the fake stuff.